Also I saw an interesting point in an article about the koenigsegg thing that would pertain to this too; environmental laws would be much harder to practically enforce with this as you could run virtually any engine anemic enough to get though the emissions tests (and set it as the default mode to get around the Volkswagen nonsense) and then offer high/sport/cruise modes that runs the engine at full capacity otherwise
Only if your company is ready to willfully break the law.
The vehicle ought to, at the time of testing, meet or exceed all relevant standards, and not have a user accessible option to circumvent the standards.
Thankfully, automakers have quite and uphill battle to actually make something secure and inaccessible, so I feel confident a solution would be found :)
[1]”Chipping” used to enclose physically replacing a car’s ECU but now it usually just means the control software has been chnaged digitally. [2]Unfortunately, some awful people will and do “roll coal” to purposefully increase emissions and smoke. It’s illegal in many places but difficult to enforce.
[3]Your car still has to pass emissions and sometimes people do bring the ECU back to stock firmware before annual inspections just to pass. Difficult to enforce but tuning usually sacrifices fuel economy for performance and its not simple to do. Most people who just want a grocery-getter won’t be trying it.
The car itself must keep track of how much Nox it has produced and how many miles it's driven. The ratio must stay below some legal limit (or you pay an extra pollution tax to go over it)
That's why all dishwashers have a mode which takes 4 hours and does a lousy job. It's the mode that only uses 3 drips of water and a sip of electricity.
I've never had a problem with our one with it's 2.5hr eco mode, when running overnight (which is 90% of our loads). If we need a quick load during the day, we'll use the 40min cycle. Either way the wash quality seems the same.
I would put eco mode as 'passable', but you have to remember to scrape off the plates well beforehand, rince especially gungy stuff (like porridge), and to probably do a bit of hand drying of items afterwards.
One the other hand, the 'intensive' mode only uses 50% more electricity, takes a quarter of the time, leaves the plates clean and dry every time, and uses a hotter wash temperature which I suspect is better at killing pathogens, and doesn't need any pre-rinsing or plate scraping beforehand. It's a no-brainer in my mind.
lol
Changing a cam (or cams) in most engines isn't all that difficult. Even without a camshaft you'll still be heavily limited by the shape and size of the combustion chamber and the geometry of the valves. You simply won't be neutering the engine that much.
That's overstating the case quite a bit. There are plenty of engines where you don't need special tools.
> I'm sure it's a lot more complicated on a modern car.
Wait. You were talking about older engines? Then, no. You're absolutely wrong. Swapping out cams on most older engines is a piece of cake. Pretty much anything without variable valve timing will be super duper easy. Pushrod motors are especially easy. There are some exceptions, of course, like the DeLorean's V6 (the cams slide out of the head so you generally won't have room to pull them out without pulling the head).