Slashdot Mirror
VW Group, BMW and Daimler Are Under Investigation For Collusion In Europe (cnet.com)
The European Commission has launched an antitrust investigation into the Volkswagen Group, BMW and Daimler, over allegations they colluded to keep certain emissions control devices from reaching the market in Europe, according to a statement the Commission released on Tuesday. CNET reports: The technologies the group allegedly sought to bury include a selective catalytic reduction system for diesel vehicles, which would help to reduce environmentally problematic oxides of nitrogen in passenger cars, and "Otto" particulate filters that trap particulate matter from gasoline combustion engines.
"The Commission is investigating whether BMW, Daimler and VW agreed not to compete against each other on the development and roll-out of important systems to reduce harmful emissions from petrol and diesel passenger cars," said Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, head of competition policy for the European Commission, in a statement. "These technologies aim at making passenger cars less damaging to the environment. If proven, this collusion may have denied consumers the opportunity to buy less polluting cars, despite the technology being available to the manufacturers."
"The Commission is investigating whether BMW, Daimler and VW agreed not to compete against each other on the development and roll-out of important systems to reduce harmful emissions from petrol and diesel passenger cars," said Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, head of competition policy for the European Commission, in a statement. "These technologies aim at making passenger cars less damaging to the environment. If proven, this collusion may have denied consumers the opportunity to buy less polluting cars, despite the technology being available to the manufacturers."
It's shocking how Europe is always so biased against these American companies and never investigates any of it's own.
Oh wait.
... sometimes with good reason, but we need people like him to force innovation on these dinosaurs otherwise nothing will change even if at the end of the day the maverick loses and the dinosaurs survive but producing much better vehicles.
I'm pretty happy with my second 1L turbo petrol thanks very much, so that rules out "nobody".
Nobody wants these underpowered 1L engines that they try to compensate for by putting in a turbocharger. What they don't like to tell you is when your turbo or your intercooler shit itself is you're stuck with a $4000 repair bill. Then on top of that, they want to attach all sorts of non sense to the exhaust system. I don't blame these guys for going, "We're not going to develop this crap, our customers don't want it anyways."
There is a considerable difference between emissions control systems and a turbo or supercharger when it comes to performance and purpose.
So much so that it tends to make your entire comment pointless.
... Except a token gesture. Germany's car industry is vital to German economy, and Europe's economy IS German economy. That's just the way it is. That's why Dieselgate was a powerful shock to the whole EU and a "friendly" reminder from president Obama that the US can turn off the EU at any given moment without Europeans being able to do anything about it. Junker is huffing and puffing and making a big show of challenging Trump's America because he knows that retaliatory measures against the EU would be opposed by Democrats, while a Dem president with a Dem majority would have been unimaginably dangerous to defy. Hillary would have laid down the law, in even harsher terms than Obama did, with Euros having no choice but to comply. But Junker also understands that he's on his last legs and he can drop everything over his successor, who must only hope push does not come to shove. If it boils down to US interests vs EU interests, both parties will stare down the EU and bring it to heel.
> but they'll as you say be less reliable and all the replacement parts required and/or early scrapping will easily offset any minor gains in the exhaust emissions.
You have a source on this?
Never heard this argument before.
I want!
Look up how much energy it takes to manufacture a modern car. Most of it will have come from fossiil fuel power stations or diesel transporation, either shippingi, trains or trucks.
.Sure, it will end up with cars producing less CO2, but they'll as you say be less reliable and all the replacement parts required and/or early scrapping will easily offset any minor gains in the exhaust emissions.
Yet modern cars with all of this are far more reliable than they ever were back in the day of carburettors, doing mileage that cars of the 70s would never reach.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
Well, the OP was pretty wild, for sure, but you're not exactly bang on target either:
1. Most private automobiles are driven at light load and part throttle most of the time,
2. But people like good power for acceleration / overtaking safely and top speed (where allowed)
3. Making high-displacement engines fuel efficient and therefore low-emissions is hard; (for certain types of emissions)
4. Making small, forced-induction engines give plenty of power when required, but consume not much the rest of the time is expensive, but doable
(But note the special case of blown 2-strokes, where they've never been able to fix the oxides of nitrogen problem; shame, they're fun to drive...)
Hence the trend towards smaller-capacity, forced-induction engines, which go fine when you rev them, but to my mind don't give the same overall driving satisfaction as a big old V8; especially a forced-induction big old V8, but that's another story...(disclaimer: my daily driver is a CL55)
Look up how much energy it takes to manufacture a modern car. Most of it will have come from fossiil fuel power stations or diesel transporation, either shippingi, trains or trucks.
Almost 100% of any car made in the last 20 years is recyclable. Most of the materials used in a new build are from recycled metals.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
I got a bigger one.
As if. For instance, the bodywork of most cars is anodised these days, for rust protection. Getting the zinc off the scrap metal afterwards is nigh impossible, though, so you end up with a lot of sub-par scrap steel.
And that's not even talking about all the plastics. "Recyclable" is a very flexible term, and can mean a lot of things. Up to, and including, just shredding the stuff in question, and using it as low-grade plastic for disposable items. Which, by itself, hardly counts as particularly long-term thinking in and by itself.
More reliable, safer, and efficient. But that adds to complexity and cost.
Is there any reason we can't have the efficiency of a modern 4 cylinder engine, drive-train without all the useless "features" that just adds to complexity and cost? I would love to own a brand new car that's easy to work on without all the entertainment and luxury electronic crap. I dunno, say a base model of a 1980's Honda Civic or a Toyota light truck (manual windows, etc) but constructed with modern safety and engine. Is anti-lock braking even needed in a car that light?? Hopefully you get the gist.
Life is not for the lazy.
Easy to work on adds to the cost of losing sales in repairs at proprietary process dealerships. It also tends to make the designs larger and bulkier in general. In the 60s before computer modeling, some difficulties in repair were more excusable, but with modern CAD I'm assuming they specifically make the spaces so that standard tools won't fit, require fairy thin arms and fingers to fit in yet with the strength of a professional weight lifter, and place sharp corners even Legolas couldn't dodge cutting himself up on when servicing parts.
Sure, it will end up with cars producing less CO2.
Only on a test. About everything in modern cars is optimized to pass government emission and fuel economy tests. This doesn't translate to better cars is real driving situations.
For example, start and stop technology. It makes no difference in regular driving, but it improves EPA city driving fuel economy test performance. The difference? In EPA tests you are 100% stopped, in real life you often have to creep forward in traffic or even near stoplights.
Only Tesla scandals, real and imagined, are to be given top play. Please take down this thread.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
This. The most environmentally responsible approach is long-term car ownership. Longer you own the car, lower the annualized impact of manufacturing the car. If you own your big-block Chevy long enough you will have lower lifetime emissions that someone leasing Priuses.
If EPA was rational they would regulate car long term reliability - ensuring that the car could be used for at least 250,000 miles and 20 years without major rebuilds.
So you'll be able to point me in the direction of another 2 ton electric 4 door that can do 0-60 in 3 seconds and still has a quoted range of 300 miles and is on sale today then won't you....
Come on , whats keeping you....
"Yet modern cars with all of this are far more reliable than they ever were back in the day of carburettors, doing mileage that cars of the 70s would never reach."
I know it's sample size 1, but my carbureted 1979 Mazda GLC was about the size of a modern family sedan, had every emission control device known to man, and consistently got better than 30mpg -- better than the more modern cars that replaced it. While I agree that modern cars are amazingly reliable, I submit that the problem with carburetors wasn't reliability or fuel consumption. It was that they had moving parts that were subject to wear and that diagnosing problems and fixing them was very difficult. I suspect that if carburetors were still in use, they'd be more reliable than they were 40 or 50 years ago. (But they'd likely still be hard to fix).
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
It's just the old saying that no replacement for displacement, which is proven to be absurd these days.
In passenger cars, a 2.0L 4 cylinder turbo nowadays produces more power than a 3.5L 6 cylinder naturally aspired 20 years ago (that's around 300PS).
A 1.0L 3 cylinder turbo can produce about 140PS, which is sufficient for most people who wants to buy a car.
The traditional big displacement engines from the American manufacturers...I haven't seen any stats they're in any way more reliable than the turbos.
Where does your "nobody" come from? If you know how to drive. It's in no way "underpowered". Of course, if you don't know how to drive, it's another story.
You've never bought an American car made in the 60s or 70s. I'll leave the 80s models for futher review...
Back then you were surprised to find one running well after 100,000 miles. Not just the sheet metal, which, if you went out to the garage around 2am, laid down on the floor, and put your ear up next to the quarter panel, you could hear it rust. But those high-compression engines, lacking a little in advanced metallurgy and manufacturing, suffered from intake manifold gasket failures, carburetor problems, and of course biennial exhaust system replacements before that magical extra digit changed on the odometer. I drove two for a while, a 72 Riviera (damn, that was sweet) and a 78 Mustang II (damn, what a terrible car), and both had great issues. When the Japanese Invasion took hold, most of Detroit improved their offerings, but it took a while. Oh, and I drove a 80-something (maybe 79) Datsun 310, and it rusted too. The Nissan 310 that followed it (cheap company cars) less so, but let me tell you about the crankshaft thrust washer...
Anyways, No one cared that American cars from those decades didn't last. It was the standard. Somehow, though imports did better, with the notable exception of BMW, which seemed to deliver great cars that didn't last in America, mostly I suspect because we did not take the care of them that German owners did, for a variety of reasons. Planned obsolescence? Probably. It changed. Now with relatively rapid changes in tech, we see engines getting turbos (which can last very well if done right, ask Saab and Subaru) and of course the cockpit getting so much tech. I wonder how many 20 year old cars with LCD screens will still have a working display. Hard to drive without that sweet virtual dashboard. If you think these EU manufacturers plan for their vehicles to suffer predictable, designed-in failure to drive repair revenue or replacement, do not be surprised. Ask GM why they really killed the EV-1.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
> If you forget
It's the problem. Take some more driving lessons.
Cash for Clunkers
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I'm on my second (C-Max this time, regular Focus hatch the first). It does need to be revved fairly high for torque, but I have never stalled unless I was driving it like it's a 2 litre diesel (as in "expecting it to take off from a standing start in second gear"). You do have to shift gears a bit more often, and I have made my displeasure known to the car verbally when I was in the "suggested" gear for the car and tried to accelerate. It seems to love suggesting going to 6th gear from 40MPH upwards. ONLY if you're doing a constant speed on a level, because even a slight hill will completely take the oomph out until you downshift, usually by at least two gears. I easily hit 45-47MPG with the first one on longish journeys, closer to 40MPG when I was doing lots of tiny trips. About 2-3 MPG less with the heavier, bulkier C-Max. Is it as fun/easy to drive as a bigger engine with more torque? Hell no, it's quite dull, but then it's more or less the textbook "family" car, and I quite like how it seems designed to prevent me from doing anything stupid in a fit of road-rage with my family in the car.
Is anti-lock braking even needed in a car that light??
I would expect it is more important in a light car. Less weight means less grip, and it being easier to lock up the wheels during braking. Anti-lock brakes enable you to brake and turn at the same time without worrying about pumping the brakes. You want it.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
There's little doubt that automakers would sell their grandmothers into slavery if the price was right, I'm a bit curious why they would take the legal risk of conspiring to suppress development of a spectrum of emission control technologies. The cost of plugging away lethargically on emission control device development is low ("Hey we're working on better catalysts. But it's slow. Developing new technologies takes time"). The cost of getting caught is likely to be very high.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
ABS is even more valuable with a light car. Complex ECUs permit better emission controls, and that's your government at work, talk to them. It's hard to argue against cleane air. Useless entertainment features? Oh, I mostly don't like being stuck with the audio system they decided to settle for, but I suppose if they built Bluetooth and streaming into it I'm done, amps and speakers are still upgradable.
'They' won't let you build an 80s Toyota Hilux any more, you'll have to use modern emissions and that's the end of repairability. And this is, BTW, an argument in almost all consumer electronics and similar products, and even farm equipment, where the manufacturers will deny you access to the software, and that's the end of fixing it yourself. Mind you, BMW fanatics have developed software to deal with many chassis versions, as have some others, but that's complex for a reason. Just not to make it easy for YOU to fix.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
>3.5L 6 cylinder naturally aspired 20 years ago (that's around 300PS)
So WTF is a PS ?
The unit of power is a KiloWatt , I think 76KW is about 100 HorsePower
" you often have to creep forward in traffic"
Often at idle, or minimum acceleration. No meaningful difference.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Wish I had mod points. Nailed it.
So it was VW and Daimler who hacked the US 2016 Election. It was the Germans, not the Russians, all along!
A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver --Proverbs 25:11
We no longer need to make cars that go at ludicrous speeds. My cheap run-of-the-mill car will easily do 130mph if I ask it to.
That's unnecessary.
All the safety features on modern cars are there for a reason. Your bumpers disintegrate because they will save your life much better than any older car. Airbags are everywhere, even the roof supports. Because it saves your life. None of those are repairable, you don't want them to be, because people will sell you a car with a second-hand replacement airbag that they bolted in after they rear-ended someone and you'll die.
The entertainment costs an absolute pittance of space and money. Usually the same wires as an ISO radio, maybe
a mic or two, and a couple of data cables. And yet they add satnav, in-car voice activation, bluetooth dialling etc. It's literally such a cheap bolt-on they give it away to you because people go "ooh" or consider it a necessity.
In terms of the *car*, the main engine and everything else, the repairability may have gone down but - you know what, few people care. The vast majority of people do not service their own car. It's just that simple.
My father's a mechanic, worked on fleets for decades. He is perfectly capable of building his own kit cars, making anything out of a pile of scrap, removing every single component of a car and engine, cleaning and servicing, and then refitting it all.
He hasn't for years because... he's not being paid to do it. He did it for me a couple of times for accident repair and literal engine failure, etc. but he wouldn't just do it.
The costs involved are all in the parts. He got trade prices. The rest is labour, which is enormous. The complications of all the modern tech is ridiculous, granted. Yet the computer tells him exactly what's wrong when it would take him hours to find out himself.
So even he would go out of his way to avoid promising anything more than an oil change, a brake-pad change or simple repairs / replacements (e.g. lambda sensors).
Not because he couldn't, but it's just not worth the hassle. And when you buy the kit - even a certified compatible, at trade prices, from a guy you've known 20+ years - it takes longer to fit and piss about than just taking it to a garage. It's not something he can afford to do any more as a favour to people.
ABS is mandated in Europe. No ABS on your car, it doesn't get off the forecourt for the model design. Entertainment and luxury stuff is literally just trim. My dad couldn't do anything about most of it or even approach anything techy, but it's all throwaway computer modules and switches in the seats, nothing complex or expensive. But the actual engine-running and safety features - nobody sits and pisses about with those any more, you can't afford to. Just replacing like-for-like costs a fortune because of the legislation on car design.
For example, seat-belt pre-tensioners. Literal explosives in the seatbelt. You can't mess with that stuff. Airbags in every corner and bracket and door and support. You can't mess with that stuff and even running cables around / near them can be a chore.
It's not that there's nothing to play with. It's not that you have to be an expert to do so. It's not that these features are "unnecessary". It's that there's so much in a modern car that you can't get cheaper parts to replace them and it's just not worth the effort to try.
My dad's already written off changing brakes on my car if they run low because it has an electronic handbrake. I didn't get the option on an entire raft of vehicle models. You get an electronic handbrake. And to safely adjust that means a piece of software from the manufacturer, a lesson in IT, and hours of pissing about.
But the consumer just sees "hill start assist" and doesn't think twice, because they don't care about the repairability. It will hardly ever be them repairing it.
Cars are more-so consumer items now than even computers and tablets and smartphones are. I sympathis
Nobody wants these underpowered 1L engines that they try to compensate for by putting in a turbocharger. What they don't like to tell you is when your turbo or your intercooler shit itself is you're stuck with a $4000 repair bill.
Then maybe you should nerd up and learn to replace the turbocharger yourself. It's a trivial job as such things are measured and you should be able to get a reman under $1000 including gaskets. Intercoolers are quite reliable as a rule, unless you hit something.
Then on top of that, they want to attach all sorts of non sense to the exhaust system.
Improving automobile emissions makes excellent sense for those of us who like to breathe.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Never buy one they are shit and not nearly as economical as they suggest as well.
Shit, probably not. Ford's quality figures are similar to other automakers. Not as economical as they suggest, that part is true. The vehicle needs mild hybridization in order to actually be efficient, since it has to struggle to come up to speed. Acceleration is where hybrid systems really help mileage, besides regen of course.
All vehicles will be hybrids soon enough, and then the ecoboost may actually deliver the promised mileage.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Yes, but start and stop system will restart the engine as a result, reducing effectiveness of the system.
What really makes turbos last is doing oil changes, and if the designers took the oil feed off from the right location. If they get it from an main oil galley, it's crap. If they took it directly off from the filter, then it might actually last. On most vehicles it just comes out of one of the oil passages so you're getting sludge in your turbo oil. I just noticed this characteristic when I was fiddling with a 1999 Blue Bird Q-Bus with a Cummins ISC. The turbo oil feed line comes directly from the oil filter manifold. I had to rebuild the turbo on my 1982 MBZ 300SD because the bearing was worn out. I put in a 360 degree bearing instead of the 270 degree one that is normally used for ease of installation, too... which is also crap.
I should look into the VGT on my lady's 2006 Sprinter, and see if they used a proper thrust collar in that one. Just like my OM617, the OM647 features a Garrett turbine, though it's variable instead of being a fixed T3-pattern unit.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Old cars can be cool and not expensive. If you drive a beater car and don't show pride of ownership, then yes, people react accordingly. If you drive an old car and it is clean, minimal rust, and is running well, then it is "old school cool".
For example old and inexpensive Civic Hatch, VW Golf, Subaru Impreza, Toyota Celcia, and so on would not be seen in a negative light. Your choices broaden a great deal if you step up to luxury bracket, as almost any $100K car would still be seen as cool 20 years older. For example, old diesel W123 Mercedes-Benz is both super practical (easily 40MPG) and super cool.
Europe has much stricter environmental laws, but it turns out European manufacturers are shady as fuck. This is pretty much the perennial argument about private enterprise throwing up their hands once the government steps in.
When I see a lowly salesperson driving a BMW, I assume they don't know the first thing about managing money, and that they are generally incompetent at life. People who spend 10% of their gross salary leasing a car probably aren't smart enough to be gainfully employed.
Funny how I know literally dozens of people with cars from the 70s...
Also funny how there are tons of old American cars on the road from the 70s, but barely any German made ones...
The reason modern cars are heavy is primarily safety - crumple zones, reinforced pillars, airbags, etc. all add weight. Generally other parts of the car (e.g. engine) have gotten lighter.
Then ask Saab owners. Turbos were not the problems, the DIC was a problem.
Really, you think I don't know Saab is defunct. Really. Did you know Subaru sold turbo engined cars in the 90s? Earlier, maybe?
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Collectibles?
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Stop start actually does meaningfully improve fuel economy in cities. The technology that does not improve fuel economy is a turbo. Tests don't replicate common driver behaviour (with more power) which results in the tests effectively testing the smaller displacement engine w/o the turbo.
Us auto sales in 207 were around 17 million. source. There's 222 million drivers in America. That's around 7% of drivers buying new cars.
Somehow this doesn't seem sustainable. It's also probably why used car prices are so crazy. E.g. a low mileage used car is within 10% of the price of a new one. I paid $12.5k for a 2014 Sentra not long ago and only got it that cheap because it'd been in a fender bender....
OTOH I wish I could come up with a way to snatch trade ins from dealers and put them in the hands of buyers. A coworker just took a nice, 4 year old, low mileage car to the dealer for trade in and got $4k for it. That dealer will turn around and sell it for $10-$13.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
When you say "meaningfully improve fuel economy in cities", what do you exactly mean? Is 0.01 Gal per full gas tank is meaningful? Also, how much gas do you think car consumes when idling? I think it is less than 0.1 gal per hour per L of engine of displacement. So 5.0 Mustang idling for 2 hours would use up 1 gal of fuel, or would be able to idle approximately for 1.3 days on a full tank.
Yes, skulduggery and lobbying.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Or make a decent enough living to actually afford nice things?
Just because you don't, doesn't mean others can't.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Also good for consumers: if multiple manufacturers are using common parts, the part availability goes up, and the pricing goes down due to economies of scale.
We can't have that, can we? Better bust up this arrangement so we end up with a whole lot of snowflake emissions crap that is impossible to repair.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
The average new car in the 70s vs the average new car now is a difference of $23k vs $30k adjsuted for inflation. The average car in the 70s wasn't even remotely as nice as the average car of today even ignoring value added features.
Cars are just as cheap as they always have been. People just like paying for luxury. Ironically this is the opposite of the airline question where flights in the 70s were more expensive than business class is now, yet people still complain about service of economy.
The world needs to collectively stop whining.
Look up how much energy it takes to manufacture a modern car. Most of it will have come from fossiil fuel
Less than one-third of the energy consumption of the typical automobile is spent in production.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
We no longer need to make cars that go at ludicrous speeds. My cheap run-of-the-mill car will easily do 130mph if I ask it to.
We never needed to, either. It's never been safe to go more than someplace in the 60-80 mph range, in terms of surviving unexpected equipment failure. That stuff is rare, but it still happens.
The entertainment costs an absolute pittance of space and money. [...] It's literally such a cheap bolt-on they give it away to you because people go "ooh" or consider it a necessity.
Actually, it's one of the main areas of competition now that all automakers are basically competent to build a decent car.
ABS is mandated in Europe.
ESP is now mandatory in the US and in Europe. ABS has been mandatory for a long time.
Voiding your warranty with Lenovo, even on a big server, is not something a professional would routinely or unthinkingly do. Voiding your warranty on a car capable of 130mph is something you want people in their garage to be able to choose to do? The results are unthinkable.
I don't know how it works in Europe, but here in the USA we have the Magnusson-Moss warranty act which prohibits voiding warranties without cause, and recent court actions have given it teeth. You can tinker with your car, and they can't just void your warranty. They have to show that your modifications could reasonably have caused the problem. The bar is pretty low, but the days of being able to deny you warranty coverage anywhere on a vehicle because you tampered with one component are over. How does this work in Europe?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
They say 3-10% savings in city.
That car is an outlier. I doubt that the Volvo P1800 that has the second-most number of kilometers is even half of what that has logged. And while that is a lot of distance on a passenger car, it isn't unusual for over the road (long haul) trucks to accumulate that kind of mileage.
Besides, from what I've seen from scrapyards, the majority of vehicles there that weren't wrecked are there for something that's relatively trivial, easily fixed, or often just minor cosmetic damage because they were in a minor accident and insurance totalled them out. There's often cars there that literally have nothing wrong with them at all - they were traded in or donated, ended up being wholesaled, and at the auction no one wanted them so the scrapyard that put in a couple hundred dollars scrap value bid ends up winning it.