Diesel cars produce more toxic emissions than trucks and buses, EU study says
theverge.com
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So, when you are trying very hard to make engines more efficient to get impressive mpg numbers, you also end up generating more NOx (Which you can then get rid of using urea, which I think is the preferred option in trucks and buses - think AdBlue or whatever it is called when used for cars.
Obviously, it would soot orders of magnitude more - but I wouldn't be surprised if the NOx emissions were surprisingly low, seeing as efficiency was way down on Toyota's list of requirements; they just made a bigger fuel tank.
It was designed to just work(tm) - almost regardless of what happened to it. Gas mileage? Not as much.
However it does consume more AdBlue and/or produces less power the cleaner it is
They did it to sell a "better car" with disregard to pollution regulation
This is why it's more costly. In order to design a diesel car that meets the exact same specifications, they either need to add an entire urea system (costs more money to manufacture, plus ongoing AdBlue costs to the consumer) or add a larger less efficient engine to meet the same performance target (costs more money to manufacture, plus ongoing higher petrol costs to the consumer).
Making a non-polluting diesel car is certainly more costly than making an equivalent diesel car that you don't care about pollution on at all. You're adding a big engineering constraint, of course it gets more costly!
I should add that I'm all in favor of cutting down pollution, and that if diesel as a technology turns out to not be that practical anymore for small cars, then so be it. Eventually they should all be zero emissions anyway.
This is tricky because, in the US market at least, one of the major appeals of small diesel cars was their performance / low end torque. There aren't really any other options on the market right now that can offer the same mix of performance/efficiency. Diesel cars are definitely on their way out in the US but I'm not sure it will be a net gain in the end. Lots of people such as myself are choosing to replace their small diesel cars with bigger, less efficient, similar performing cars.
Friend of mine is ditching his VW Diesel TDI for a Chevy Bolt at the end of the month. I'll be interested to see what he makes of that switch. Electric has if nothing but low end torque.
However, at least around here they sell it at (some) gas stations, and the user manual (2012 Passat 3c) shows how you go about topping it up, so it can't be that much of a concern.
I strongly doubt that there is a significant cultural difference between the two, in terms of car culture.
My blotto California brain went 'no! no one is touching my car!'
Well, they don't sell well in the US, but they didn't sell well prior to DEF, so I don't think you can pin the blame on that.
- You can let the tank go empty and not turn up to the workshop for the fill up, how does disallowing to top it up yourself prevent that?
- Many current cars with AdBlue will flash increasingly annoying warnings at you, and although many people drive with check engine lights lit, running out of urea will display you a counter of remaining kilometers and the car will simply refuse to start when empty. Again, nothing to do with whether you push the car to the dealership on foot or fill the tank yourself from the bottle (and actually, there are very foolproof anti-spill bottles, which let the liquid go only when tightly screwed onto the DEF tank).
Yes it does, since it affects the design of the vehicle. Remember that the context of this thread includes:
"So the tank needs to be large enough to cover a full maintenance interval...or creative solution to limit consumption."
If it's really a question of forcing people to refill the tank you could have the engine refuse to start if the tank is empty.
There are more fundamental issues though, the car needs to not run if it's empty, a lot of people drive around with their dashboard lit up and don't care. People will balk at having a full tank of gas and the car shuts down because of DEF.
I've never seen any warning or notice stating that it should not be filled by owners. I have a diesel VW and refilling the tank is pretty easy. The dealer didn't have any qualms selling it to me.
There's an idiot light type indicator that tells you when the change is coming up, just as with oil changes, and if ignored I think the engine will go eventually go into a kind of limp mode.
This all sounds to be entirely due to inadequate emissions testing processes and manufacturers doing the absolute bare minimum to comply with those tests as if they're gaming the rules of an automobile race.
It sounds absurd, but I can see the increase in Diesel soot on the roads and pavements here, and more often than not, it can be smelt from passing traffic.
To be fair, that I've become more aware of it is making me notice it more - but I live now not so far from where I grew up and it's clear how much difference the last 10-15 years have made to the state of the local environment. It's disgusting, and no doubt a massive public health crisis 10-20 years from now in the UK, where we already lead the world in lung disease.
It's the NoX that I notice much more than the soot. I get breathing difficulties after walking past buses (the sharp smell of the NoX fumes is pretty noticeable). I've had bronchitis twice in the past two years.
I've even started changing my walking routes to avoid busy roads entirely due to the diesel pollution.
What adds insult to injury is that many of these buses advertise as "Enviro" because their Diesel engines produce marginally less CO2 than a gasoline engine.
It's the same story elsewhere - MB offers probably half of the engines that rest of Europe gets, if there is a petrol option it is hugely underpowered, and diesel is the only way to go.
Obviously no-one wants to admit that they were wrong, but to continue to tax existing diesel vehicles lower because of reasons we now know to be bogus is a disgrace.
Diesels need to be taxed MUCH higher than petrols, especially those without AdBlue injection.
Long range EVs can't come soon enough. Even still, my next car is a Leaf.
Now, the bubble collapsed.
Also, Germany currently gives Diesel owners a rebate on the fuel tax. That is why a liter of Diesel is around €1.10 and a liter of gas is around €1.30. I wouldn't be surprised if this rebate will be gone soon. (But I wouldn't take bets on when)
But I can't imagine that the usual drivers want the hassle with filling up two tanks.
Reality is, that ADAC or TÜV years ago already warned, that EURO 6 cars may produce even more emissions than EURO 5 cars. So, decades of EU environment politics where just Potemkin villages to please German car producers.
how?
> So, decades of EU environment politics where just Potemkin villages to please German car producers.
???
The German news where full of it.
It is not helpful, when the labs are cleaner during car testing, but at the roads the people suffer from the pollution. VW is not the only brand, that optimizes the emissions for artificial environments.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/german-governme...
The other sad thing is, that the praised German car manufacturers are about to loose against new comers from the US and China. Good for the environment and the health of the people of course .... but how said Gorbatschow: "Who comes to late ..."
But that is the trouble: Our ministers all have their fallback positions in the industry. Just have a look at the former Schroeder government and what happened to those people.
The guy known as Gazprom Gerhardt, who coincidentally decided to phase out nuclear power? Yeah, sad story.
Besides, while most natural gas consumed in Germany may be for space heating and/or industrial heat, it also provides about 9% of the electricity, which is still a good chunk of money for Gazprom Gerhardt.
By the way, who is the "we" in "we had to force him"?
The heating in Grundremming is new to me, only found a press release from 2012 in which is mentioned. Anyway.
We is the basis of the Social Democratic Party of Germany. In which there was a majority agains the usage of nuclear power for a long time now. It was part of the party platform in 1998.
Also it was his home state of Lower Saxony. The Wendland region was the centre of the resistance against nuclear power. And it was never about the safety of the plants itself but about what should we do with the radioactive waste. A question still unanswered to this day.
The issue in this discussion about Diesel and Gerhard Schröder is a different one. When he was Prime Minister of Lower Saxony and when he was the Chancellor, he always listened to the automotive industry. And this haunts us to this day.
Either or. Combined cycle ("GuD") is more efficient than coal, simple cycle responds faster. But you'll never guess what responds the fastest---it's the large nuclear plants (http://www.mb.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/sites/Archiv/pdf/Sonderdruc..., p.10).
Waste should be recycled, unlike the wastes from fossil fuels, such as NOx, which have to be released into the atmosphere.
Anyway, at least we can agree that Gazprom Gerhardt was a crook.
I have replaced two of them over the past few years. If the third one ever goes, I'm completely done with the vehicle.
But this is me, a home mechanic, doing the work. For a professional with access to professional tools, it would be a different story. The parts themselves aren't too expensive. The easy one can be purchased for <$50 online and the two others are <$200 each online.
It can still happen if there are other issues such as a malfunctioning ignition system though (which could allow unburnt fuel to ignite inside the catalytic converter and cause it to overheat). This is why the check engine light actually flashes when the ECU detects a multi cylinder misfire (to signal a condition which could damage the converter).
Another note: Any car since the mid 90’s will throw a check engine light if you simply remove the catalytic converter. This will cause it to fail inspection in most states of the USA, which ultimately results in the car being legally un-drivable.
There are some people who manage to remove the catalytic converter and still pass inspection by simulating the signals from the secondary o2 sensors (or directly modifying the ECU), but this is a pretty rare practice and is usually limited to the “performance enthusiast” community. You can easily smell when a car has no converters, and it’s a pretty serious fine if you get caught.
Not if the inspection station ignores the ODBII/III tests and does a direct tailpipe test. They'll get caught pretty quickly. Some stations can do that, too. They think ODB is lying, they'll sniff your exhaust.
Can you get away with this long-term in most of the EU? In most (or all?) US states, you have to have some sort of historic vehicle or something to get it registered without a catalytic converter.
'The advert said: “The only MOT regulation regarding the DPF is a simple visual inspection. As long as the DPF still appears to be fitted, the vehicle will pass the MOT visual inspection. Therefore we only remove the internal core, leaving the outer casing in place. The vehicle will appear to have a DPF fitted and will appear unmodified.”'
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/dec/14/asa-bans...
But overall diesel has been a complete disaster and will take probably a decade minimum to undo. Complete tunnel vision focus on CO2 emissions at all costs which continues to plague environmental regulation IMO.
Not necessarily true--gas boilers can be up to 97% efficient, whereas CCGTs top out at the mid-60s. CCGTs can be more efficient as part of a district heating system.
One makes hot water (~100% efficiency based on LHV), the other makes electricity (~50% effciency). What's your point?
However, as CO2 was bad and diesels emitted less overall, diesel it was.
Result? Air quality in towns took a nosedive, and suddenly diesel cars were forbidden to drive in city centres on days with poor air quality. Much annoyance (naturally) ensued - first the public is being told (by diesels suddenly costing thousands of € less) to buy diesels; then they are being told that they cannot drive them.
I luckily live in a very rural area; otherwise I wouldn't have had the conscience to (nor need for) my daily driver - an old diesel Land Cruiser.
https://longtailpipe.com/2015/10/02/differences-in-us-and-eu...
In Europe most cars have been available in diesel or petrol versions for decades, and it's very rare to find somewhere that sells petrol but not diesel - not so much in the US, where other than in big rigs etc. diesel was only really found/available in pickups until recently, and diesel pumps can be rare.
The big appeal of diesel in Europe with their higher fuel costs is the better MPG - gas is cheap in the US so there isn't as much demand for vehicles with higher MPG
Other manufacturers 'pass' US diesel emissions, so it isn't impossible to comply with the laws
Complete bullshit. There isn't a single death certificate in the world that lists "NOx poisoning" as cause of death, unless it was an industrial accident.
These numbers come from assuming that some high dose of NOx will kill you, therefore 1% of that dose kills one in a hundred. So, at least for regulatory purposes to scare people, we can take a tiny dose, multiply it by a huge number of people, and get the number of deaths.
Apparently, this is true for any chemical, such as Paracetamol. 10g of Paracetamol are reasonably likely (about 50%?) to kill you. So if 100 people take 200mg each, one of them is going to die, right? Apparently, "30 million packs" are sold each year in the UK, each containing about 10g, and somebody swallows most of it. So every year, Paracetamol kills about 15 million people in the UK. Or maybe just 5 million, if some Paracetamol is flushed down the toilet. So it takes no more than 13 years, and there nobody left in the UK to be killed by NOx.
But the UK isn't devoid of people. That's because this whole logic is bullshit, and when applied to medicine, everybody knows it. When NOx concentrations of less than a ppm are involved, it suddenly makes sense.
Dear ICCT: If you feel the need to make up bullshit like this, you are tackling a non-problem.
(The study you linked to doesn't include NOx. REVIHAAP itself has more inapplicable stuff, such as one study that actually looked at proximity to roads, then noted that they can't tease apart the effects of NOx, ozone, soot, etc, then proceeded to make a claim about NOx specifically anyway.)
Are there any studies of emissions from vehicles in the second half of their useful life? Let's say the average car in the UK will have done about 120,000 miles by the time is it scrapped. I want to know what typical cars are like in the 60 to 120 thousand mile range of their life. I guess this is the dominant source of pollution on UK roads. If so, there'd be a case for more thorough testing of emissions in the MOT.
First rule of computer security: do not trust humans.
First rule of not trusting humans: computers lie when ordered to by computers, and cannot be trusted, and results should be checked as often and as completely as possible.
The problem with cars (in particular diesel ones) is that their pollution causes problems locally, too. That is less of an immediate concern if you're plying the Yokohama-US Pacific coast route.
And this fuel does not seem to loose attraction due to its price. "Worldwide bunker use in 2001 was estimated at 278 million tons, of which around 212 million tons were residual fuels. Between 2001 and 2020, total consumption grows at an average annual rate of 3.1% [...]" [1]
[1] https://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyPDF.cgi/P1001TZU.PDF?Dockey=P100...
In a perfect world, shipping would be emissions-free; however, it is not; the vast majority of the world's commercial shipping runs off heavy fuel oil.
Getting it to pollute less in the short term is IMHO better than holding out, waiting for zero emissions somewhere down the line.
When I see these cars getting floored and I see the dark grey/black smoke coming out I often wonder, this must be super healthy for all of us.
The health problem with NOx (as I understand it) is that it will react with oxygen producing ozone and therefore smog, if there is enough in the air.
If the US standards get much stricter there will have to be PM filters on gasoline cars too.
This is also part of the reasoning one of the Tesla founders used when they moved on to creating hybrid drivetrains for trucks with Wrightspeed.