Millions of 'Extremely' Polluting Cars Still on Europe's Roads, Says Report (theguardian.com) 48
Thirteen million diesel cars producing "extreme" levels of toxic air pollution are still on the roads in Europe and the UK, according to a report, seven years after the Dieselgate scandal first exploded. From a report: The non-profit research group, the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), revealed in 2015 that many diesel cars were highly polluting, emitting far more nitrogen oxides on the road than in official testing. The scandal led to a more rigorous test being introduced in the EU in 2019. However, based on extensive testing evidence, the ICCT has now revealed that about 13m highly polluting diesel vehicles sold from 2009 to 2019 remain on the roads. A further 6m diesels have "suspicious" levels of emissions, the ICCT said. The cars span 200 different models produced by all the major manufacturers. The ICCT said the bestselling models from 2009-2019 in the EU27 and UK with "extreme" emissions are Euro 5 versions of the VW Passat and Tiguan, Renault Clio, Ford Focus and Nissan Qashqai.
Make the auto industry replace them (Score:5, Interesting)
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Making the companies liable and accountable for their blatant disregard for laws is the only way to stop future abuses.
Yeah, but then all those bribes and political "contributions" would dry up and go to the opposition.
Re: Make the auto industry replace them (Score:5, Interesting)
Glance over how emissions rules were changed between 2006-2008 which reduced the allowed levels so much that previously fine vehicles were suddenly âoemany times over the limitâ.
Yet trucks get a pass and drive around with7 liter v8 diesels getting worse fuel economy. The laws dont care about efficiency so no matter how many miles to the gallon you get, polluting even 1 percent more is not allowed.
So if a regular vehicle gets 30mpg and pollutes 300grams per gallon of gas its fine but if I invent a fictional engine that gets 300 miles per gallon and emits 301 grams of pollution according to the laws it is completely ILLEGAL.
Yet a 300mpg vehicle will need to burn less fuel than the 30mpg vehicle thus it will be in real life far LESS pollution than the legal vehicle.
This is why huge trucks have massive diesel engines and get compared identically to cars in the eyes of the law yet we all know the small car in real world driving pollutes less than the trucks yet the cars are the ones outlawed.
The laws suck. Talk about that.
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So if a regular vehicle gets 30mpg and pollutes 300grams per gallon of gas its fine but if I invent a fictional engine that gets 300 miles per gallon and emits 301 grams of pollution according to the laws it is completely ILLEGAL.
Yet a 300mpg vehicle will need to burn less fuel than the 30mpg vehicle thus it will be in real life far LESS pollution than the legal vehicle.
It's grams per mile. Not grams per gallon. So the 301 grams/gallon vehicle is 10 times better (at 1.003 g/mile) than the one at 300 grams/gallon (10 g/mile). The whole miles per gallon thing is just to assuage the butt-hurt of people who don't like big/powerful vehicles.
Re: Make the auto industry replace them (Score:2)
Re: Make the auto industry replace them (Score:2)
Still, CO2 is part of that grams per mile figure. And unless you specify weighting factors for the emissions components, the vehicle that puts out 1 g/mile still beats the one that puts out 10.
Vehicle Count and Realism (Score:2)
As for your fictitious example, yes it does show that if you could invent an engine many times more efficient than a current ICE you would run into probl
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So lets say a lorry operates for 10 hours a day, on average (some one be much longer some much less) and its engine is around 5x larger than an automobile. Then that results in 6.2x50x = 310million automobile equivalents of pollution.
This is all seat of pants numbers but it does demonstrate that it probably isn't cars that domin
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which reduced the allowed levels so much that previously fine vehicles were suddenly âoemany times over the limitâ.
Rules do not apply to previously fine vehicles they only apply to newly produced models. And just because the rules came into place in 2006 doesn't mean there wasn't very clear advanced notice to allow production to meet the targets. E.g. We've known for at least 3 years already what the Euro7 standards will include, and they don't even take affect until mid 2025.
but if I invent a fictional engine that gets 300 miles per gallon and emits 301 grams of pollution according to the laws it is completely ILLEGAL
Yes. And? Emissions and pollutions aren't a single compound problem. The targets are set based on health hazards. No one gives a shit how efficien
True Cause is excessive taxes on fuel (Score:3)
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I pretty recently stopped driving (Score:2)
You drive what you have to. I've heard Europe's a little better than America, but in a lot of places you still need a car to be a functioning member of society, and pay's been at best stagnant for decades. If you want cleaner cars you either have to pay folks a lot more or have public transport.
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a 20 year old Honda. It passed emissions tests, but I was always surprised it did.
Not surprising at all. I have:-
a 20 years old Honda Jazz
and
a 33 years old Honda Civic
The Jazz passed MOT two weeks ago. The Civic isn't due for several months but passed MOT last year with a clean emissions test and zero observations.
It must be borne in mind that a large amount of pollution is generated every time a new car is manufactured. A widely held opinion is that my well maintained Civic is greener than any new car can ever be simply because it has only been manufactured once during the last four dec
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The Jazz passed MOT two weeks ago. The Civic isn't due for several months but passed MOT last year with a clean emissions test and zero observations.
My 20 year old Jazz passed too. And that's because they are tested against the standards they were supposed to meet, not the latest Euro6 or whatever. (Also because I bribed the inspector to overlook the weak handbrake).
A lot does go into manufacturing new cars, but it actually pays off in terms of emissions relatively quickly if you drive a decent amount and your current car isn't super-efficient: https://youtu.be/L2IKCdnzl5k?t... [youtu.be]
That said, unless you're driving really a lot, it's probably better to just k
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Your Honda passed emissions tests because, like all cars sold in the US since 1975, it has a catalytic converter. That invention reduces emissions by about 99%. The problem described here is not that older cars pollute more. The problem with these European cars is not how old they are, but that VW cheated on emissions tests, placing cars in a special "low-emissions" mode whenever the test equipment was hooked up.
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Not all cars since 1975 have a catalytic converter. Aside from pure-electric cars, I drove a 1977 Honda Civic Wagon that met the emissions standards (including California) and got good (at least for the time) gas mileage without a catalytic converter or fuel injection, thanks to the CVCC engine. Of course, that also meant it had a PITA-to-work-on carburetor (because it had to produce two different mixtures in different volumes at the same time), and three valves per cylinder (which meant adjusting the timin
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I wasn't a big fan of import cars in those days (well, Ferrari, Lambo, Lotus, Maserati, etc., are a whole different world), but I was very impressed that Honda would put a fairly advanced, almost prototype technology, into production. I've never gotten much info on the CVCC "stratified-charge" (iirc) engines, how they did, why they stopped making them, etc.
What was your overall experience? Good? Was it fairly reliable? Efficient?
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My father bought it new in 1977, I was too young to drive it then. I did learn to drive on it and drove it through high school and college though. It was efficient for its time, although it did drive like a little car (so 4 or more college guys in it made it pretty pokey off the line :) ). Some people like to feel superior because they know how to drive a manual transmission - this not only had that, but it had a manual choke you needed to know how to use (which most people don't).
It was reliable for the mo
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Wow thanks for all of that. Would "dry gas" (methanol) have helped with the water in fuel?
Which reminds me of a "Mayday!" episode where in jet planes there can be very fine granules of ice in the fuel, and there's a heater that's supposed to melt them before they go into the engine, but due to the way they were made, a sort of bed of the granules could form, stay too cold, and block off the tubes that go into the heat exchanger. The little tubes originally protruded into the inlet area of the heat exchang
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More valves per cylinder shouldn't make anything but installing valve seals/guides take longer, unless it was so primitive it didn't have hydraulic lifters -- which were certainly a thing then, but not every engine used them, so in some you had to make valve adjustments. That's not timing, though. That's just tune-up. Timing is management of the ignition/injection to crank/cam angle relationship.
Anyway, the Honda Civic is the only ICEV to pass CA emissions without a cat since emissions testing, and that for
Re: I pretty recently stopped driving (Score:2)
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This is all true, but the problem of "extremely polluting cars" described in the article has nothing to do with the changing standards over time, or with older cars polluting more than newer ones. These cars are "extremely polluting" because VW cheated on emissions tests, altering the way the engines run while the test equipment is hooked up, but spewing out emissions at all other times.
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I've never lived in a state with emissions testing, so this is an honest question. If your vehicle fails and you're facing financial hardship, do they offer assistance in getting the vehicle back up to spec, or do they just point you in the direction of the nearest store selling bus passes?
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I'll second slacktide's answer. In my state, I forget how far back it goes, but up 'til 1996 you have to do a dyno / tailpipe test. It's actually not super stringent, IE, it's a good bit looser than the car's original emission spec.
1996 and newer they just connect to the OBD-II connector and trust that the car's computer knows that everything is okay.
I forget (and am too lazy to look up) the dollar amounts, but it might be something like you have to spend up to $150 for cars older than 1996, and up to $30
For some understanding (Score:2)
Pollution tests produce the same situation. During a test the engine is in a state where the sensible thing would be to take measures to reduce pollution.
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Diesel engines produce more pollution when the engine is cold.
They all do. You have to run gassers richer when they are cold. That's what starting choke is for.
definition (Score:2)
I read it so you don't have to,
Several times? So, four times? It's not ideal, but it's probably still less than a diesel 20 years older than that with no NOx reduction strategy whatsoever.
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All the vehicles mentioned are relatively small passenger cars. Even when using a defeat device, they still don't pollute that much.
Emission testing is rife with corruption (Score:2)
Especially in central/eastern europe where cars are very old - you pay someone who knows "how". People who are not yet privy sometimes try to get through the test by themselves at first, and usually fail. What VW dieselgate did is just "automate" this corrupt process for consumer's sake.
Like a lot of legislation in EU [youtube.com], emissions testing is more about greenwashing bureaucracy and regulatory capture than an honest intent.
For the EU every combustion engine car is evil (Score:1, Troll)
So as long as there are no-EV cars around, they will post these kinds of reports.
Frans Timmermans, as the EU overlord, will not stop flying in his private jet all over Europe to spread this message.
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Personally speaking, as the owner of a classic car that still exists because I take it to car shows, I'm waiting for the day it flips. Once the tipping point happens, regular gas / diesel will get obscenely expensive and EV's will get cheaper. That will suck for poorer people who "suddenly" (over about a decade really) won't be able to afford their vehicle while it's
In Portugal diesel cars remove the particle filter (Score:2)
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Some times I get a headache for the rest of the day just for being forced to smell that stuff for a while, it really enrages me how egocentric people can be...
You do realize that gasoline is much worse for you than diesel, and that it's simply not as smelly? And you're experiencing a psychosomatic response to the smell, and not to the effect of the unburned HCs, which you get much more of and which are much more volatile when gasoline vehicles are involved? If you're behind a gasser and a diesel, and both have just cold started, you're breathing much worse compounds from the gasser, but you're smelling the diesel.
Automakers keep talking about bringing us vehicles
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Carcinogenic particles are mainly from diesel cars
Completely false [slashdot.org].
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Not Everyone Can Afford a New Car - Mine 2003 (Score:2)
I am still driving a 2003 Camry. On a fixed income of about $12,000/year, and the recent loss of my Calfresh, I can barely afford to keep a car on the road, so I can get to the doctors.
The real scandal was not dieselgate (Score:3)
The real scandal, at least in Europe, was not dieselgate.
It was the promotion of diesel cars in the first place. The reason for the promotion of diesel cars was that they get better mileage than gas cars.
So the idea was, there is a climate crisis, and its caused by human CO2 emissions, and in cars, the more fuel you burn, the more CO2 you emit.
So we must take everyone to higher mileage cars. And they did. And simply took no account of the much higher levels of more damaging pollutants this would result in.
Then, as this became clear, governments did a U-turn and started to penalize diesels.
The latest plan is of course to now use emissions standards to compel EV takeup.
What are we to make of the saga?
The first thing to note is that in pursuit of the climate agenda, ill considered decisions are recommended and demanded by activists, who haven't considered the consequences and risks of their demands carefully and in the round.
And why should they? They will bear no responsibility if a serious attempt is made to implement their policy demands and it all goes sour. Its the politicians who listened to them who will bear the blame.
The second thing is that enormously damaging policies may be agreed and implemented under activist pressure despite being totally ineffective in addressing the supposed problem. The supposed problem in this case was global warming. But when you increase mileage as in this case, you don't necessarily reduce emissions, because people may simply use the increased mileage to drive more, thus consuming very similar amounts of fuel, but driving more miles.
The third thing is that the climate agenda addresses only one supposed problem, and it, in practice, bans consideration of competing objectives which may be more important. If you are in London or Paris the problem is not global warming. The problem is air quality. If there were some way of reducing local pollution which increased CO2 emissions it would be sensible and beneficial to implement it.
You can see a practical case in Scotland at the moment. The Greens do not want to improve Scotland's most notoriously dangerous highway, because they are opposed to any new road improvements, because climate. Never mind that improving the road would make almost no difference to Scottish emissions, never mind that reducing Scottish emissions anyway would have no effect on global temperatures. Never mind that the real problem is the accident, death and injury rate on one particular section of highway.
No, lets ban improvements 'because climate'.
The scandal of the diesel move was that vague ideological considerations were allowed to lead to a policy which damaged health and cost a fortune as one poor technology was first promoted and then disfavored. The lesson is, don't trust activists. They tend to be blinkered and obsessive, and when it all goes sour, they will be nowhere to be seen.
Or they will be on the sidelines throwing stones at you. You made the decision after all, they were just putting a point of view.
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You can't reason with religious fanatics
will be sent (Score:2)
These vehicles and their owners will be sent to fight in Ukraine.