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Nearly All New Diesel Cars Exceed Official Pollution Limits (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The Guardian, citing a comprehensive set of data, reports that 97% of all modern diesel cars emit more toxic nitrogen oxide (NOx) pollution on the road than the official limit. A quarter of this voluminous number emits at least six times more than the limit. From the report, "Surprisingly, the tiny number of models that did not exceed the standard were mostly Volkswagens, the carmaker whose cheating of diesel emissions tests emerged last year sparked the scandal. Experts said the new results show that clean diesel cars can be made but that virtually all manufacturers have failed to do so. The new data, from testing industry leader Emissions Analytics (EA), follows the publication this week by the Department for Transport of emissions results for 37 vehicles, all of which emitted more NOx on the road than the official limit. But the new data covers more than 250 vehicles in more stringently standardised road conditions. EA found that just one of 201 Euro 5 diesels, the EU standard from 2009, did not exceed the limit, while only seven of 62 Euro 6 diesels, the stricter standard since 2014, did so. Diesel cars must meet an official EU limit for NOx but are only tested in a laboratory under fixed conditions. All vehicles sold pass this regulation but, when taken out on to real roads, almost all emit far more pollution. There is no suggestion that any of the cars tested broke the law on emissions limits or used any cheat devices. Mayoral candidates in London, the city with the worst air quality in Britain, have seized on the DfT data to call for tighter controls on polluting traffic -- including a ban on diesel cars."Caroline Pidgeon, the Lib Dem mayoral candidate, said: "The figures are exactly the reason why we need to speed up the introduction of the ultra-low emission zone so that it starts in 2018. Ultimately we will need to ban diesel vehicles from much of London and we need a mayor prepared to take these tough decisions and work with people to make these changes happen."
I have a right to pollute the air by burning whatever I please. It's freedom, the air is free, so I'm free to do whatever I want with it.
Why must you steal my liberty?
Limits must be defined in terms of the condition of the test. If testing is done outside those defined conditions, the limits are hard to apply and enforce. Seems like the regulators need to re-define the limits and testing method.
I am shocked, SHOCKED, that clean diesel is just another totally meaningless advertising slogan!
The cars only have to pass a laboratory test. If that test bears no resemblance to the real world (which the EU one doesn't) then thats the fault of the people who devised it.
The main problem with emissions is if you want good fuel economy and hence lower CO2 per km then you need a high burn temp. The trouble with that is a high burn temp gives high NOx. Take your pick.
The only serious solution to NOx is a urea system such as adblue as used in trucks but thats more equipment, more complexity and more expense.
Sounds like they got themselves a PR firm to try and change that.
Before this fact was just used for public shaming of one german manufacturer... Believe me, they did this purposefully to force Germany to agree to secret ISDS courts (aka "this wouldnt happen with ISDS courts, look how badly VW is doing").
Paranoid conspiracy in four posts!
Not quite a record, but an achievement nonetheless. You should get some mod points.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
What it actually means is slightly less dirty diesel.
Even if new diesel cars did pass this test they'd still start blowing black soot and other crap after a number of years have passed and the car has reached owner number 3 who isn't bothering to do anything other than basic maintainance to keep it on the road until it falls apart.
The Internet is full of enlightening Europeans heaping scorn upon lowly Americans for not using their awesome "clean diesel" technology. Silly Americans still driving non-diesels!
The way things are going, electric cars will get huge boost and eventual dominance when cities will start banning all non-zero emission vehicles from driving within city limits.
And all the emissions will be shifted to countryside where power plants can pollute to their heart desire because population density (and associated health problems) over there are close to nil.
Expecting "independent" labs to actually be independent is not much better. Remember that it was a Swiss academic lab that found the original problem, because no German lab could be found that was willing to make these measurements on a German car. They all had a lot of business to lose and probably had reason to expect that the measurements would show massive problems. As soon as enough money is involved, the whole complex becomes corrupt. And, just as with the financial crisis of 2008, I predict that nobody will go behind bars for this, or at best some lowly scapegoats.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
You should look up sarcasm in the English Common law library. Hopefully, you find it.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
You should look up sarchasm in the English Common law library. Hopefully, you find it.
SARCHASM: The gulf between the author of wit and its intended recipient (ATTRIB: Someone on the internet)
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Unfortunately, yes. And that is what eventually kills a society: Too many self-centered fucks that do not care about anything except themselves.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
If we avoid lab conditions, you bring in random factors. So some heavy polluting car could just get lucky and have no sharp stops and quick speed ups, which is where it happens to heavily pollute, so it passes.
We need lab conditions to ensure a fair comparison between different cars.
It is assumed that all cars vary from real life to lab conditions in roughly the same manner. That is, that a car that does best in the lab conditions will also do best in real world conditions, even if the real use pollutes far more heavily.
In addition, we assume that the lab is similar enough to real world so that we know how much we are polluting.
If either of those assumptions are false, it indicates a bad lab condition set up which needs to be fixed. But that is not the fault of the car companies, but instead the fault of the politicians and scientists that designed the lab. (Yes, it is often designed by politics, not scientists.)
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Prior to the Act, any transport on rail that was entirely within a single State was free of regulation by Congress; it was not INTERstate, it was INTRAstate. With the creation of the Interstate system, all commerce was thus classified as Interstate, even if entirely within one State, on the claim that because it was using a Federally funded Interstate system, it must affect other Interstate traffic (even if by simple schedule management) and thus is actually an Interstate act and therefore subject to regulation.
Much like Wickard v. Filburn, this is a political-agenda driven perversion of the Constitution. Claiming that intrastate transit is actually Interstate (because it may - not does, but may - impact Interstate transit), or that growing food for your own consumption will affect the price of that same food in another State and this is Interstate commerce, has essentially given the US Federal Government unlimited power to regulate and control everything that anyone does at any time.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
The main problem with emissions is if you want good fuel economy and hence lower CO2 per km then you need a high burn temp. The trouble with that is a high burn temp gives high NOx. Take your pick.
But that's the NOx coming out of the exhaust port. What matters is the NOx coming out of the exhaust PIPE. That's what catalytic converters are about.
A triple-acting catalytic converter pulls the oxygen off NOx, leaving N2, and uses it to burn CO into CO2 and UHC into CO2 and H2O.
Keep the air/fuel ratio carefully adjusted and it it balances out. Too much fuel, you have UHC and CO left over, too little and you have NOx left over. That's the job of the engine control computer, its sensors (especially the exhaust oxygen sensor), and sometimes an exhaust air injection system.
The optimal mix for big-three pollutant minimization is not the best for fuel efficiency. But it's pretty close. The lost power shows up as heat in the catalytic converter - which is part of what drives the reactions - mainly by kicking the reaction over the energy hump and the products off the catalyst so it can get on with more work. (That's also why the vehicles are allowed to warm up for a limited time before the regulations get tight.)
The issue with "cheating" is whether the engine control has been hacked to recognize the standard testing regime and work differently while being tested than it does most of the time on the road.
I'm not sure how it works in the EU. But here in the US (at least when I was working on auto emission testing) the laws don't put any requirements on what the vehicles emit on the road. They just require they meet a set of limits on a set of standardized tests.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Gambling at Ricks? I had no idea.
So what was an open secret to every diesel mechanic in the U.S. and Europe, that the diesels didn't ever pass the emissions tests in the real world, didn't get noticed by anyone in a position of power in Europe or anyone in the the U.S. Department of Transportation, any state DOT, anyone in the general press or anyone in the specialized automotive press. Do we really believe that? Or are we witnessing a breakdown in both government and press accountability?
Part of the problem is bad regs (under certain heavy load conditions diesels really can never meet the requirements). But that is no excuse for allowing VW and the others to get a total "pass" on all pollution control regs in Europe. This is a totally open secret, just like the computer tweaking all manufacturers use so they can claim the magic "40 MPG!". The shift point programmed in make the car burp and barely accelerate so AFTER the certification runs the manufactures issue "software updates" that drop the mileage a bit but make the cars run properly. Now this is an open secret. It is probably illegal (fair trade laws, EPA regs, etc).
I'd like to propose an experiment. There is clearly an important story here. I'll bet that many of the readers here are members of the press or government employees; they are honorable people who know a lot. They tried to report this stuff and were rebuffed. They are rightfully afraid to send the info to Slashdot. In modern America you will be punished or fired for publishing documents that show what is going on so, regretfully, you must learn to think and act like a Soviet or Chinese dissident. This is the only way to publish the often embarrassing truth and still stay under the radar.. ,
The key is a Gmail/hotmail account that is not traceable One way is get a throw-away computer and use wifi at coffee shops. NEVER use the computer for any other purpose except browsing and spreading the word and NEVER leave the battery in while not using the computer. All email is traceable. A second way is use the throwaway computer and a "borrowed" untraceable email address- and that means if you have ever cell-phoned or emailed the person with the account you are traceable. I'd suggest that you use your brother-in-law's or grandma's name to open a gmail account using their computer (with their permission) and report what you know to Slashdot.
And remember on the "how to get the documents" side, if you open, download or copy documents using your work credentials they will trace the leak back.
So folks, if you are an insider, give it some thought. Find a way to get a copy of the documents that matter. Photograph them with a throwaway camera (pay cash at Walmart). Load them on a "safe" computer at the coffeeshop and drop them as a comment here under 'anon coward"- you need to stay "anon" but it is about time you stopped acting like cowards.
2. The Bill of Rights was not meant to enumerate specific rights, but rather raise the bar so high on restricting or revoking those rights as to make it legally impossible
It was meant to enumerate specific rights AND to set the bar high enough that restricting or revoking those rights is difficult, not impossible.
Not sure how it is in the EU. But here in the US it was NOT the auto industry. The testing regime was completely defined by a government agency.
At the time I was working on engineering emissions testing programs as a consultant, one of the auto company engineers claimed it had been designed like this:
- The EPA put recording instruments on a car (notably the bike-wheel odometer/tachometer).
- Then they parked behind cars in a "typical" city (Denver Colorado, if I recall correctly) and waited for the owner to come out and drive somewhere.
- The timed how long (if at all) the target warmed the engine before pulling out.
- Then they followed the target to its destination, doing their best to drive their instrumented car the same way as the target.
- From among the recorded trips they picked one that looked representative and contained about an average mix of city and highway driving. That became the test cycle the manufacturers must use.
Emissions test measurements (the fancy ones the engineers have to run at the companies, not the surveillance ones applied to car owners) measure enough about engine exhaust gasses and vehicle forces and motions that the mileage can be computed from the carbon balance, without extra gadgetry. So the government mandated it be computed and printed on the price stickers. It thus became glaringly obvious that (of course):
- (Of course) The chosen test cycle was not what all people drove all the time.
- (Not of course) The chosen test cycle happened to be somewhat more fuel efficient that the typical driver's average use of his vehicle.
Thus was born "Your Mileage May Vary (and will probably be lower)"
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
...before too much longer, a decade or two most likely, the vast majority of the vehicles on the road will be electric anyway. Technology has a way of rendering these issues moot rather thoroughly. This is one we can see coming well in advance.
The driving-to-pollution coupling will be at the power plants, not at the vehicle. It'll be much easier to control as a direct result. And of course, far more efficient in the first place.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I will be happy to fight for your right to "roll coal" as much as you want in the privacy of your own garage... with the doors closed, of course.
In fact, I encourage such behavior.
=Smidge=
Not sure if trolling or not, so I'll just suggest reading a high school civics text.
Where did you go to school?
The USA Constitution says that the rights of the Federal Government are severely restricted, that is, they are listed in the USA Constitution.
The rights of the people (individuals as 1 or a group such as a State) have severely UNrestricted rights.
The Bill of Rights ONLY lists some of the unrestricted rights of the individual or states. The fact that the Bill of Rights does not address a particular right that an individual has does not mean the individual does not have that right. To the contrary, the individual, under the USA Constitution, has the vast majority of rights and these rights need not be listed for the individual to have those rights.
History shows that the USA Federal Government has continually and constantly disregarded and restricted the rights of the individual as often as the Federal Government can. And without regard to what is Constitutional, legal or illegal.
The USA Supreme Court has limited the rights of the local and state Governments in most cases that it has ruled on. The local and state Governments do not have unrestricted rights.
This is what you should have been taught in the Government Schools (I was).
The is what you should have read, the USA Constitution, in the Government Schools (I did).
This is what you should know to pass a citizenship test.
Please try to keep up!