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The Dirty Truth About 'Clean Diesel' (nytimes.com)
HughPickens.com writes: Volkswagen persuaded consumers it had created a new generation of so-called clean diesel cars — until investigators discovered that phony testing concealed that its vehicles emitted up to 40 times the permitted levels of pollutants during regular use. Now Taras Grescoe writes in the NY Times public outrage over the fraud obscures the much larger issue: "clean diesel" is causing a precipitous decline in air quality for millions of city-dwellers. Monitoring sites in European cities like London, Stuttgart, Munich, Paris, Milan and Rome have reported high levels of the nitrogen oxides and particulate matter, or soot, that help to create menacing smogs. Although automakers worked hard to convince consumers that a new generation of "clean diesel" cars were far less polluting, diesel has a fatal flaw. It tends to burn dirty, particularly at low speeds and temperatures. In cities, where so much driving is stop and start, incomplete diesel combustion produces pollution that is devastating for human health.
Fortunately, Volkswagen sold only half a million of its "clean diesel" cars to the American public before the emissions scandal broke. Today, fewer than 1 percent of the passenger vehicles sold in the U.S. run on diesel fuel. Europe is now scrambling to undo the damage. In London, Mayor Boris Johnson last year called for a national program to pay some drivers to scrap their diesel vehicles. In Paris, Mayor Anne Hidalgo has gained broad support for a proposed ban on diesel cars. "Last month, the signatories of the climate deal in Paris agreed that the world has to begin a long-term shift from fossil fuels to more sustainable forms of energy," concludes Grescoe. "Recognizing "clean diesel" for the oxymoron it is would be a good place to start."
Fortunately, Volkswagen sold only half a million of its "clean diesel" cars to the American public before the emissions scandal broke. Today, fewer than 1 percent of the passenger vehicles sold in the U.S. run on diesel fuel. Europe is now scrambling to undo the damage. In London, Mayor Boris Johnson last year called for a national program to pay some drivers to scrap their diesel vehicles. In Paris, Mayor Anne Hidalgo has gained broad support for a proposed ban on diesel cars. "Last month, the signatories of the climate deal in Paris agreed that the world has to begin a long-term shift from fossil fuels to more sustainable forms of energy," concludes Grescoe. "Recognizing "clean diesel" for the oxymoron it is would be a good place to start."
My own nose is able to tell that diesel isn't particularly clean burning.
... that comes out of the back of even new diesel vehicles on hard acceleration tells you all you need to know about how clean diesel really is. Yes, it emits less CO2 per mile than petrol/gasoline for the equivalent power output but thats where its enviromental credentials end.
Cars in general are bad for your health. Whether they burn oil or gas they cause particulate matter that is dangerous. The US is in worse shape than the EU because our cars tend to be bigger and emit more CO2 and particulate matter than the smaller EU cars. Plus we drive a lot more and our country is built around the automobile. What a shame, but I doubt there will ever be a solution for it.
If diesels pollute mostly at low speeds and temperatures, why not make diesel hybrids, which would allow the diesel to run at peak efficiency and/or cleanliness?
This makes a great story:
But nobody ever mentions the actual level - which is pretty damn important because 40 times 1 part per thousand is a lot more significant than 40 times 1 part per trillion.
Yes VW cheated - but lets not forget that the "Clean Diesel" TDIs are MUCH cleaner than the previous generation diesel cars (TDIs included) that were on the market. Anyone who has owned both can tell you, the clean diesel TDIs don't smell, never emit black smoke and the tail pipe stays clean and doesn't fill with soot the way the old cars did.
VW broke the law and should be punished, but this isn't the BP oil spill.
So what, Diesel is much more effective than gas cars. You can go 3 times the distance on same volume of fuel. A good engine has less CO2 compared to the trucks most of America drives. America has a skewed system of protecting local auto industry, they basically don't measure CO2 at all, they care about a short living, harmless (because of the short life) NO. Think about it - a large GMC van/suv on a truck frame, with 4 or 6 liter engine, it is much more polluting than a small 1.5/2l not so "clean" diesel. You have to think long term - about greenhouse gases. NO is not a greenhouse gas, CO2 is.
... nonexistent.
That is the problem, intermittent combustion. You need something that burns steady, like a steam engine or even better, a Stirling turning a generator... You don't need a muffler, and the heat from the catalytic converter can actually be useful.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The article centers on problems with Volkswagen's system, but how well does Daimler's BlueTEC system perform?
Wow...hyperbole much?
My '08 GTI had a black tailpipe from the day I bought it. Turbocharged direct injection engines also suffer from momentary overboost conditions on hard acceleration and they produce soot. What's worse is that many, if not all, of these gasoline engines do not have particulate filters on the exhaust.
I'll bet if we start scrutinizing the exhaust pipes of all these turbocharged, direct injected gasoline engines, you will find their emissions probably aren't compliant either.
Buybacks for good working engines so that they can be destroyed in the name of conserving resources is insane.
I support phasing out polluting technologies, but let's not lose perspective on the actual effects at play here. Fine the company and fix future models, but deal with the emissions by getting the badly tuned / worn out diesels off the road.
Yep, I'm saying cops should use emission guns to spot crap cars & mods. I don't think the models in this scandal are the ones that will be pulled over.
Before taking a job in systems administration, I used to hold a CDL and drive regional/long haul for a trucking company. Everything we had was, of course, diesel because we run mostly on highways and at fourty tons our speed isnt a huge priority. in fact, we sometimes drive under the speed limit to make up mileage/save fuel based on projected consumption. the diesel car, for all its promises, is a break-even proposition at best.
speed: outside of a few concept sports cars, diesel isnt about speed but torque. in trucking we compensate by turbocharging our engines, to make the lives of normal drivers easier. without turbos it would take ten minutes or more to get up to speed. the tradeoff is bad mileage.
coldstart: cold start problems will always exist. for those of you in minneapolis or duluth, I see you shopping for the same antigel treatments and fuel additives for your audi that I use on my freighliner, and the truth is theyre awful for emissions and even worse for mileage. emissions systems are often programmed to detect and correct for them. they dont always work in the coldest weather, and consumer autos dont have fuel tank heaters or radiator louvres.
"cleanliness": no. hell no. On my Freightliner CL Columbia truck, I had no less than 6 gauges for the emissions system. everything from exhaust backpressure to air-in temp, exhaust temp, and temperature monitors on the scrubber DPF CV. sometimes id sit idling for 15 minutes just to make sure my emissions layout was "green" before taking off, because if its not ill blow smoke for miles down the highway. urea tanks and injectors need to be filled and cleaned respectively at regular intervals, and in long haul trucking this is a no brainer. we have a very user friendly interface for monitoring and planning refill. but car drivers? do you really want to worry about the car dropping down into "limp home" mode when you forget to top off the tank? it could strand you on the highway at 24 miles per hour.
finally, theres the godless process of smogging. what might fly in one state, wont in another, and as more states adopt emissions standards that require smog checks, more of these older diesel cars will fail outright. for most trucks, if you can smell the diesel smell, you wont pass.
Good people go to bed earlier.
As usual, you have politicians and vested interests talking out of their arse and lurching from one crisis to another. The vast majority of pollution in any city is produced by a few hundred thousand large trucks, lorries, buses and vans which are usually given emissions exemptions. Good luck stopping them from running diesel. Banning diesel cars will do nothing for this (especially modern diesel cars which really are much more efficient even allowing for VW's stupidity) and might well make the situation worse. A lurch back to petrol/gasoline for Europe means producing more of a fuel that takes more energy to produce and transport as well as having to burn more of it by volume. Nobody seems to ask just how much in the way of emissions are produced on a journey outputting a certain amount of power.
We're likely to hear more anti-diesel rhetoric in the future. With the ever falling oil price and no floor to it in sight petrol/gasoline is simply going to be uneconomical to produce at some point. The only thing to do is to then try and ban the cheaper alternative through laws and regulations. There's a bit of distortion going on at the moment.
Protip: I would have modded this up if you removed the first four words.
So many good posts end up at +1 because of hyperbole or bombast. Make a good point and it stands on its own.
So how is reducing them going to help meet the Paris climate deal?
It should also be noted that standard gasoline cars also emit much more than tests indicate, and as any driver knows seldom match the stated mpg claims.
Harmless NOx.
Good god. Read the manual.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOx
NO and NO2 will form acid nitric which is a real strong acid.
4 NO + 3 O2 + 2 H2O 4 HNO3
2 NO2 + H2O HNO2 + HNO3
Read first and then say is not harmless. Is toxic. And this was the reason for smog forming.
CO2 is not toxic. But everything becomes poison in large quantities. ( H2O ?).
There was a fantastic talk at this year's Chaos Computer Club in Hamburg delving into the reasons behind "Dieselgate", including insights into the car industry itself and findings from disassembled ECU code. Part of it shows exactly how and why the NOx scrubbing technology was purposely disabled during normal driving. It does work, it just wasn't allowed to do its job, presumably to lower maintenance costs for the customer. And as the talk shows this decision must have involved hundreds of people including upper management, not just a couple of engineers.
The testing methodology for emissions is a shambles and has been cheated by every car manufacturer for decades now to varying degrees. If we're serious about fixing the emissions problems then this is the first place that needs attention. I believe you can make diesels cleaner, but it costs money. Fix the tests to force these emission standards to be applied in normal driving and then let the consumer decide if the added cost is worth owning a diesel. In fact we need to fix the tests regardless, if only to get a proper look at the real state of emissions across the board.
But seriously, the talk is well worth watching.
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
Yes, diesel engines cost more than regular ones, but that difference has declined sharply in the past decade and what's left of the price difference of maybe 10% is easily offset by the cost of operation. Getting 50 miles per gallon of diesel is far from impossible and with a price of about 80% of regular fuel it gets even cheaper.
As long as this is the case people will reach for diesel as long as there is no compelling reason not to. It's simply as that.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Man, it's times like these that make me wish I had a diesel car.....
It's a damn shame that VW look terrible and Audi's are too expensive for me xD.
Have you ever fallen asleep at the keybhanusdiog?
Poor people suffer a lot more from pollution than rich. Disallow cheats from writing off their fines.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
I love my TDI and you can suck my dick to determine the level of pollution that it kicks out. I never had it tested but I am pretty sure the new generation of TDI engines is much cleaner than any previous diesel engines before them.
require that as of 2020 30% of all cars sold (by OEM) be Electric (or Hybrid with Electric as Primary mode)
oh and 15% of all trucks/SUVs same rules
this will prevent OEMs from doing the "we made an electric car and nobody bought it" trick
the fine should be 125% of the gross difference (so if they only hit 20% then the fine is 125% of 10% of their gross)
I think that this proposal, signed by Elon Musk amongst many others, has an interesting approach: http://www.takepart.com/open-l...
tl;dr Instead of burdening VW with the huge cost of fixing the problems and fines, mandate that they invest the same money in Electric Vehicles and plant (ie economic development and jobs) in the affected states (in this case CA).
I haven't watched the talk yet. I've been to busy watching other 32C3 talks. :-)
But I do know that just after Dieselgate came out, some of the news in the Netherlands was that the testing lab in our country (which does this for otherEuropean countries too) had already figured this out at least a year earlier.
Their report showed that out of 16 models tested 14 failed a slightly more realistic test. So they were already busy helping to change the rules at the European level to get proper realistic testing.
Here is one of the Dutch articles of that time:
http://www.volkskrant.nl/econo...
They already noticed problems in 2009 so it seems.
New things are always on the horizon
Years of listening to europhiles prattle on and on about the wonders of diesel cars, and stoopid 'muricans with their cowboy gasoline hotrods.
So much for that noise. Let us know when you get your fleet fixed and burning gas.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
FUCK YOU! :) Curse words make my point stick better.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
I thought while one of Volkswagen's Cxx people was busy throwing its software engineers under the bus that this indicated:
* either VW had absolutely terrible, terrible software auditing, and the executive was effectively unwittingly condemning his own company for such shoddy practises.
* or he was lying.
There is absolutely no way that a "rogue engineer" as the guy put it could do this kind of thing and get away with it, even if VW's software auditing is indeed terrible. It would have taken at least the collusion of other engineers and at least some of management. If they do have software auditing, the collusion likely goes much higher.
It doesn't surprise me that the Chaos Computer Club confirms this is the case.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Better off with a gas-electric hybrid. Electric motor has even more low-end torque than diesel.
Depends on the application. Diesels-electrics are used in locomotives and I think they would probably work fairly well in similar applications like in large cargo hauling trucks. I think it wouldn't make sense for a small city runabout or a family sedan but for big trucks I'm kind of surprised we haven't seen it worked on already. Diesels are actually best in steady state applications which is why they are great for trucks. Yes they are torquey but their fuel efficiency is their primary draw and that comes from operating at (relatively) constant speeds.
Does that make it a less insightful or interesting point?
If they can make Clean Coal, why can't they make Clean Diesel?
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
A steam engine?? Its one of the most inefficient engines types ever designed.
Umm, you are aware that virtually all fossil fuel and nuclear power plants are types of steam engines right? A steam engine is just a heat engine that uses steam as its working fluid. Modern steam power plants have efficiency approaching 50% in some cases. If you are talking about some particularly inefficient form of steam engine you need to me more specific.
You can have my 2008 ML320 CDI turbodiesel when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
Come on, why haven't we seen one diesel hybrid car? Then there's zero issues about start, stop, and low-speed. Even with the price-gouging of the gas companies, that would really give you a high milage/gallon.
And don't tell me that would be "new" technology. Go down to the railroad tracks, and watch all the ->diesel-electric- locomotives, which have worked this way since the thirties....
mark
Your comments highlight the crux of the problem. Back in the day, inefficient (read truck like) diesel were shooting out black smoke. That particulate is large in size (10 or 100 of microns) that you actually "see". Improvements in efficiencies (both in combustion and trapping) made modern "clean engines" reduced the size of particulate to few microns. Those are much more difficult to see. Yet they are far more dangerous. Large particulate is trapped in your upper respiratory tract, the fine stuff gets deep in your lungs, often bioaccumulaating like abspestos does. You know how the stoey goes. Not because you don't see it it means it's not there... Next time stick a paper towel on the exhaust of your cold diesel and leave it there for a few minutes. Look at the color. Now you have somerhing to "see".
The way to go for minimizing the emissions is to build diesel-electric hybrids, where the engine only turns a generator that charges batteries. The reason is that the engine can be optimized for one RPM and load, and the catalysts can run closer to a steady state. Where the emissions spike are during transitions of power output, especially when accelerating after a period of very low output that lets the cats cool down.
I don't have feelings one way or another, but I observe that the greens here in Oregon are pushing something like "green diesel" that uses vegetable oil and is supposed to have a much smaller carbon footprint. Now, I only know about this what I've read on bumper stickers, and don't know if this is actually clean or not, but whether or not, it seems like this will also be a casualty of this new anti-diesel movement.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Diesel electric trains are popular because mechanically coupling wheels to a 3000 horsepower engine is not trivial :)
Mechanically coupled steam engines exceeded diesel locomotives power for about the first 50 years we had diesel locomotives. The advantages of diesel electrics are numerous and not just related to transmission of power to the wheels. There are mechanically coupled diesel locomotives in service today though they aren't common. Advantages of diesel electric locomotives include: they can be safely operated with smaller crews, they can be started and stopped basically instantly, they are quieter and cleaner, they can be ganged together easily, they require less maintenance than steam engines, they have lower maintenance costs, they are more reliable, they are safer, etc. Steam engines are basically at full power all the time. It's what made them useful and also what made them dangerous.
Even before the Volkswagen scandal, it was always a tradeoff between diesel (fuel efficiency) and gasoline (air quality). Europe went with the former while the United States went with the latter. The hope of the former was that diesel would get cleaner, with companies like Volkswagen supposedly leading the way. Now sadly, we know better...
There's about twice as much gasoline settling out of crude at the early stages of refinement, but diesel requires much less further refining.
How much do the Mercedes BlueTec engines pollute? I don't think "clean diesel" is the oxymoron, I think "cheap clean diesel" is the oxymoron. Do the nitrous oxide scrubbers added to the exhaust work or not? I also think that when Volkswagen "fixes" the problem by reprogramming these vehicles to always run in low-emissions mode (which greatly reduced fuel economy), there will be a huge black market for replacement chips that go back to the original behavior -- get great fuel economy, but pollute!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Another joke came to light a few days ago. Apparently VW borrowed 4.8 billion from the European Investissement Bank 'to develop clean motors' and since this obviously wasn't true, they have to pay them back _now_.
This will be completely funded by the VW group and will provide sufficient compensation to drivers to allow them the opportunity to buy an equivalent new car from *any* car maker without compelling them to purchase a vehicle - i.e. to rewind the clock with respect to the purchase which was conducted under false representation by VW.
The group will also be contributing towards the healthcare costs of each state where their vehicles have been sold and have thus contributed to decreased quality of life. Anyone suffering from respiratory diseases within these states will receive private healthcare of their choosing funded by VW.
Requiem for the American Dream
Good idea, but Elon Musk has quite a vested interest: he wants to be the Intel of battery technology. Anything that drives up the demand for electric vehicle batteries puts money in his pocket. On the plus side, anything that drives down the price/performance ratio of electric vehicle batteries is a net win for the planet. I'm just not sure forcing the adoption of a technology before it would otherwise be economically feasible is actually a win. Given time, batteries will probably be the best energy storage mechanism. I don't understand why Toyota is pushing hydrogen to hard, as it currently stands, it has about half the efficiency as batteries.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Based on many online discussions over decades, re: diesel, largely internet unanimous and with people from Europe and Japan extolling the benefits of diesel, why single out automakers?
It's time for a blanket ban on diesel vehicles. We know that brain cancer is caused by inhaling diesel fumes. We now know that these new diesel cars are not cleaner than the old diesel cars. There is no argument for why these vehicles should be kept on the roads. They are an unacceptable health risk. Forget climate change, there's enough reasons to scrap these cars before we even get into greenhouse warming.
Yeah the problems have been known for a while, but it's something else to see disassembled ECU code with very specific conditions that disables the system during normal driving. In the talk they even re-create the emissions test conditions on a rolling road with realtime monitoring of the ECU's memory contents, so you can watch as it calculates the amount of urea to inject. As soon as the driving behavior leaves the test boundaries those calculations drop to 0 and stay there. It's pretty blatant.
The EPA just filed a lawsuit against VW, and given this evidence I don't see how they can weasel their way out of it this time.
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
its a good way to remove a "dirty" diesel from the road (after of course the road crew removes the smoking chunks from said road)
I'm very sceptical of any "2 minutes of hate" campaign against diesel. Especially when there's a price war on oil to kill off competition by Saudi.
Fuel prices at the pump are at their lowest since 2009 just now.
Diesel was a dirty fuel, which has had it's act cleaned up. The AdBlue cats have done a lot to help that.
As I see it this is a long game plan by OPEC's leader(s) to kill off competition and then raise prices while at the same time using politicians and media to go after petrol's more economical rival diesel.
If you want to talk dirty and pollution I think now is the time to scrap all fuel burning vehicles and go electric.
Picking on just one isn't the solution.
And yet, this misses the point. NOx emissions are only PART of the story. Particulate matters, and under driving conditions we constantly endure (stop-and-go), particulate is produced massively, with very small particle size. That, along with NOx, creates the massive smog in Europe and respiratory conditions. NOx may break down and all, but soot doesn't. One can justify, pointlessly IMHO, that diesel is still worth, but in all reality, particulate will kill it.
diesel is a great clean and efficient fuel when used right. That use is diesel-electric range extender hybrid. As others have pointed out diesel sucks at slow speeds. But a small diesel generator pack in a electric car can always operate at one set speed to which the engine and generator can be tuned. You get the efficiency of a diesel electric locomotive on wheels.
Yes it does. Reader reactions are affected by emotions. If the first sentence is an insult it triggers an emotion which affects interpretation of the rest of the point, as will making a spelling or a grammar mistake.
If you must then be sure to play it safe and leave the crap posting to the end. Quite frankly I'm not entirely sure what his point even was given I typically stop reading when I get to "fuck you".
Being in a busy road in london, you can choke on "clean diesel" in a way petrol could only strive for!
It's estimated that the majority of transit, trucks, cars and motorcycles in operation in both India and China spew out 10-20 times more pollution than they are supposedly emitting.
Never trust. Verify. And don't verify in the lab. Grab random vehicles in operation on the roads and subject them to 10 mile tests. If they fail, melt them for scrap right there.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Is it? My understanding always was, plants produce O2 from CO2 — and can live even in a pure CO2 atmosphere. Even if they'll grow different, they'll still thrive, no?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I largely agree, but it's also true that Musk/Tesla is advocating creating a competitor in the EV space.
I think that the basic thrust is sound. VW is going to have to spend a huge amount of money in fines and fixes. This money is essentially wasted on trying to fix fundamentally broken diesel technologies. Investing in EVs and production in CA might not have an immediate ROI for VW, but it's a better way to invest the billions that they are going to loose anyway then in just damage control.
As soon as the diesel injectors get dirty you can throw all that "clean diesel" argument out the window. And yes, they will get dirty.
What I have a problem with is this focus on VW only, I have a feeling the other manufacturers aren't any better.
New things are always on the horizon
the protein density of crops will drop, because the synthesis of proteins is nitrogen limited
The atmosphere is 78.09% N2. Suppose CO2 increases to 0.06% and N2 drops to 78.07%. Are you claiming that would cause a noticeable decrease in nitrogen-limited processes?
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Hybrid trucks might make sense but batteries are not even energy dense enough and cost effective or last long enough to make a difference to anyone but the wealthy and those who have no need to drive more than 30 or 40 miles a day with easy access to a place to charge.
Actually, some improved battery technologies are finally being deployed which could eliminate that problem. High energy density, high efficiency, ultra-fast recharge.
Let's see if electric or hybrid delivery trucks start to appear in a couple years, once the production ramp-up of operations like Tesla's "gigafactory" battery plant are far enough along to provide batteries to more than the luxury/early-adopter-premium automobiles.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
It's time to accept that the internal combustion engine's time has come for personal and mass transport. The goal has to be a shift to electric, with a real push from all manufacturers.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
This. At the crux of it are taxpayers paying for increased company profit margins.
The trend over the last several decades has been to move to "just in time delivery", where all your goods are always traveling on roads (which are paid for and maintained by taxpayers), never stored. Doing so means that companies do not need commercial land for warehouses, don't pay taxes on them, and have less goods sitting "idle" in a warehouse waiting for delivery to the storefront.
The end result however is the perpetual destruction of roads which need to be constantly maintained by taxpayer dollars, and the pollution of the environment at really little implication or cost to the company.
The simple answer is to remove the subsidy, start charging the "real" cost to companies, and you'll see companies changing their business model pretty damn quick to something more efficient and less environmentally damaging! (never mind the oil subsidy as well)
They are not. Many independent organizations since then did the tests to confirm just that.
One German magazine made a test of several diesel cars, and threw in one benzine one. In their test, only one - diesel! - car complied with the advertised emission standard. (Don't remember the brand (not BMW). What was surprising to me is that even the car running on benzine produced the NOx.)
Another German magazine did a test too, and IIRC only BMW diesel emission was within the advertised emission standard.
The larger problem behind the scenes is that the manufacturers have promised too much to the regulators but couldn't deliver. Thus the existing Euro 6 emission standard, established on the said promises, is simply not implementable at the moment. The industry insiders told that the emission limits should be raised by at least 70% to be in alignment with the current level of technology.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
what's all this about diesel being dirty? just because vin diesel plays a rough around the edges guy in the movies does not mean he does not keep up personal hygiene. I'm sure he's as clean as many Europeans and i don't know why they would outlaw him!!
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
I vaguely remember several Europeans guffawing at stupid Americans and how we can't get or won't buy the more clean and full efficient diesel cars...
"Monitoring sites in European cities .. have reported high levels of the nitrogen oxides and particulate matter, or soot, that help to create menacing smogs"
- Since the creation of new clean diesels? Or for a longer period?
- Was there an increase or decrease, since the new diesel tech came out?
- Were all old diesels replaced by new diesels? (if not, aren't we blaming new tech that hasn't been widely adopted?)
"In London, Mayor Boris Johnson last year called for a national program to pay some drivers to scrap their diesel vehicles."
- They're scrapping brand spanking new cars? (spoiler: no, just old, thundercloud brewing ones)
"It tends to burn dirty, particularly at low speeds and temperatures. In cities, where so much driving is stop and start, incomplete diesel combustion produces pollution that is devastating for human health. "
- And outside the cities, where people tend to drive longer distances?
- Isn't the real problem that people take their car for these short-distance trips? (e.g. Diesel engines, aren't the issue, people are)
- Which vehicles make for the largest percentage of diesel vehicles in a city, cars or delivery trucks & vans?
Besides, in many European countries, diesel cars are more expensive, in terms of road tax, and are only economically viable when you drive more than 30K km a year (give or take) So it wouldn't make sense buying one, if you only drive in the city.
This article raises more questions than it answers, in my humble opinion.