Via The GWPF:
The European car industry was shaken on Monday as Volkswagen’s share price fell almost 20 per cent over its admission that it cheated on US emissions tests, triggering calls for a broader inquiry into the sector. More than €13bn was wiped off VW’s market capitalisation, spurring a wider fall in carmakers’ shares, after Martin Winterkorn, the group’s chief executive, apologised and ordered an external investigation into the affair. he news prompted a fall in carmakers’ shares with Daimler, BMW, Renault and PSA Peugeot Citroën each being sold off amid investor concerns over the potential scale of the cost to VW and the broader industry. VW faces billions of dollars in fines and warranty costs, possible criminal charges for executives and class-action lawsuits from US drivers. –Andy Sharman and Jeevan Vasagar, Financial Times, 22 September 2015
The federal government paid out as much as $51 million in green car subsidies for Volkswagen diesel vehicles based on falsified pollution test results, according to a Times analysis of the federal incentives. Such green car incentives have also gone to buyers of hybrid, electric and hydrogen fuel cell cars. But the EPA does not track aggregate figures for incentives paid out to buyers of specific models or brands. –Jerry Hirsch, Los Angeles Times, 22 September 2015
Carmakers bombard consumers with marketing about how “clean” and “eco” their products are, but incidents like VW’s software cheating are a reminder that the auto industry has no abiding love for the green ideals it’s peddling. Volkswagen will pay dearly for its transgression, but you can be sure there are many more companies out there—both inside and out of the auto industry—that are taking advantage of the average consumer’s enjoyment of feeling environmentally friendly, without actually delivering the benefits promised. —The American Interest, 22 September 2015
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Regarding computers, a simular cheat was discovered when GPU (graphics processor unit) manufactor Nvidia was caught some years ago, making drivers that was detecting test software, resulting in better test results then actual.
Sorry this may be off topic, but it is related. It appears that fiddling with the car’s electronics emissions systems is illegal, even if the car is for “off road use only”.
Casper’s Electronics Inc. Clean Air Act
The Department of Justice and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced today a landmark settlement requiring Casper’s Electronics, of Mundelein, Ill., to pay a penalty and stop selling devices that allow cars to release excess levels of pollution into the environment, in violation of the Clean Air Act (CAA).
http://www2.epa.gov/enforcement/caspers-electronics-inc-clean-air-act
Ye gods and little fishes, have they never seen truck racing on T.V.? The particulates from these things are so bad it is sometimes not possible to see the trucks. Perhaps all motor racing is to be banned as not complying with USEPA clean air regulations.
Fireworks after that; they’re incredibly smoky.
Richard of NZ… Don’t laugh! I’ve heard rumors of EPA wanting to ban all motor racing, because of emissions.
Engines have been “chipped” for more performance for decades, but if this is now to be considered illegal, dozens or even hundreds of auto tuning companies will be put out of business. State control over everything as the US turns into an authoritarian state afraid of it’s own shadow.
I’m really thankfull I live in the uk and not the states…
If you play the cAGW CO2 eco sham game eventually you will loose.
It is sad to see the sham science of globull warming creeping into engineering!
Engineers should have the b@lls to speak plainly about the global warming fear narrative.
And yet, despite hundreds of thousands of non-compliant cars on the roads, there was no huge swell of pollution, no cases of hundreds of people dropping dead in the cities as VW diesels roared past. Hmmmm.
Yea… but the sea level rose 0.0001 nanometer … ;^D
But the ozone level might have risen–especially of other makers have been using the same dodge.
Consequently, the ozone-reduction measures the EPA is proposing may not be necessary, so long as this dodge is removed from autos.
there is in Europe as they have been embracing (actually encouraged) diesel. Now they realise that yes CO2 output is down but actual pollution is waaaay up and actually causing health problems
No big deal. VW only has to produce charts showing what their computer models “projected” the mileage and emissions to be, showing that by 2100 the emissions from these particular vehicles will be zero.
Our Passat cc had such a clean exhaust tail pipe not a speck of soot on it, at 3 yrs old when it was
Mot tested the emissions were zero. The garage checked another car and got a reading, rechecked the Passat still showed zero pretty good I reckon.
My daughter has a 2008 Mustang GT 5-speed convertible that also has clean shiny insides to the exhaust pipes. Approaching 100,000 miles and the tailpipes are still shiny clean inside. As a ‘car guy’ and retired mechanical engineer, I’m impressed. Ford, you done good.
MPG goes down when all the emissions equipment is operating on a modern diesel engine. So you can either have great mpg with some dirt or so-so mpg with less dirt.
I wonder which actually results in more pollution.
Kind of like how ethanol in gas is supposed to be cleaner but you have to burn more of it since your mpg drops with ethanol.
I believe that used to be an issue with the early pollution control equipment in the American gas-guzzler era. The equipment reduced carbon monoxide and smog pollution, but also drastically reduced engine power. The response of the manufacturers was to fit massive engines which achieved as little as 3mpg, so as to restore the performance. The overall consequence was more pollution, not less.
Which shows that making regulations is a bit like asking a genie for a wish. You will get what you asked for. But, it may not be what you wanted.
Though, pure ethanol burns very cleanly, so if we were able to make synthetic fuel from fusion or whatever, ethanol or isopropanol would be ideal choices, especially as they would burn in most existing IC engines with a little remapping. In principle a much cheaper and better solution than replacing all existing vehicles with electric ones.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_Claims_Act
“The American Civil War (1861–1865) was marked by fraud on all levels, both in the Union north and the Confederate south. During the war, unscrupulous contractors sold the Union Army decrepit horses and mules in ill health, faulty rifles and ammunition, and rancid rations and provisions, among other unscrupulous actions. In response, Congress passed the False Claims Act on March 2, 1863, 12 Stat. 696. Because it was passed under the administration of President Abraham Lincoln, the False Claims Act is often referred to as the “Lincoln Law”.
Importantly, a reward was offered in what is called the qui tam provision, which permits citizens to sue on behalf of the government and be paid a percentage of the recovery. Qui tam is an abbreviated form of the Latin legal phrase qui tam pro domino rege quam pro se ipso in hac parte sequitur (“he who brings a case on behalf of our lord the King, as well as for himself”) In a qui tam action, the citizen filing suit is called a “relator”. As an exception to the general legal rule of standing, courts have held that qui tam relators are “partially assigned” a portion of the government’s legal injury, thereby allowing relators to proceed with their suits.”
I have an E-Class Benz with a 3.0 L turbo diesel, excellent engine, more torque than you’d expect. That system uses Adblue which is a DEF liquid that scrubs the exhaust stream of particulates (which is likely the problem with the VWs, not CO2.) I understand the VWs don’t or didn’t yet use that system which makes getting a diesel to pass a strict particulate test very difficult. Consequently, most modern pickups with diesels use the Adblue system, as do semi trucks. You can fill the DEF tank at most good truck stops, it’s required about every 10,000 miles.
The EPA has been in a feud with VW going back 15 years when they were pressuring VW to develop a hybrid and abandon marketing a diesel powerplant passenger car in the US market. California went so far as to ban the sale of VW TDIs in 2005. Of course in this latest complaint against VW the EPA is using the public health threat of nox, which is complete nonsense. I bought a new TDI Jetta back in 2004 and it was one of the best cars I have ever owned with mileage at 42/52. Never did anything beyond routine maintenance with 265,000 happy miles in all weather extremes. Just my opinion, but the gov’t should get out of the emission business.
I want to see VW challenge the constitutionality of the California’s emission scheme. If a farmer’s whet production can distort the market, certainly added cost of cars in the largest market is an infringement on the commerce clause.
In the UK when Gordon Brown was PM (which says it all) he wanted everyone driving diesels to lower CO2 emissions. Vehicles were taxed (we pay an annual fee for the privilege of driving a car in the UK), prior to this at a fixed rate for all cars, then Brown introduced bands of road tax from £0 to £400. As a result the law of unintended consequences kicked in, because although diesels produce less CO2, they produce even more noxious gases, some of which are carcinogenic. In the USA there are very few diesel cars and your cities are not as polluted as ours. Paris bans cars with even/odd numberplate numbers every other day, due to this pollution. If anyone has been stuck behind a bus or car belching out black clouds of smoke they will know exactly what am talking about. Of course the other way of dealing with the problem is to have forward facing exhausts.
This is not the first time that the law of unintended consequences has struck when politicians who don’t have a clue with regard to motor vehicles have drafted ill thought out legislation. In the 1970’s California brought in strict emission laws, cubic capacity of engines had to increase, to maintain performance, as did fuel consumption, the Gulf States raised the cost of oil and Western economies took a downturn. On top of that lead was removed from petrol, its octane was lowered, again higher fuel consumption and the petrol had a greater percentage of benzene which is a 1000 times more toxic than lead.
Don’t forget that demands for ever-lower NOx emissions also killed the turbine car, as Chrysler couldn’t afford to keep redesigning it every time they met the requirements and the government came out with new ones. A car which could run on just about any liquid that burns, and could have significantly reduced US reliance on foreign oil.
I would say that public transport is far more polluting in cities than passenger cars. Having lived and worked in Edinburgh, Stoke-on-Trent, Derby and Nottingham and now moved to France I regularly visit Poitiers and Limoges. Of all these cities the ones with the least unpleasant air are the two French cities. This is, in my opinion, down to the fact that Limoges has electric trolley buses and Poitiers natural gas fueled buses. It should also be noted that France has a very high percentage of diesel cars, probably about 70%. The UK cities have diesel buses and taxis and a much lower percentage of diesel cars, probably less than 50%.
In UK cities the smoky diesel bus problem is far more prevalent than the smoky diesel car problem, and in most cases it’s simply a case of lack of injector maintenance rather than the need for any hi-tech filters. Basically the way to make a profit running a bus service is to minimize your overheads. Smoky diesel trains are an equally common sight. The ones that don’t generally smoke are the larger diesel trucks, the haulage companies seem to do their maintenance better.
The big scam is the arbitrary and capricious regulatory world that promotes diesel automobiles! Ever been to a European city (where diesels are replete)? There’s a dirty line about 12′ feet up all the structures from diesel particulate. Now where supposed to be surprised that diesels really aren’t that clean. Seriously, who are they/we kidding other then ourselves? It’s comparable to having spent 5 decades of my life watching the NFL and insisting there is no way those guys get head injuries, they’re wearing helmets.
they are clean, they don’t emit a lot of CO2, the black stuff only harms humans not the planet.
Does this not imply that all of Europe is based on cheating in air quality compliance, to go along with cheating in the carbon trading scheme? BTW, How many diesel cars are in Paris?
What do the Presidential vehicles and aircraft get in fuel economy?
VW was using common practice they use in Europe. Cheating to pass unreal limits with unreal consumption and emissions. And all people are paying for this as CO2 and emission taxes…
In most EU countries diesel is tax subsidized against gasoline, this is bending market and people things that diesel much fuel efficient than gasoline. On one side there are ridiculous taxes on fuel, like 100 – 150% this is causing people to look for every chance to save some money spent on fuel. And because taxes are lower on diesel together with bigger energy content of diesel and bigger efficiency of diesel engine they are naturally choosing diesel engines.
Real efficiency of diesel is like 15% higher than gasoline engine, but this is reduced by bigger weight of diesel engine. On highway there is almost no impact of bigger weight so it is 15%.
But in the city, in start/stop environment bigger weight of car is reducing efficiency to around 7%.
So in world without bent market of taxes where cost of fuel reflects just its value and production costs diesel would be interesting only for small group of people who are traveling a lot and big distances. In this application diesel is fine and its use is well justified.
Other people after taking into account higher maintenance cost of diesel, disadvantages of turbo diesel: need cooling before switching off, need to be on working temperature when using full power, long heating would rather prefer gasoline engine.
>>Real efficiency of diesel is like 15% higher than
>>gasoline engine, but this is reduced by bigger
>>weight of diesel engine.
You sure about that?
My all alloy twin turbo European diesel is the same size as any other 4-cyl engine. And produces 50 mpg in mixed driving, for a large 5-door saloon. And that was checked with pump usage, as well as the flow-meter. And my diesel has the same power output as the equivalent petrol engine on this vehicle. (This is not a sporty car.)
I don’t think modern diesels are significantly heavier than petrol engines.
R
according to the EPA, since 1980 vehicle miles traveled has increased 95%, the population has increased 39%, and the aggregate of the six most common emissions has decreased 62%.
So, in a way VW is using a model to supply data in stead of using real life measurements. Where have I heard that before?
It sounds familiar to me, too. I’m surprised they didn’t justify their actions by claiming that 97% of company scientists were in agreement that their computer model was just as accurate as real-life measurements. How would the EPA dispute that?
A point raised elsewhere is that carbon dioxide emissions per mile ought to be proportional to fuel consumption per mile for the same fuel, yet a perusal of manufacturer ads shows that they are anything but proportional.
Question is, if two vehicles with the same fuel consumption produce differing amounts of CO2 per mile, where does the extra mass of the element carbon come from? Either matter is being created from nowhere.. or someone is falsifying test results here too.
EPA CRIMES…. Pumping diesel fumes into human subjects.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/09/22/epas-own-diesel-crimes-worse-than-vws/
Dont know how it works in the US but if this extends to the UK also it would mean all those driving around in supposed low CO2 emission vehicles paying only £30 yearly road tax could instantly in theory be hit with a 10 fold increase which VW I guess would be liable to pay also.
It will be interesting to see if this extends to other German companies or is it endemic in the industry ?
Could be a nice opportunity for vehicle manufacturers who are ‘doing it right’ to take a large market share from VW with some humorous ‘poke with a stick’ advertising to boot
So, instead of being used to promote advances in green technology, our tax money has been used to subsidize cheating and crony capitalism. Why am I not surprised? Will we ever reap a return on our investments?
By ‘return’, I don’t mean an increase in cheaters and crony capitalists. We have a surplus of those already.
With throwing money away the only return can be poverty and debt. So, it’s all going according to plan.
22 Sept: WSJ: Auto Stocks Skid on Volkswagen
Emissions cheating scandal hits shares of auto makers and suppliers
By Saumya Vaishampayan
The Volkswagen emissions scandal hit shares of auto companies hard Tuesday, as investors sold everything from makers of auto parts to car manufacturers.
Volkswagen AG shares tumbled nearly 17% in Europe on Tuesday, bringing its losses so far this week to 31%. The German company said Tuesday that as many as 11 million vehicles around the world have the software allegedly used to cheat emissions tests and disclosed it would take a charge to earnings and cut its outlook for the year…
The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 1.1% Tuesday…
http://www.wsj.com/articles/auto-stocks-skid-on-volkswagen-1442954118
from Deutsche Welle: VW’s share price, already reeling from a difficult day’s trade on Monday, was down almost 20 percent on Tuesday at around 106 euros ($118) per share. In March this year, the same stocks were selling for more than 250 euros each.
22 Sept: Vox: Brad Plumer: Volkswagen’s appalling clean diesel scandal, explained
Regulators didn’t notice this ruse for years. The problem was only uncovered by an independent group, the International Council on Clean Transportation, which wanted to investigate why there was such a discrepancy between laboratory tests and real-road performance for several of VW’s diesel cars in Europe. So they worked with researchers at West Virginia University, who stuck a probe up the exhaust pipe of VW’s clean diesel cars and drove them from San Diego to Seattle…
As Frank O’Donnell of Clean Air Watch pointed out to me, the EPA caught a number of truck manufacturers, including Caterpillar and Volvo, doing something similar back in 1998 — programming their diesel trucks to emit fewer pollutants in lab tests than they did on the road…
Clean diesel appears to be a genuinely promising technology — in theory, such vehicles could get both excellent mileage and lower emissions. But this whole scandal raises serious questions about how well automakers can actually achieve both goals in practice…
http://www.vox.com/2015/9/21/9365667/volkswagen-clean-diesel-recall-passenger-cars
This was caught by a couple of citizens who were curious about why the North American VWs seemed to be much better than the European ones. It seems that the EPA would never have caught this on their own.
Citizen science rocks!