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Comment by korisnik | Hacker News Reader

Somewhat relevant, allegations have come out that the German government was aware of VW cheating on emissions tests

http://www.independent.ie/world-news/volkswagen-scandal-germ...

It's been known since at least 2014 that real-world emissions from many diesel cars were much higher than lab-measured emissions. There was speculation about defeat devices as well. EU regulators had recently made moves towards requiring real-world testing though unsurprisingly automakers were fiercely opposed.

For instance here's an article from February 2015 that mentions: "Campaigners say that car makers also use tricks such as programming vehicles to go into a low emissions mode when their front wheels are spinning and their back wheels are stationary, as happens in such lab experiments." (http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/feb/03/car-maker...)

What reasoning could they have given for opposing real world tests... surely thats an obvious sign of an issue

What exactly is a real-world test then? The procedure has to be nailed down to be accurate, and at that point we're back to optimising for a given test procedure again.

It seems to have been common knowledge in the industry for some time. It was mentioned on BBC Newsnight in December last year for instance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjUr3RQRERM

That is not all.

In Germany there are rumors going around, that not alone VW did cheat at those emission tests and not only at those tests. And the rumors are around for a long time now.

It is a well known fact, that in the EU, the emission tests used in the EU are absolute ridiculous (not only the NOX-tests -- all of them). They are totally artificial, so that they have nothing to do with normal car usage. But they are still used. The reason is, that particularly the German government are blocking all initiatives to change them. This does suggest, that they know about the cheating or at least where influenced from the big car industry. The German car industry is very influential in Germany.

Also it is a well known fact, that the gap between the official fuel usage figures and the fuel usage experienced in real world situation is growing and growing for many (maybe most) car brands. I would say, this is the same thing, because those numbers are determined by tests operated by the manufacturers -- and they are also artificial test situations like the emission tests. Officially, the fuel usage of new cars was reduced very much, but some say, that the real numbers have maybe even growing instead.

All this is known for years, if not decades.

Because of the the German government, the EU still takes a blind eye on this.

Yes you see this already for long time in forced induction cars. If you drive like in the cycle you will get good fuel economy, but it you drive like regular people and for example the turbo spools, fuel economy suffers at the expense of performance. What is particularly egregious here is that NOx levels were gamed to 10-40x, not fuel economy (and directly CO2) to something like just 5-10%. In my personal view it is not German government directly so much as for the tax incentives to keep the unrealistic cycles in place (which then the gov gets involved partly for votes and partly for large industry to be able to still easliy sell more reasonably priced cars).

As much I read, the difference between "standard cycle" and realistic driving is currently at 30-40%. And I guess, there is no realistic way, may you be a good driver as ever possible, to reach these consumption levels.

And I don't agree: The tax incentives are also made by the government and the taxes are of course based on the official (forged) numbers. Also when you argue the fuel tax will make it right: No, I don't agree, because the consumers can not decide -- they are also lied at with the wrong numbers!

I am currently shopping for a car and now need to keep in mind which brands/models are affected by this fiasco as another factor in my shopping.

Here in Ireland motor tax is based on CO2 emissions

I can see some very very unhappy VW drivers in this country in coming months if their tax suddenly jumps by an order of magnitude due to this avoidance scheme putting these cars into the high emission bands

I do wonder how Revenue will handle this, not only some people might find themselves with a more polluting car but a larger and unexpected tax bill will impact peoples pockets directly.

The CO2 amount should remain the same—the issue is with other pollutants that cause smog. The only reason that CO2 might go up is if the fix involves increasing fuel consumption. However, you might not even need the fix in Ireland, as many European countries (as I understand it) have laxer smog requirements to begin with.

Regardless, though, I wouldn't buy a VW product right now, wherever I lived.

Euro standards are backwards; they have stricter CO2 emissions regulations, but are lax on NOx. I'd imagine they don't have a lot of smog events like what happened in California during the 60s and 70s.

I wouldn't call them "backwards". They're opposite of the US, but that's because they're optimizing for reducing a different pollutant. Smog is certainly undesirable (as an asthmatic, I know that from experience), but CO2 may well have more dire long-term costs.

Of course, the optimal situation would be to tightly regulate both pollutants.

I would definitely call them backwards.

The amount of extra CO2 from a car running a better NoX system is utterly irrelevant compared to how much CO2 is emitted.

Trading CO2 for NoX is completely indefensible. NoX is really really bad for the environment.

The main difference is that Europe has separate regulations for Diesel and Gasoline cars, while the US has regulations independent of engine type. You are right that this leads to lax regulations on NOx. That said, the new Euro 6 regulations for Diesel cars should bring Europe closer to US levels.

This is actually an area where TTIP might improve things a lot by aligning different emission standards.

> Euro standards are backwards; they have stricter CO2 emissions regulations, but are lax on NOx.

In Europe, people don't commute as much, and as long hours, in cars, so I would guess NOx levels in city air don't get as high as in the US cities. So maybe there is no need to have as strict NOx emission limits for cars in Europe.

NOtwithstanding the other comments here, in europe the % or diesel cars is already very high. so europe is optimizing for diesel allowances, and the usa is optimizing also for its own local issues.

That was an explicit goal cut CO2 by pushing diesel and ignore the heath effects of NoX

> Here in Ireland motor tax is based on CO2 emissions

The amount of CO₂ produced comes directly from the amount of gas that you burn. There is nothing you can do anything about that. Except drive economically and thus spend less gas.

The present scandal is not not about CO₂, but pollutants that make the local air quality worse.

This is mostly about NOX, not CO2.

I guess, the tax is based on the "official numbers" not the real numbers. So you are in the clear.

As others already posted, this scandal is about the NOX numbers, what is a different thing, but I am pretty sure that the CO2 numbers (which correlate with the fuel usage, as much I know) are forged too (see my other posting).

i dont think there is a scandal here unless they could prove Germany knew about it before 2014.

i would expect them to know about this in July 2015 as your article suggests Germany knew about since "July".

the actual issue was brought to public eye more than year before that, "We presented this in a public forum in San Diego, in the spring of 2014"[1]

[1] http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/adva...

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