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Opel Dealers Accused of Modyfing the Software of Polluting Cars (deredactie.be)
An anonymous reader writes: Belgian public broadcasting station VRT has discovered that GM Opel dealerships in Belgium seem to be updating engine management code when Zafira cars equipped with the 1.6 litre CDTI diesel engine are brought in for service. After the software change, the nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions drop sharply, at the cost of reduced power output. Bern University of Applied Sciences and environmental lobby club DUH previously found this model to pass European emissions standards only when the rear wheels are not rotating. When the rear wheels are made to spin along, NOx emissions increase to several times the limit set by European regulations. General Motors denied using defeat devices as well as the update program that seems to be taking place. However, an anonymous mechanic at an Opel dealership states that GM started pushing updates shortly after the Dieselgate scandal broke.
I suspect that the majority of brands do the same thing more or less, so I'm not surprised.
It's back to the drawing board for those that sets up the conditions for tests and the emissions limits to get figures that better reflects reality. And this is not only diesels that are circumventing the regulations, I expect everyone of doing similar regardless of fuel type.
There's no surprise to customers that the fuel consumption figures provided by car manufacturers are almost impossible to achieve in reality, no matter what the gauges in the cars says.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
So if pretty much every manufacturer is doing this, how is this not equal to a kind of mass civic protest?
If in reality car emissions are higher than overly ambitious standards, but still low enough that air quality is OK - should the cars be "fixed" (as in the pet related term, neutered) or instead should the regulations be brought to realistic levels based on what cars are actually emitting today?
You think our air quality is ok?
So if pretty much every manufacturer is doing this, how is this not equal to a kind of mass civic protest?
Money.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
If in reality car emissions are higher than overly ambitious standards, but still low enough that air quality is OK - should the cars be "fixed" (as in the pet related term, neutered) or instead should the regulations be brought to realistic levels based on what cars are actually emitting today?
Air quality is anything but okay. I can't speak for the US, but here in Europe, we have serious problems with it. In China it's so bad in some areas you can actually only register a new car if it's electric - that's actually an important reason why electric cars are getting more attention now.
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
"Overly ambitious" standards? In whose opinion, the car manufacturers or those who suffer the consequences?
This isn't some civic protest akin to Prohibition, these are regulations designed to avoid Tragedy of the Commons scenarios with real costs to society. In the UK alone, nitrogen dioxide emissions cause 23,500 extra deaths, costing around £13bn per year.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
My Volvo V40 D4 used 4.7l/100km for 30.000km strait. At the very first service interval, the ECU software was updated. Immediately the car started to use 5.3l/100km and no longers seems to deliver the same power. My driving habbits and usual routes have not changed. My shoes didn't get any heavier. How do you explain 15% more fuel usage other than trying to cover up software 'flaws'?
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
If you are idling at stop lights diesel sucks. If you are on a highway it's better.
Cities compound the problem by having lots of stop and go traffic.
Sure the air is fine, couldn't be better, who the fuck want's to live till they are 70 and still be able to blow out birthday candles.
There are three kinds of falsehood: the first is a 'fib,' the second is a downright lie, and the third is statistics.
>So if pretty much every manufacturer is doing this, how is this not equal to a kind of mass civic protest?
Well, if Bernie Madoff were to resist arrest - and then every other convicted fraudster in the US resisted incarceration or tried to escape all at once... would you also consider *that* an example of legitimate civic protest ?
Sure you *can* protest for the right to harm others - but that doesn't mean your protest deserves anything but scorn from those others or lawmakers. At best this is "protest" in the same way that the South's seccession to preserve slavery and actively oppose states-rights (the claim that it was defending states rights is flagrantly ahistorical bullshit - it was in fact opposing the rights of states like Maine to *not* respect their slave-laws and not feel compelled to return runaways) was a civic protest - it still deservedly got suppressed.
Your rights end where mine begins. All pollution intrudes on my rights, we may grant a license for some on the basis of wanting the outcomes of the polluting process but you never get a *right* to do it because you are harming others, you get a limited license granted under specific conditions to minimize the harm suffered by the allowance. If you overstep those limits by any degree whatsoever you are the enemy of freedom - no matter what republican politicians say.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
CO1 is inherently unstable and will bond with oxygen to form CO2 fairly rapidly. That's why we don't have a major CO1 air polution problem - CO1 is basically the past tense of CO2. It's also why carbon monoxide is more toxic than CO2. CO2 will choke you but at least it doesn't accelerate the process by absorbing the oxygen you breathed in with it before you can.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
If every manufacturer decided to make seatbelts unsafe (and lied about it), would you consider that a civil protest or a criminal action?
Many corporations breaking the rules in an effort to save money doesn't make it right in any way shape or form.
Oh arse
Did the car makers complain about the standards? No
Were they upfront about the issue to the customer and public? No
Did they install the best for low emission software by default? No
This is not bending the rules but breaking them.
And the standards are not overly ambitious: http://www.theguardian.com/env... Stop buying fraud stuff.
CO is even worse than that - it binds to haemoglobin and doesn't let go which means the O2 in your lungs can't. Thats why it only takes a relatively small amount of CO to poison you.
They're new engine line up consists of ONE engine - a 2.0L 4 cyl in various stages of tune and turbocharging (presumably to save development costs). Good luck to them getting decent NOx figures out of that in the high power versions, not to mention longevity. There does seem to be an obsession with shriking engines below what is reasonable (3 cyl 1.0L in a Mondeo?? Hello Ford!) simply to meet CO2 emissions targets. Thats all well and good but you don't get something for nothing and high pressure small engines just don't last so you will probably find the car scrapped years earlier than otherwise and so completely negating any CO2 benefit accrued by the engine. Short term thinking at its finest.