Slashdot Mirror
German Automakers Formed a Secret Cartel In the '90s To Collude On Diesel Emissions, Says Report (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Last week, Der Spiegel published an explosive report alleging that the major German automakers formed a secret cartel in the 1990s to collude on diesel emissions. These companies, including Volkswagen, Audi, BMW, Porsche, and Daimler, met in secret working groups to discuss "the technology, costs, suppliers, and even the exhaust gas purification of its diesel vehicles," the German weekly reported. The meetings were disclosed to German competition officials in letters from VW and Daimler and viewed by Der Spiegel. The secret meetings "laid the basis" for the 2015 diesel emission cheating scandal, in which VW was caught installing secret software in more than half a million vehicles sold in the US that it used to fool exhaust emissions tests. The admission of cheating ultimately cost the automaker tens of billions of dollars in fines and legal fees, making it one of the most expensive corporate scandals in history.
Years earlier, VW participated in dozens of secret meetings with its competitors, involving over 200 employees in up to 60 working groups, on how to meet increasingly tough emissions criteria in diesel vehicles. The automakers may have colluded to fix prices of a diesel emission treatment called AdBlue through these working groups, Der Spiegel says. Specifically, VW (which owns Porsche and Audi), Daimler (which owns Mercedes-Benz and Smart), and BMW allegedly agreed to use AdBlue tanks that were too small. AdBlue is a liquid solution used to counteract a vehicle's emissions.
Years earlier, VW participated in dozens of secret meetings with its competitors, involving over 200 employees in up to 60 working groups, on how to meet increasingly tough emissions criteria in diesel vehicles. The automakers may have colluded to fix prices of a diesel emission treatment called AdBlue through these working groups, Der Spiegel says. Specifically, VW (which owns Porsche and Audi), Daimler (which owns Mercedes-Benz and Smart), and BMW allegedly agreed to use AdBlue tanks that were too small. AdBlue is a liquid solution used to counteract a vehicle's emissions.
AdBlue is a liquid solution used to counteract a vehicle's emissions.
AdBlue is a solution of urea and water generically referred to as diesel exhaust fluid. It lowers NOx emissions in diesel vehicles.
Diesel engines do not normally produce any odours.
I have no idea where you got that idea but it's total BS. Diesel exhaust definitely has odors and is rather well known for having them. They've gotten cleaner but they are hardly without smell.
I haven't seen any car emit black smoke in years. I doubt one that does would pass periodic safety and emissions tests.
I've seen at least three this week alone. Rolling Coal is disturbingly popular. And no they wouldn't pass any reasonable emissions test not to mention the practice being explicitly illegal.
There is a third option, which what was actually done. The conditions under which the tests are done (with a sensor) are known. They programmed the ECU so it would detect those conditions and modify the engine performance to pass the test.
There is even more to diesel than just the German car companies. The kind of crude that Europe gets is very high-quality and can be fed right into a fractional distillation facility. That's very economical, but also limits your choices in what comes out - you get whatever proportion of products happened to be in the crude. Usually this means quite a bit of diesel. As a result, diesel tends to be priced pretty well since there is plenty of supply. In North America, the crude is terrible - it needs to be "cracked" with catalysts into smaller chains to produce the desired product mix. This is expensive and complex, but the upshot is that once you've built these multi-billion-dollar facilities, you can tweak the mix quite a bit. If the market price for diesel is high, you can make more diesel. If it's gasoline you want, just change the recipe a bit. In North America, diesel tends to cost more, reflecting its higher energy (and carbon!) content per unit volume and therefore larger proportion of crude required to make it.
If Europe gives up on diesel, they will need to spend billions to build new or to retrofit refineries, or else take a hit and export the diesel. I'm sure the oil companies and governments would rather not. "Clean diesel" was very alluring to everyone - economical cars for consumers, high profits for car makers, lower capital costs for oil companies, and no fights over refinery construction for governments. Environmentalists were excited over the false claims as well.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
You bring up an excellent point which I did not address at all. Thank you.
Diesel lubricity regulations (HFRR spec) is much higher in Europe (and Canada) than it is in the USA. Combine that with the "occasional" mistake (oops, I put a bit of regular gas in my diesel), and the Common Rail engine design which requires a high-pressure fuel pump (HPFP) generating something above 10,000 psi to the injectors and which is lubricated and cooled by the diesel fuel itself, and you have a recipe for disaster.
The NHTSA investigated VW for this exact problem. When the HPFPs started going on their CR engines the cost to the consumer was $10,000 to fix it (because once the HPFP eats its own guts it contaminates the entire fuel system). Everything had to be replaced. VW just always claimed that the problem was that the consumer put gasoline in their car and would refuse to fix it. And the car may have in fact had gasoline in it, but it may have been contaminated at the fueling station, not the fault of anything that the consumer did.
What a mess. Hundreds of pages of analysis here.
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
NOx is quite dangerous (NO and NO2) and one of the top concerns when reducing emissions, but there are other engine pollutants which are also dangerous. Note that one thing is something like CO2, focused on more long-term/theoretical aspects and which has become mostly relevant because of scientific/social/media pressure; and a different story are immediately harmful for health/environment pollutants (like NOx) which, as explained in other comments above, have been one of the most relevant concerns for engine makers since quite a few years ago.
So, just in case my point wasn't completely clear: when referring to the political component of emission targets, I wasn't implying that I disagree with these emissions being banned. I was merely referring to the usual motivations behind their systematically-decreasing values, what kind of explains all the cheating scandals. Bear also in mind that restricting the commercialisation of industrial equipment because of unhealthy outputs is quite common in all the worldwide regulations since quite a few years ago. The case of IC engines (mainly cars and trucks) gets a bit more attention and this might also be the reason for these politics-based decisions.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
The curious thing though is that the DEF usage rates are all over the place. I first noticed this when I had to rent a diesel Ram 3500 for some towing, and it used way more DEF than my personal vehicle (VW Touraeg). So out of curiosity, I looked into the DEF consumption rate for other 3.0 liter diesel engines.
Notice that VW's and Mercedes' DEF use rates are lower than Dodge, Jeep, and BMW. And the two automakers thus far accused of cheating on diesel emissions are... VW and Mercedes.
That is a load of garbage. NOx emissions are much like sulfur in that they sing intrinsically have a major effect on the global climate but are frigging horrible in concentrations close to population centres. There was no hard-on against muscle cars, there were studied finally showing how NOx emissions negatively affect health.
You're right about the 99% but only by earth surface area, definitely not by target market which is city centre driving.
The kind of crude that Europe gets is very high-quality and can be fed right into a fractional distillation facility.
There is no "kind of crude that Europe gets". The economics of oil are highly dependent for each refinery. There are refineries that setup to take only local crudes, and there are refineries setup to take the nastiest crap on the market, and they'll get it from anywhere because it's cheap. The type of refineries are very heavily dependent on the consumer market. The largest refinery in Europe has a fantastic upgrading capacity and ability to run the nastiest shit you can think of, the second largest next door is 2 distillation towers and an ancient cat cracker struggling to keep on spec for bunker oil. It's a complete mixed bag.
As a result, diesel tends to be priced pretty well since there is plenty of supply.
The retail price difference between petrol and diesel has far more to do with taxes than supply and demand. The absolute cost of fuels even more so. Mind you saying diesel is priced pretty well should be qualified for an American news site. Priced well in this case means it only costs triple what the USA pay. The price split is very similar. Average diesel price in Chicago is 1c above gasoline right now, average diesel price in Antwerp is only 2c below gasoline.
If the market price for diesel is high, you can make more diesel. If it's gasoline you want, just change the recipe a bit.
That's really not the case at all. Well it is a bit, but the amount of handles you have are very limited. What you do have a handle on is the removal of impurities, but the general mix is hard to alter as the refineries' units are designed to produce an optimum output. I.e. if you decide you don't want to produce as much gasoline as diesel tomorrow and buy the appropriate crude to do so, what you're actually saying is I don't want to run the expensive equipment I bought to it's full utilisation and therefore don't want to make as much money. That's one of the great things about a completely fungible feedstock and product, it will always sell and the sensible option is almost universally to optimise refineries for max throughput regardless of what the market is doing. I briefly worked at a refinery in Australia that wasn't able to sell diesel locally since it lacked the ability to meet the sulphur targets with its feedstock. It was cheaper to run that refinery and export 100% of it's diesel to Asia than it was to buy a feedstock that allowed it to meet the sulphur spec, and at the time Australia was hungry for diesel. (Quite disappointing to see a ship full of diesel leave for Asia passing a ship full of diesel coming from Asia both operated by the same company, but the cost / benefit made that the most profitable option).
If Europe gives up on diesel, they will need to spend billions to build new or to retrofit refineries
To be clear Europe IS giving up on diesel, at least for the consumer market. In my city alone there has been a 90% drop in the number of registered diesel vehicles in the past 10 years. Major cities are implementing bans or have implemented them already. However this doesn't interest refiners much anyway for several reasons: They need to spend billions to retrofit in order to meet new jet standards, increasing emissions standards, flaring standards, they have continuously spent on meeting the ever changing diesel standards, and the next big one coming up: fuel oil standards. Some of the coking refineries need to upgrade as power-plants shut down, others as the iron and aluminium industry shut down.
Basically what I'm saying is investment is continuous and ongoing (even now with the oil price where it is), so changing consumer demand won't impact the industry on the whole much.