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Diesel Cars Produce More Toxic Emissions Than Trucks and Buses, EU Study Says (theverge.com)
Modern diesel cars produce more toxic emissions than trucks and buses, according to European researchers. That's because heavy duty vehicles in the EU have much stricter regulations than cars, and so even if they meet lab tests, cars end up producing much more nitrogen oxides (NOx) when driven on actual roads. From a report: The new report, released by the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), shows that trucks and buses tested in Germany and Finland emitted about 210mg NOx per kilometer driven, less than half the 500mg/km produced by diesel cars that meet the highest "Euro 6" emission standards.
Instead of driving them on actual roads, drive them on theoretical roads, like the rest of us.
Euro 6 requires 80 mg/km NOx for diesel cars. 500 mg/km CO though, a typo/misreading that lead to an incorrect conclusion?
Second sentence of summary:
I Know commenting on the headline is fashionable, but not even getting to the second sentence is a bit extreme even for /.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Yes, but they aren't cars. Both use diesel engines, but the trucks and buses produce about half the toxic output as the cars do, due to regulations on them. That is the point, that a giant truck produces less toxic pollution than a little Volkswagen car.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
I'm ruining your recursive joke but :
- Nope, there are also lots of city bus which are electric. These are quite popular in densely populated European city centers. (And as electricity production in Europe relies a lot less on burning fossils, these are definitely emitting a lot less).
- Also, as explained even in the summary : big vehicles like buses have much more stringent limitations in most European jurisdictions.
So if you take a diesel-powered car, that perfectly following regulation,
and a diesel-powered bus, that also perfectly follows regulation,
the bus' diesel motor has a good chance of producing a lot less emissions
(and also costing more and being more complexe on one hand, but on the other hand benefiting of being larger, and thus under less physical space constraints and less needs for compromises).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
you think that's bad.... http://www.standard.co.uk/news...
Something is fishy about this, I mean just my own very sensitive nose can barely tell a diesel car in front vs trucks/buses I must pass(or stop) or have breathing trouble... Didn't read the referenced post but if it's true at all it must be pound for pound? Cause diesel cars dont' even come close to being as offensive.
All of this drawn-out study and deliberation and the protracted uncertainty and wasted manufacturing and expense for users makes very little sense, when it's abundantly clear that all road transport is set to become electric in a very short space of time.
Just go there now and save everyone a lot of time and effort, and improve air quality at the same time.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
All of this drawn-out study and deliberation and the protracted uncertainty and wasted manufacturing and expense for users makes very little sense, when it's abundantly clear that all road transport is set to become electric in a very short space of time.
I'm as big a fan of electric cars as anyone here but even I'm not naive enough to believe that gasoline/diesel powered vehicles are going to go away any time soon. Even if electric cars eventually do take over the market it's going to take decades to happen. The average age of a car on the road today is 11.5 years. That number isn't going to drop dramatically any time soon. And right now EVs are more expensive than their equivalent gas/diesel powered cars in most cases. That's going to keep the dino-juice powered cars on the road for quite some time to come.
European countries should just do themselves a favor and begin killing off excess humans.
They tried that in the 1910s and again in the 1940s. Didn't work either time. Just depressed the population growth for a while and generated a lot of rubble in the process.
just my own very sensitive nose can barely tell a diesel car in front vs trucks/buses I must pass(or stop) or have breathing trouble... Didn't read the referenced post but if it's true at all it must be pound for pound? Cause diesel cars dont' even come close to being as offensive.
Nitric Oxide (NO) is colorless and odorless. Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) has a reddish brown color and a pungent smell. So if the majority of the NOx emmissions are Nitric Oxide you couldn't smell it even if you wanted to.
Green facism?... Surelly some wimpy Social Justice Warriors cause you worry?
In my time there were hardcore Maoistes, Trotskistes and Stalinists, those I was scared of, now these guys going on a gluten free diet, meh.
Screaming quotas, lower emmission, more recycling can be annoying, but facism?
Now if you want to breathe NOX gases, take some lead compounds into your system, drink water with benzene, please do.
But please, do it quickly. You need to increase the dosage it is clearly not working well enough.
Humans don't just magically create carbon. They are carbon neutral.
Humans by ourselves are not carbon neutral even if you ignore our activities. However humans as a component of an ecosystem can be carbon neutral. In simple terms we breathe in oxygen and emit carbon dioxide. Plants do the reverse. Together the system is carbon neutral even though parts of it are not. Problem is that humans also do activities that are decidedly not carbon neutral and we do them to a degree the earth's ecosystem cannot easily absorb.
The problem arises when you take carbon out of the ground and release it into the atmosphere.
Correct. Which is something we do with almost every modern day activity it seems. What mystifies me is how people actually can believe that digging up fossilized carbon reserves (essentially sequestered carbon) and releasing it into the air and water somehow we can magically be done on a vast scale with no adverse effects.
So NO2 isn't toxic because you say so? Yeah, man, fuck science.
As i understand it you get more nox if you optimize your combustion for co2. And the other way around. In europe you pay a high tax on co2 so the carmakers try to reduce that heaviley and as a result we get worse nox.
A few places in the UK have already started having tolls for vehicles that emit pollution at the point of use.
Which is fine but let's not pretend they are enough to force a mass transition to electric cars. The fees would have to be absurdly high to really force people to accelerate the switch to electric cars and unfortunately the options in EVs and hybrids are still rather lacking unless you want a really crappy eco-cred vehicle like a Prius or an impractical city car like a Leaf. Some like the Chevy Volt aren't bad but the options are rather thin if you don't want a sedan or hatchback.
It's not much of a stretch to imagine congestion fees for non-electric motor vehicles in urban areas.
Maybe in the UK it's not a stretch. Tolls like that will likely never happen in the US during my lifetime as long as the republican party maintains its hard on against anything that smells like a tax. Maybe some of the states in the US (California?) could manage such a system but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for it.
It's a flawed statement. Cars do, yes because of short term driving in towns. Where buses/trucks are long periods of driving and highway (which is what diesel is meant for). Not, drive to store, pick up Playboy, drive home.
If diesel cars are worse than busses per km driven, imagine how much worse they must be per km per passenger (or per km per kg).
I would assume too that the smaller displacement diesels in cars are in a higher state of tune and run hotter.
love is just extroverted narcissism
We're all proud of you.
Now, next question. How come small, light cars somehow manage to have worse emissions than buses or trucks? Surely there is no grand conspiracy whereby vehicle manufacturers sit in a smoky room complete with a floating hologram of the planet held under an outstretched hand, and think to themselves "hahaha, those fuckers, we can quite easily sell them clean technology that we already developed for buses and trucks, but what we are really after is ruining the planet (and our own future market, oh, and the place where we and our children live) with the dirtiest technology possible, so we'll stick that in every car"? Surely there are no piles of old engines lying around that must be sold before they can switch to cleaner engines? What's really going on here?
That's a whole lot of words to say a thing that was already said. Humans don't just create carbon. It already existed.
The only thing that creates carbon is stars when they go boom. Neither humans nor plants nor any other form of life creates carbon. The carbon that is on earth has been here for billions of years. The only question is how much of it is in the ground versus the atmosphere and humans absolutely can affect that balance.
(for you pedantic souls out there, yes I'm aware humans can technically create carbon from other atoms but doing so takes huge amounts of energy and isn't done on any meaningful scale)
Wasn't that already tried in the 1930s and 1940s?
Electric vehicles just aren't viable though. Half the population have nowhere to charge one at home, let alone when anywhere else.
Eyeroll. Electric cars can be charged anywhere there is an electric outlet which is pretty much everywhere. And even if we ignore that piece of reality it still is the case that well over half the population DOES have a place to charge them at their house. Furthermore we can build the infrastructure if we want to and there are hybrid cars as a bridge option until we get there. Frankly electric and hybrid cars appear to be the future whether you care to admit it or not. Won't happen overnight but it is likely to happen because it makes economic sense in the long run. They are more fuel efficient, can be better performing, and are already approaching price parity in many cases.
Economy, torque, reliability (well, not so much any more with all the extra complexity) and ease of maintenance (no HT system for starters).
Yes, for NOx they're bloody awful and the politicians knew this but in the 90s CO2 emissions were seen as more important. Which of NOx or CO2 is more important now probably even the greens would have trouble answering.
it's not the engines, it's the emission systems attached to the engines, so you are completely off base with your comment. trucks and buses have better emission systems to meet the stricter demand, they save $ on the cars systems by engineering them to the lower standard using the cheapest systems possible. they likely could meet the stricter standards set for trucks and buses but it will likely make the cars heavier and more expensive.
So NO2 isn't toxic
It had better not be. Because the vehicular production of NOx falls down in the noise level compared to natural sources. Besides, it's just part of the nitrogen cycle and a kind of plant food.
Have gnu, will travel.
In fact outlaw all vehicles that are not Pluggable Hybrids or fully Electric. Start with an annual carbon tax and a soot tax on the vehicles. Tax is based on how much pollution the vehicle produces. Then give them a 20 year phase out. You can't build new ones after 10 years and you can't drive one after 20 years.
Part of the reason is that diesel trucks are required to have a DEF[*] tank and a corresponding catalyst in the exhaust. This greatly reduces the NOx output.
For cars with a similar system (commonly "BlueTec"), it tends to be underpowered, with far too little DEF being used. Consumers can't be relied on to refill it regularly, and would B&M if they had to buy and top up DEF every time they filled the tank.
For trucks, there are fuel logs and inspections, and you can't just ignore filling DEF without getting fined.
[*]: "Diesel Exhaust Fluid", a mix of urea and deionized water.
1-Volkswaggon makes diesel cars. 2-Cars get less maintenance than trucks. 3-larger vehicles have more room and weight for pollution control stuff, so they do a better job. 4-Diesel engines for cars are often derived from gasoline engines. They have lower compression and a less efficient design so they produce more emissions.
I own a house, and I can't. I'd have to run an electric cable across a public throughway.
Oh well then you can generalize your situation to apply to everybody in the world then... Sorry my friend but your situation does not describe everyone else.
Only 66% of homes in the UK have off-street parking, including those with a garage
That's still a HUGE number of homes. You are making the mistake of thinking that somehow the options are either gasoline or electric with no other options. Gasoline and diesel powered cars aren't going away any time soon. But electric WILL become a serious player in the near future I think. It has too many advantages both economic and performance to be discounted.
Mine is one of them; the garage is 80 yards from the house, has no power and is too small to fit a car into.
If you can't fit a car in it then it isn't a garage, it's a shed. The fact that it currently has no power is a choice you can remedy if you want to. I don't have a car charger in my garage (which does fit 3 cars) right now but I could change that easily enough.
Hybrid cars are an option but you can eyeroll all you fucking want, electric cars are not fucking viable in this country.
They are perfectly viable. They don't have to completely displace petrol vehicles to be viable. Yes there will be some infrastructure changes required. Those changes will take a long time to happen. The transition to electric cars isn't going to happen for at least another 15+ years in any sort of substantial way. Once it does though the power lines will be laid and the infrastructure will be built. We didn't used to have petrol stations on every street corner either not so many years ago.
There's too much news these days to read more than first sentences (unless it's very interesting), and this is worse when you see the same news over and over across your sources of choice.
Translation : "I'm too fucking lazy to become educated, but I'm perfectly willing to spout off about shit I am cluelss on."
"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,..." - Nancy Pelosi
"far less"? All the diesels seen on the road today still (even after the low-sulfur directive) still stink to high heaven. Particulates are still visible, even if we ignore the Rolling Coal asswipes.
--
"I have also mastered pomposity, even if I do say so myself." -Kryten
I happen to live in a populated city that brags about having a ton of electric/hydrogen fueled vehicles (Porto, Portugal),
CH here.
Long range public transportation:
We have an extensive train network (all electric, thus mostly hydro-electric and nuke powered, with a little bit of solar and wind sprinkled in) (Thank the *Alps* for nearly perfectly clean hydroelectric - unlike tropical hydroelectric which tends to be giant glorified swamps)
It covers most of the territory except for remote less populated area (and as they are less populated, the long-range public transportation using busses hardly makes a dent in the total energy tally)
Short range:
Most big cities have a dense network of tramway and trolley buses (aerial electric power delivery makes much more sense in a densely packed area) also sometime metro/subs for some cities.
They are also joined by (diesel) bus. But the electric propotion of short-range transportation is quite significant and hardly just for the show.
Private companies in public transportation / ride sharing:
Most taxi fleets in big cities tend to rely on hybrid vehicle (lower gaz consumption makes operations cheaper)
the rise of Uber (mostly privately owned car with classical ICE drives) is actually a step backward environmentally. (But as taking transportation instead of driving a car around is better anyway, the end tally might not be bad).
Private companies car sharing:
The main car sharing operator in Switzerland (mobility) operates a mixed fleet featuring ICE (mostly), hybrid (fewer) and electric vehicle (only a few, usually available at sharing stations where high electrical power is available : eg.: parking near trainstation usually feature 1 or 2 Renault Zoé. But other places feature them too. Random example : EPFL institute).
From that point of view we are less ecologically advanced than france, where the dominating car sharing companies tend to have all-electric fleets (e.g.: Autolib in Paris).
Though there are smaller CH player with electric fleets (e.g.: ElectrEasy)
So globally, in Switzerland, the role played by electricity in public transportation (specially by public company like national trains and city public transportation) is really significant.
Also, regarding merchandise :
Switzerland is peculiar in that transport of merchandise *across* the country is *forbidden in trucks*.
Trucks can be used to deliver merchandise to/from and within cities.
But if you want to transport merchandise long distance or across the country, it's mandatory to load it on trains.
When driving on the highway, you're going to see way much less trucks compared to other European countries (e.g.: Italy, France, Spain...)
Last but not least a few interesting corner case :
I few touristic cities (mostly in the mountains like Zermatt and Saas Fee) have completely banned ICE engines within the city (with a few exceptions like firefighters, ambulances)
Thus nearly the whole fleet is small electric glof-cart-like cars and taxis.
Fun to see (even if completely insignificant statistically to the rest of the country).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
While their NoX output might be lower, it is relatively common to watch a diesel truck pull away from a stoplight, and flood the entire intersection with so much exhaust and soot that you can't even see through it. :|
Rare to see a car or non-commercial vehicle do the same.
Unless it's a *Red-Neck Truck.
( *Requires: Diesel engine, largest pickup truck, gigantic tires, custom exhaust and a ridiculous lift kit. Flag pole and 100,000 watts of lights installed optional )
Then it has the same specs and problems as their commercial brethren.
Most trucks and buses are diesel aren't they?
In Seattle and nearby areas like SF, a lot of them are electric or hybrid electric, actually. Even fuel cells. It depends on which trucks and buses you refer to. A large number of the Seattle buses are fully electric, I can see about 20 out of my window on the streets right now.
Adapt.
We're changing the world today. You'll be left behind.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The exhaust from diesel power can stink and it can condense on surfaces leaving a sticky film that attracts dirt. But it's not "toxic". No one has ever murdered anyone with diesel fumes, no one has killed himself in his closed garage by sitting in the diesel-powered car with the engine running.
While diesel exhaust is largely carbon dioxide, it also contains carbon monoxide which can kill you pretty quickly. It also has many components that can cause cancer, primarily lung cancer. If course it's toxic.
References:
https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/dies...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Enigma
Higher compression produces more not less NOx
In other news: OPEC cuts oil output for first time in 8 years and oil prices rise.
Don't forget that the reason people use diesel cars is that they are significantly more fuel efficient that petrol cars.
Diesel cars have been getting a real bashing over the last year or so. (e.g. VW emissions scandal)
I have question; why, now, has diesel become the fuel of the devil for the ordinary man?
This article effectively says "Diesel good only for commercial vehicles, bad for consumer vehicles".
Bull. Shit.
It's like the other BS propaganda campaign currently being waged against sugar.
Sugar is the source of all 1st world poor health according to the media.
Sugar is "bad" for 2 reasons.
1) It's natural, tastes better and costs more than artificial sweeteners.
2) It can only be grown in certain climates/countries. e.g. Brazil.
The "BRIC" countries are currently under economic attack unless you haven't noticed.
Brazil was doing really well up until recently. It's economy is helped significantly by sugar.
"He's gone off topic, this isn't about diesel", your probably thinking about now.
No, Brazil uses sugar to make alcohol which you can buy and pump into your car at it's gas stations.
It's a fossil fuel replacement...
The current standard for diesel passenger vehicles in CARB states (California Air Resources Board, which sets the limit for California and 16 other states) is 0.05 grams/mi, which is 80 mg/km.
And if you're curious, here's how much the cheating 2.0L VW diesels were emitting. If the Euro 6 standard is 500 mg/km (0.310 g/mi), it looks like the 2015 VWs were already in compliance, and the 2013-2014 VWs were just barely out of compliance.
You have a truck.
Cars are different - people can drive 20-50,000 miles on a single small tank of DEF, because most diesel cars hardly use anything at all - just enough that the manufacturers can get away with it.
With the pitiful DEF tank size in many cars, if it used as much DEF as trucks do to really bring the NOx emissions down, they'd have to refill it every second or third time they filled fuel. In reality, most diesel car drivers never fill it - it gets topped off when they take the car in for service.
I think i agree with the sentiment.
I don't think EU Council Directive 96/96/EC of 20 December 1996 even states that DEF status has to be checked to get renewal.
I am not even sure there is any warning signs in cars with DEF.
Oh, I'm sure that the cars check the DEF status, when they have such a system at all. But they also tend to use such a microscopic token amount of DEF that they won't run out. And the EU directive seems more concerned with particulates than NOx, which is primarily what a liberal amount of DEF reduces to near-zero.
Nitrous Oxide emissions from diesel engines that under hot summer conditions can lower the pH of rainwater to slightly acidic conditions as opposed to internal combustion engines that exhaust carcinogenic petroleum fractions are are less of an environmental hazard to people and the environment.
The main reason that passenger car diesel engines create more NOX gasses than commercial trucks has little to do with catalytic exhaust treatment and more to do with how the engines are driven. Diesel is most efficient as constant rpm and when most of the run time is long haul constant speed; you get fewer emissions. For short distance errands; a diesel often does not come up to proper operating temperature before it is shut down and loses efficiency. The thing about diesel emissions is that they can be visible whereas the very nasty emissions from a gasoline engine are not. Even though diesel emissions are less toxic than gasoline engine emissions; they are perceived as a greater problem than they are.
If you want a zero carbon footprint; bio-diesel is 100% non fossil. Zero carbon footprint for climate effect.
NRRPT/RCT
I'm curious:
Unload truck onto train, ship, unload train onto truck, deliver?
or
Drive truck onto flatbed railcar, ship, drive truck off railcar, deliver?
For trucks that are separate tractor trailer, just the trailer on the flatbed.
The law doesn't specify anything.
But it seems to me that for logistic reasons, the 3rd option you mention is the most popular :
the trailer is a standardized contrainer that can be moved from the truck to the train without needing to lose time for unloading/reloading the merchandise.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Trolley buses are - unfortunately - only widespread in the former soviet union and its client states
CH, here. The country has mostly been neutral during cold war and is far from being a client state.
But bigger cities here love trolley and trams too.
Electricity is easily available (thanks to alpine dams)
And city centers are rather densely populated - and thus the network of bus stops is also dense (you don't need hundreds of km of wire just to link 2 bus stops)
(for some reason soviet government seriously loved trolley buses, they have even built a trolley bus line in Afghanistan, back then they were there)
I would say that electric motors are simpler, smaller, easier to install into a vehicle. And are easy to ship around.
Whereas ICE are more a custom job that is vehicle specific.
Thus it's much easier for a Sovietic planned economy to make a 5-years plan to build a huge mega factory in one client state (e.g.: Bulgaria) and ship motors and install them into bus through the whole communist world.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]