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German Cities Can Ban Diesel Cars, Court Rules (cnet.com)
A German court has ruled that cities in Germany are allowed to enact bans on diesel vehicles, Reuters reports. It's unlikely that bans will magically appear across the country overnight, but not everyone in the country is happy about this decision. From a report: Environmentalists might be happy about the possibility of banning some of the road's dirtiest cars, but owners and right-leaning groups are not. Reuters reports that some politicians believe this decision could disenfranchise a large swath of car owners across the country, many of whom likely can't afford to immediately replace a vehicle.
The end goals of these bans is to force all-electric cars, then force everyone on public transit because owning an electric car is at this point harder than internal combustion one.
It snows heavily for 4+ months of the year where I live. Yet, municipality is converting roads and parking spaces into bike lanes, that are unused and unusable a portion of the year due to snow. To me, this is politically driven insanity.
No food for you!
Have gnu, will travel.
Germany has a civil law system. Judges merely interpret the law as written, they do not set precedents. Unless there's some German national law specifically prohibiting the banning of previously sold products, there's not much a German judge can do to block a legislature from passing such a ban - the legislative body holds ultimate power. It's not like a common law system where previous court decisions about ownership rights, resale rights, and prohibitions on ex-post facto laws would come into play because they're similar, even if they didn't specifically mention banning a previously sold product.
how dare they spend money on snow removal equipment that's only used 4+ months of the year. It's a conspiracy, I tell you.
Yeah, mainly the companys that lied over decades about "clean diesel" and their cheat-software...
= Smokeswagen.
It would seem likely that any bans could easily be phased in with warnings - for example, this small area will be off limits next year, a larger area the year after, etc.
This would give most people who both need to drive in those areas and have a diesel to try to sell/exchange their car. I realize that this would probably cause problems for some people, but so does nitrogen oxide which seems to be over the EU limits in a bunch of urban areas in Germany.
What the fuck do ze Germans know about clean and dirty? They keep running coal plants and claiming to be clean.
Captcha: Dictator
Building a new car is more polluting than the running an old car, and the economic activity required to afford that new car also burns more energy, with its pollution, than the car will save.
Cars will move to electrics pretty soon now - as the old fleet ages out the electric replacements will be too cost-effective to not buy - only gearheads will still want liquid fuel vehicles.
But in the meantime, some wealthy politicians and their wealthy friends can ban the cars that their staff people drive (because the wealthy people don't pay them enough) so that they don't have to breathe their "poor-people" pollution. The politicians will hide behind the fig leaf of environmentalism because just enough people aren't educated enough to call them on their ruling-class bullshit.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Your right to pollute ends at the tip of my nose. If you want to drive a POS that generates choking, unhealthy pollution, move to a city or country that is willing to tolerate it. I'm not, and many like me are not.
They can't vote because they have a diesel car?
And in any case, why do you think the governments need to tell you not to crap up your own living spaces? Could you not figure it out yourself and adapt without compelling everyone else do to do the same by force of arms?
The point is that diesel cars crap up other people's living spaces.
Most of the time you're not operating your car on your own property. But, collectively, all of the diesel cars crap up all of the peoples' living spaces.
Yes, you're right: if your crappy car only crapped up the place you lived yourself, there would be no problem with people rushing to get less-polluting cars without urging.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
EVs are better in the cold weather than fossil cars.
Huh???
Diesels are lousy when they're cold. Most of the pollution from a diesel engine comes from the few minutes when it's warming up.
In fact, one of the factors of the diesel scandal was that the manufacturers shut down the pollution controls when it got cold. https://www.envirotech-online....
http://www.bbc.com/news/busine...
Gasoline cars aren't great when they're cold, either.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
It'd be a financial disaster at least for owners to simply ban diesel vehicles outright; first, ban the sale of diesel vehicles (new and used). After 10 years or so, then you can consider banning outright (maybe allow permitting for "historic" vehicles).
Diesel cars have far worse levels of local pollution generated. Modern petrol cars generate CO2 but the exhaust is extremely clean.
One important distinction here is in the type of regulation. If any ban is as simple as the summary suggests--diesel-based vehicles are to be prohibited--then it's a bad regulation.
The reason is the distinction is between rule-based and standards-based regulations.
Bottom-line: any city that passes a rule to this effect should make clear that if someone designs a diesel engine with extremely clean exhaust, (or perhaps even if it can show lower total lifetime emissions for a vehicle) it can still be used.
Real lawyers write in C++
Particulate air pollution in the cities is a real problem. I think that all cars should be banned from high population cities including electric because even tires create particulate air pollution. Think how nice Manhattan could be with no cars or trucks. Just walking and bicycles. Drones could make deliveries, and garbage pickup. The police, mass transit and emergency personnel would be the only ones allowed to drive a vehicle.
Note that virtually all manufacturer cheated the tests. Most did so using loopholes they can just about defend legally; VW cheated using illegal methods (which is why they need to pay for it now). The end result is the same though: under many circumstances, the exhaust gas treatment is turned off and nitric oxide/dioxide levels go through the roof. This is especially the case when it is "cold" (often defined as less than 15C...).
How exactly are you going to tow a caravan behind an electric or a hybrid? I haven't seen one yet approach anywhere near 7,000kg GCM.
Let's be clear why this is an issue: German automakers have entered into leases for these cars on a fixed-term, and all of those polluting vehicles were leased at a certain rate based on an anticipated residual value at the end of that lease term. Now that the writing is on the wall for these cars, they stand to lose millions and millions of Euros because they won't be salable in their home market.
Given the recent discovery of across the board cheating of emissions regulations, no one in Germany on either side of the argument genuinely believes that these cars should still be on the road. They literally stink and everybody knows it. Many vehicle operators in Germany won't even care about the ban as the cars are provided through their employers and the ban will certainly be phased in the same way as previous bans (look up Umweltplakette--banning high-polluting cars in city centers is not a new concept) and by then most operators will have turned in the leased cars for Benzin cars or new hybrid electrics or whatever replaces them. Yes, some private owners will get "screwed" and either need to retrofit their cars for emissions compliance, scrap them, or, most likely, sell them to one of the many operations that export them to Eastern Europe and beyond. But, it's primarily the lying automakers that will be punished by the ban.
The beginning of the end. Diesel - born in Germany, banned in Germany.