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US EPA Accuses Fiat Chrysler of Excess Diesel Emissions (yahoo.com)
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday accused Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV of illegally using hidden software to allow excess diesel emissions to go undetected, the result of a probe that stemmed from regulators' investigation of rival Volkswagen AG. From a report: FCA shares plummeted as the maximum fine is about $4.6 billion. The EPA action affects 104,000 U.S. trucks and SUVs sold since 2014, about one-sixth the vehicles in the Volkswagen case. The EPA and California Air Resources Board told Fiat Chrysler it believes its undeclared auxiliary emissions control software allowed vehicles to generate excess pollution in violation of the law. Fiat Chrysler Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne angrily rejected the allegations at a hastily-assembled conference call with reporters, saying there was no wrongdoing and the company never attempted to create software to cheat emissions rules by detecting when the vehicle was in test mode.
You can't do it without urea injection and exhaust particulate filters.
Buy a plug-in electric car, SUV, or truck (they sell them for $9000 in China today and in First World nations like Canada) and stick it to the man.
And where do you think that electricity comes from? The vast majority of it is from fossil fuel electric generation plants. Until nuclear takes over fossil fuels in power generation any arguments about the merits of electric vehicles is moot, except maybe, from an economic standpoint, electricity generated from coal plants.
As a side note about your comment about imported Russian gasoline, it appears most of the fossil fuels in the United States is actually imported from Canada.
California reached a nexus point on this issue in the 1990s. See, emissions testing is cost-effective only if a significant fraction of the vehicles are in violation. If a smog test costs $40, and 10% of the cars are failing, then it's costing the economy $400 to detect each non-compliant car. If the excess pollution the car was putting out costs the economy (say) $1000, then testing is a cost-effective way to get these polluting cars fixed or off the road.
But what if the program is successful and compliance rates increases to 99%? Then you're spending $4000 to detect each non-compliant car, and the cost to detect these polluting cars exceeds the damage they do. That's the situation California found itself in in the 1990s.
The companies which made emissions testing equipment came up with a radical suggestion. Get rid of the annual smog tests. Instead, mount emissions detecting equipment at areas where cars normally slow down to pass. Freeway off-ramps, intersections, etc. The equipment would constantly detect emissions, and when it saw a spike in emissions it would snap a photo of the offending car(s). If the same car's plates showed up in multiple photos, you could send that registered owner a fix-it ticket requiring they bring the car in for testing. This way you're not wasting time or money dealing with the 99% of cars which are in compliance, and only spending extra money testing the 1% of cars which are probably in violation.
Unfortunately by the 1990s, smog testing in California had grown into a billion dollar industry. The service stations and smog test stations lobbied hard in Sacramento to kill this idea. They won, and so we still require smog tests today even though the vast majority of cars pass. It's worth nothing that an on-road emissions detection system would've caught the violating VWs nearly a decade ago when they first started cheating.
Where do you get your information?
I live in Canada, there are very few models of EV available for purchase here compared to any CARB state in the US.
There is also no requirement that EVs be sold at all anywhere in the country, unlike the US where CARB states require the sale of EVs.
So let's revise what you said:
models available: nope
Required to be sold in every province in Canada? nope.
I can purchase locally the following EVs: Tesla Model S, Tesla Model X, Nissan Leaf and BMW i3. That's the entire list. If I go to another city I can add Smart ED, Kia Soul EV, and Mitsubishi MiEV. (theoretically the chevy spark and ford focus electric are also available, but I've been unable to find anywhere selling them)
I can not buy the following EVs anywhere in Canada despite their availability in the US:
Fiat 500EV
eGolf
Mercedes B Class Electric
Scion iQ EV
Honda Fit EV
> For example, they don't care whether it's a 1.6-2.0 liter 4 cylinder in a 3000lb car that gets 50mpg or a 7 liter V8 in a 7000lb package that gets 15-20mpg.
Not sure who the "they" you refer to is. In the US EPA cares, the have CAFE standards, and the Estimated fuel economy is used to calculate the allowed CO2 emissions per mile. Other emissions are not directly tied to fuel economy, but hitting the above standard closes the loop.
https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/...
These standards
apply to model years 2009 through 2016
and require CO2 emissions for passenger
cars and the smallest light trucks of 323
g/mi in 2009 and 205 g/mi in 2016, and
for the remaining light trucks of 439 g/
mi in 2009 and 332 g/mi in 2016