“They had finally overcome the legacy of the GM diesel lemons of the early 80s, and now it’s back to where they started”, Sperling says.
And indeed, all should be presumed innocent until proven guilty – which they have not been.
If you own a diesel-powered Volkswagen, you’re well aware that this week the German auto maker was exposed by federal regulators for equipping vehicles with a computerized “defeat device” that gave inaccurate emissions readings. Rather they’re looking to see if something is malfunctioning in the vehicle to cause it to emit more pollution than it should.
Air pollution is a major health concern in towns and cities.
Both nitrogen oxide and nitrogen dioxide help create ground-based ozone, a potent gas causing lung inflammation and premature death.
Even short-term exposure has been found to cause an increase in deaths from heart disease by just under one percent, and from lung disease by just over one percent.
Specialists estimate that the bogus test results may mean as much as 900,000 tonnes of extra nitrogen oxide (NOx) a year could have been pumped out by VW cars alone – nearly equal to the combined emissions for all Britain’s power stations, industry, agriculture and vehicles.
Like other leaders, Blair was swayed by the motor industry’s argument that switching from petrol to diesel would lead to huge drops in greenhouse gas emissions.
Why haven’t diesels been made cleaner? Again, it doesn’t seem likely in Europe, since passing the environmental standards really isn’t that hard.
Unintended consequences include NOx and particulate matter. The same could be said of EVs and hybrids – they cost more in fact – but they so far have escaped as serious of implications calling focus now on diesel.
Los Angeles After almost 20 years as a loyal Volkswagen customer, Bob Merlis is among scores of Americans determined to get rid of their cars after the German automaker admitted it cheated in emission tests. It’s a workhorse that drives this society well beyond personal transport. In 2013, it reported it accounted for more than 70 percent of “clean diesel” passenger vehicle sales. There must be hundreds of us in the U.S. In 2000, he elaborated, heavy-duty truck manufacturers in the United States were fined for using defeat devices to comply with emissions limits and had to introduce more stringent standards ahead of time.
These details remain true but popular sentiment and reaction is what it is.
If more cheating is proven it could swing this momentum further away from diesel even if it could be cleaned up to most people’s satisfaction. Here in the states, though, the diesels that appeared during the fuel crunch of the 1970s were plagued by a reputation for being loud, slow, and smelly.
The EPA said Volkswagen used a device programmed to detect when the cars were undergoing official emissions testing. Until recently, few diesel cars would have passed the U.S. rules. If VW Group is lucky, some might migrate to Audi, where the margins are much higher anyway.
Diesel won’t disappear anytime soon, but its star turn as an eco-friendly alternative to the emissions of gasoline and drawbacks of electrics may be cut short. That number’s now at 40 percent. Diesels do deliver better fuel economy and tremendous torque.
Reportedly by 2019 a second stage in the RDE mandate will allow close to the legal limit 0.8 g/km NOx. It was assumed that there wasn’t any need to cheat in Europe, but investigations have been launched far and wide, and we’ll see. Then this happened. I get madder every moment that passes by about this. Already once-stalwart proponents of diesels have begun a switch to plug-in hybrids to meet future regulations. It was a simple, more innocent time, the end of the last decade if memory serves, when Volkswagen Group leadership announced goals to become the world’s largest automaker, while selling 800,000 vehicles in the US, by 2018.
VW diesels are done in the USA and Canada.
Consumers, particularly younger ones, are armed with easier access to information about what they buy than previous generations, and it’s affecting their choices.
Next month with diesels pulled from US dealer sales and 2016s not EPA certified, the immediate effect will be clear.
Unclear is how VW may remedy the affected TDIs. Older models will get the same fixes, he said. “The short-term answer is to reduce price”.
“I think their feet should be held to the fire”. Unknown is whether authorities would step up enforcement for the half million out-of-compliance VWs now on the streets. But some drivers remove the filters to improve performance and fuel economy.