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Emissions Scandal Expands: Mercedes-Benz, Honda, Mazda, and Mitsubishi (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Volkswagen has taken some serious heat for deliberately circumventing emissions tests with "defeat devices" in some of their vehicles. While no other cars have been found to use specific devices to fool tests in the same way, we're now learning that many manufacturers still mysteriously perform worse in the real world. Last week, the Guardian revealed that diesel cars from Nissan, Hyundai, Citroen, Fiat, Volvo, and Renault emitted significantly more pollution in realistic driving conditions than the tests supposedly allow. Now, we learn that vehicles from Mercedes-Benz, Honda, Mazda, and Mitsubishi emit substantially more than they should as well. For example: "Mercedes-Benz's diesel cars produced an average of 0.406g/km of NOx on the road, at least 2.2 times more than the official Euro 5 level and five times higher than the Euro 6 level. Honda's diesel cars emitted 0.484g/km of NOx on average, between 2.6 and six times the official levels." This provides clear evidence that the automotive industry is designing its cars to follow the letter of the law (passing tests), but not the spirit (actually reducing pollution).
Or it reveals that the testing mechanism was always wrong. It's a leap to say that differences between the tests and "real driving" represent fraud, until it's proven that the cheating mechanism is actually there (as it is in VW).
I don't think diesel passenger cars will be a thing much longer in North America after this. And time to change the tests to measure results in real world usage conditions.
Ok, if they want to cheat then they should have to forfeit 3X any revenues (not profit which is a much smaller figure) they made from the products they sold. Have the money fund the EPA or something similar or refund the customers. Any engineer or manager who signed off on or was involved in this should be liable for damages as well as criminal charges with no corporate protection since this was a fraud.
I've also read in the last day or two that VW is (predictiably) trying to claim that management knew nothing about the emissions and that "a handful" of engineers were responsible. While there were obviously engineers responsible I have NO doubt whatsoever that management requested and signed off on this. They're just trying to throw a few peons under the bus to save their own skin.
The law says "pass this test" so they pass the test.
How is this different than standardized testing in schools? The state says "pass this test" so the teachers train the kids to pass the test.
Do they actually LEARN anything useful for the real world?
Do these cars actually have low emissions when driven in the real world??
You be the judge.
Flappinbooger isn't my real name
Why? It's not like Slashdot is a US centric web page... Why does it have to make special mention of the status in the US?
Obviously anything not concerning US citizens should be labeled as such. After all, the site's motto is "News for US Nerds, Stuff that matters to US only".
You need a controlled environment for consistent results.
The point here is that when the headline says it expands to Honda, one might errantly assume it includes Honda vehicles that are available here in the US (as the VW Diesels are). If the headline was expanded to specify "Diesel vehicles from ..." then it would be more clear. There have been emissions scandals with gasoline-powered cars in the past, so specifying that this applies just to Diesels would be useful.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I don't understand why we're seeing all these gasoline hybrids instead of diesel ones. Aren't diesels running in their optimum range much more efficient? And with all these emissions issues turning up, isn't it feasible to set up diesel hybrids to basically always run in a narrow range with the best emissions and efficiency possible?
fencepost
just a little off
Slashdot is hosted in the US. The employees for Slashdot all work in the US. The majority of slashdot readers are in the US. The majority of slashdot commenters are in the US as well. If they want an informed audience and an informed discussion it would be worth pointing out that three of the four brans listed don't sell Diesels in the US.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I wonder if it is a clue they talked about "Euro" levels in the summary. It is almost as if Euro means Europe or something..
Why? It's not like Slashdot is a US centric web page...
In all actuality, it really is. Slashdot covers US politics to an extent that it covers no other country (or even perhaps all of them combined). And it's not "politics in America affects everyone", either: I can't for the life of me figure out why, say, a Scandi cares about H1B tech hires in California.
Beating test cycles by engineering to the test is hardly a new phenomenon, and it is the bulk of why current EU tests are being replaced by new standards currently in development that are harder to game. Even with this improvement, expect some level of optimization for test conditions while either ignoring or even harming real world performance.
The relentless cycle beating has had a myriad of harmful effects beyond just not accomplishing the purpose.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
I remember while listening to the autobiography of Smokey Yunick as read by John Z Delorean, he was talking about his days as a vehicle tester for GM in the 70's when emissions became a thing. He talked about how they would drive the standard shift cars in a hilly area, always riding the clutch, always turning the car off at lights and stops etc. This would give the car much greater test numbers than real world use. Cheating the system isn't new, and the fact that there seems to be NO ONE checking on these guys speaks volumes.
The VW boss recently said "It's the decision of a couple of software engineers, not the board members." It looks like those two software engineers snuck into all these other car companies and altered their systems also! How nefarious!
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
With that logic, the first to be hanged should be the leaders of the world's governments.
Yes. Blasting a black cloud of carcinogenic particulates in my face every time you accelerate is definitely eco-friendly.
It shouldn't be any surprise that if you ask a set of engineers to make the car pass a set of tests, that they design the car to pass the set of tests. The real issue is the quality of the tests. There should be an actual tailpipe sensor and a standard driving course rather than a dynamo test.
While I think we should strive for a cleanest possible emissions at a specific price point, eliminating diesel engines entirely by making it too expensive to meet would do no favors to the environment. Diesels are more efficient than gasoline engines, so phasing them out in favor of gasoline engines will end up producing more total pollution.
The correct approach is incentives, tax pollution via fuel taxes and give out incentives to manufacturers exceeding the average. This way cleaner diesel, that are more expensive to produce, will be eligible for a credit, making them cost-competitive.
The root cause of VW fiasco is that they couldn't produce a clean engine at a price point. Making too-expensive car that very few people would ever buy (because it costs too much!) does not benefit the environment in any way.
You are dumping 40 times the amount of nox in the air, how exactly are you more ecofirendly?
There's no way the other diesel manufacturers were unaware of what Volkswagen was doing. Here's a little more on this: http://geekcrumbs.com/2015/10/...
- The Kessel run is for nerf herders. I can circumnavigate the entire Central Finite Curve in a lot less than 12 parse
Is that a thing?
Has the day finally dawned when we can have an ethnic slur for Scandinavians? Here's hoping.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Not at all. As an engineer, you give me clear goals:
Meet these specific standards under these specific conditions.
I can do that. I will probably do that at the expense of performance under other conditions. That's engineering. that's not being a corporate apologist. Now VW took it over the line, by actively modifying the code to pass those tests, something that is forbidden, but without third-party review it's impossible to catch this sort of stuff.
What needs to be happening is that the software is audited by independent third parties, and there is random testing of actual road performance.
Corporate lawbreaking is "human nature" but whining isn't?
You are welcome on my lawn.
VW is a scandal because it detected the car being not on the test bench and relaxed to emission control.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Also I understand that "the fix" would decrease the performance of the car, which is likely to affect its resell value.
There was an article in last week's Economist on this. From recollection... in Europe, the testing is not done by an EPA-equivalent government agency, but by third party test labs. There, to get the business, the testers allow the auto manufacturers to rig the test: remove mirrors, remove all weighty optional equipment, remove seats, tape the door and window cracks, etc., etc. In other words, they are not testing the same car that they are selling.
That is the real problem. The entire basis for the corporate system is avoidance of responsibility. Maximize profits at any cost, even human life. And bad emission controls do threaten human life, see the killer smogs in London in the 50's or in China today. Look at the BP oil spill, the Piper Alpha, or Bhopal India and not a single C level manager or member of the BOD was held responsible, despite the fact that when things go right they get bonuses.
Until we hold executive officers, whose title comes from the word "to execute" as in to make happen, or members of the BOD are personally held civilly and/or criminally responsible then nothing will really change.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
It's a Jeep. If there ain't no oil under 'em, there ain't no oil in 'em.
No you are dumping UPTO 40 times the amount of NOx into the air than the maximum from the test. The important bit is the UPTO, It could mean that if I floor the accelerator from a standing start for the first 0.5s it is wildly over the limit aka 40 times over, for the next 0.5s its is only a bit over say 4x and after a second it is back under the limit. The UPTO 40 times has not been qualified to my knowledge though is almost certainly only going to apply to transient conditions and anyway only applies to VW.
However you are also assuming that petroleum spirit engines don't produce any NOx which is incorrect and that NOx is the only variable in the mix of stuff coming out the exhaust that is worth considering as a pollutant.
Here's a newsflash: particulate emissions are regulated by mass, but biological harm is proportional to the number of particles. The fact that those carcinogenic particulates from Diesels are big enough to form a visible cloud means they're less dangerous than the much larger number of tiny invisible particulates that gasoline engines emit.
(Not to mention, the modern Diesels being discussed have particulate filters -- which do actually work; the "emissions cheating" is about NOx, not particulates -- but modern gasoline engines still don't. And by the way: gasoline engines emit a fun mix of toxic substances such as benzene and formaldehyde that are much lower in Diesel emissions, and which are totally unregulated. New gasoline engines are way more carcinogenic than Diesels, even by a wider margin than they used to be.)
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
"Volkswagon's mistake..."
Apparently it wasn't a "mistake". Apparently Volkswagen used special hardware and software to break the law.
Yesterday on PBS NewsHour the CEO of Volkswagen said the dishonesty was the fault of unknown rogue software engineers, and no managers knew about it. However, special hardware was designed into the system; that couldn't have happened without help from other people in the company, including hardware buyers.
See this article: Older VW diesels will need software and hardware fixes, Horn tells lawmakers.
The CEO seems to be lying deliberately. He says "software". Then later mentions "hardware".
That Auto News article was apparently written by someone who doesn't understand that, if hardware is required, the dishonesty must have been approved by Volkswagen management.
Instructions unclear. Decorative photos tastefully hung on wall. Please send help.
Acid rain was caused mostly by SO2 from coal-fired power plants. NOx from vehicles is small potatoes in comparison.
Only in NOx-limited areas. In VOC-limited areas, increasing NOx actually helps.
Nope! In fact, the opposite. Wikipedia claims:
I admit, I didn't entirely believe it, so I found another source:
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz