Merkel’s Next Big Headache: Volkswagen’s ‘Defeat Device’
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NPC Oldsmobile Golden Rocket 88 Holiday Sedan for 1957, Columbus GA 1908 Angela Merkel has another huge headache on her plate. She seems to attract th
[See the full post at: Merkel’s Next Big Headache: Volkswagen’s ‘Defeat Device’]Funnily enough, one of my first jobs was as a “long range planner” for Lucas/CAV. At that time (1973/4) it was one of the biggest maker of fuel injection pumps for diesel engines. I looked at the US market and strongly recommended it in my reports to the board. Nothing really came of it as the price of petrol was so low in the USA compared to Europe – as it still is. Diesel only really comes into its own when fuel is highly taxed or fuel economy paramount (e.g. mining / shipping)
It is obvious that these results are much more relevant for cities like Paris – where most cars are diesel. In the USA, diesel remains a niche market IMHO.
I consider the VW scandal as a big red herring to distract from the refugee crisis. It totally is consuming all space on all news media. And it even is a known fact to the government for years, and absolutely not unusual in the domain of car manufacturing. The same is known to happen in appliances to improve the energy star rating.
I consider the VW scandal as a big red herring to distract from the refugee crisis. It totally is consuming all space on all news media. And it even is a known fact to the government for years, and absolutely not unusual in the domain of car manufacturing. The same is known to happen in appliances to improve the energy star rating.
WHY IS VW BEING SINGLED OUT?
Why not diesel engine mfg?
Why not truckers?
Why not busses?” Carmakers are powerful corporations, as of course are diesel producers.
What Volkswagen has been caught cheating on concerns emissions of nitrous oxide. As for its CO2 levels, who knows what can, and maybe will, be found? The crucial question perhaps is, are we ever going to know?
And it took a while before that for the EPA to pick up on research conducted by the California Air Resources Board. Who in turn had joined up with studies already underway at West Virginia University and the non-profit International Council on Clean Transportation, which started ‘investigating’ diesel emissions two years ago.
The fact that the EPA has ordered recalls of vehicles dating back as far as 2009 is an indication of how long’s it’s taken to get this thing to the surface.”WHY IS THE TOBACCO INDUSTRY ATTACKING THE E-CIG. IT WORKED FOR ME. I NO LONGER SMOKE.
Interesting that it was nitrous oxide. I had not seen that bit of information.
The nitrous emission is sort-of ‘optional’. Air is made of nitrogen and oxygen, but it is difficult to get them to combine, and they do not produce energy when doing so. By itself, air does not ‘burn’. So now I understand how this happened. They could tweak the engine parameters for fuel efficiency, or for high power output, or for low NOx emission. It would be one of the ‘adjustable’ outputs of the diesel engine.
CO2 output is not adjustable — it will always produce that as long as it is running. The amount of CO2 emitted is inevitably proportional to the amount of carbon in the fuel, since carbon combustion is the source of ~ 2/3 of the energy from burning diesel. If it didn’t emit carbon, it wouldn’t be worthwhile to burn diesel at all.
they reduce the amount of NOx by reducing the amount of air going into the explosion chamber. less air -> less nitrogen -> less NOx, but also less expansion force.
AFAIK all car makers cheat here. under realistic conditions no diesel car would pass the current limits, and somewhere I read most cars of todays would not even pass 1992 limits. This is a long ongoing gaming of the system.By making VW the skapegoat, they might want to support local industry. Like 1933.
They scapegoated VW before, back in the day of the Beetle and the Rabbit. Even though the smaller engines in these cars emit less junk overall, and get better gas mileage, the rules were set for ‘pollution per unit of volume’ in the exhaust. So the big gas-guzzling Cadillacs could pass, because their oversized engines gulped a lot of air, thereby diluting their emissions.
And interestingly, some of the late ’70s or ’80s Rabbit models had an air pump, to add air to the exhaust stream, just so they could pass emissions tests. So, cheating. But cheating on a rigged system of rules.
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