He deserved an award, not to be sent "home" after 17 - seventeen - years in the US.
Dieselgate wasn't about particulates, and unlike petrol cars every diesel car of the last 10-15 years has a particulate filter...
Now petrol cars are getting particulate filters too, because new emission standards (e.g. Euro 6c) include particulate restrictions for petrol engines, which they didn't previously have, and direct injection engines utterly exceed those restrictions.
That being said DPF issues seem to mostly impact people who only use the car for short distances; I've lived with DPF diesel cars for ~10 years and no issues. That being said any ICE powered vehicle is completely unsuited for travelling short distances, not just from an ecology point of view. Some more than others, though, it seems.
For general driving I find it easier to drive a diesel for low consumption compared to petrol. I also like how diesels tend to have nice long gearing, leading to low RPMs and less noise. Pick-up from low RPMs is also quite nice, a diesel has no issues to start accelerating from, say, 1200 rpm (with practically all constant speed driving falling between 1000 and ~1600ish rpm for me, to see more you'll need the Autobahn).
For petrolhead(?) purposes I have to say that diesel tend to sound like a loose bag of bolts when you rev them (which you normally won't do), obviously it's not going to sound like a race car. In that regard tiny (1 liter, 1.2 liter) non-DI, non-turbo petrol engines tend to surprise... :) though at least some of these are way worse at fuel efficiency than you'd expect.
It's not 1970 anymore. Those cats are right behind the exhaust manifold for a reason and that reason isn't to save money on piping.
Not true here in the UK - I buy and sell secondhand cars of this vintage as a side job, and not all the diesels I've seen have DPFs (I'd say it was 50% have them) - lots of models didn't have them, including quite a few vans (which pollute more due to bigger engines, lower mpg, etc). And anyone who's bought anything of this age range also knows that the DPFs are a reliability nightmare. Lots of people removed them (which is now at least tested on the MOT, although it's possible to remove it in a way that is not detected by an MOT test).
But most importantly, although dieselgate wasn't about particulates, it still means getting diesels off the road, which is a good thing. If particulates had been accurately measured in vehicles after a few years, I'm sure many more would be off the road, particularly 1st gen DPF cars.
The problem is that most people now equate a vehicle with a DPF as being a nightmare, and then by association don't care about the effect on the environment as the effect on their wallet is a more pressing need. Much the same as EGR valves, which are a reliability issue on most vehicles regardless of fuel. People block them off, leading to increased NOx pollution and better fuel consumption, and when it can cost hundreds of pounds to get it replaced (if it has to be calibrated to the ECU, etc, often a main dealer trip is involved), it's not surprising that this happens.
The sooner we can all go electric, the better, IMO. And I say that as someone who has considerable skill and experience in repairing and maintaining ICE cars.
Yet just yesterday, in “ultra low emission zone” Central London, I saw a Ford diesel van with a 16 plate (meaning, it’s a late-2015 Model at the earliest) spewing a cloud of black soot every time it pulled away at an intersection.
It’s clear that there are still too many DPF removals going on, and lax controls about monitoring emissions from supposedly-compliant vehicles.
(Motorcycles are another huge issue. They may be compliant with noise and emissions regs at the factory gate, but too many people swap the exhaust for a loud, polluting, illegal one.)
Then let's see how popular the practice would remain.
Diesel cars should have a mandatory pre sale environmental inspection to root out buyers getting stuck in the 2nd hand market.
I feel like you might get a wee bit of pushback on the idea of crushing people's modes of transport because they stuck a non-regulation exhaust on there. All-or-nothing regulations such as the one you propose are rarely sustainable. Even CARB (the California Air Resources Board), the bane of California automotive enthusiasts, isn't that draconian.
Furthermore making it strictly illegal to perform the work would assist.
Also, in the US the 8th amendment prohibits excessive fines. It is likely that courts will look on crushing a nearly new car as an excessive fine.
Of course, because executing people when they have the tiniest amount of drugs on them has also worked so well across the world rolls eyes
Where is gets interesting is when they take a hard-line stance on some things but not on others. Like you get a slap on the wrist for theft from another commoner but if you're caught stealing fish from the lord's stream without the proper license you're strung up by your thumbs in some castle dungeon for a month.
This is England we're talking about. American respect for individuals and their private property does not apply and Europe tends to come down hard at anyone that dares thumb their nose at authority by intentionally breaking the law.
From what I personally observed on my EU6 Diesel (a very common VAG 2 litre diesel... sadly ?) that, the net effect of that comes out as approx 50-100 mile reduction in the range. The reason being more fuel being used to up keep the DPF.
In summer (June till October) I observed about 600 mile range from a full tank. Between November and up until February I observed 500 mile from a full tank (between 62 to 64 litres)
I was alarmed by the difference and then tried the "Economy" mode. I guess it detunes the peak output to 150ps (from 190ps) and also disengages the engine from the gearbox i.e. the car seems to be coasting in neutral when the accelerator pedal is not pressed.
With that, I was able to get 550 miles from a tank so far and recently the weather has warmed up again and the on board computer shows a potential range of about 600 miles.
I do make sure to never drive with a heavy foot and even on motor way try to stick below 70mph limit as long as it is safe. However, most of the miles done in that car are strictly urban (max speed not exceeding 50mph)
The cost of ownership of electric car didn't quite work out for us as a family when we downsized from two cars to just the one (keeping in mind the cost of public transport in UK)
I still somehow think that Diesel is the lesser evil compared to Petrol. It has (hopefully) lower CO2 emission. The problem is NOx which is (hopefully) neutralised by SCR and Particulate which is neutralised by DPF. And you need to burn less of it over the same distance.
But sadly it is hard to conclude what's what when the governments and industry keep showing different facets of their relationship every half a decade or so.
In the Economy mode, the ECU decides to shift into 5th gear at about 31mph and then I let the car coast.
I would think 2k at 160kph is where this engine would be too if ever I drove at that speed. 99% of the times the max I have done is about 110kph where it is in 7th gear at under 2k rpm (having read about the engine and the owner's manual, that 7th gear is out of power band and is effectively overdrive, not possible to accelerate in 7th even gently)
https://www.avontuning.co.uk/services/dpf-removal-delete
Proudly professing their removal service, and with a caveat at the end to say that it makes the vehicle illegal for road use and is for off-road use only.
I don't think it should be allowed, personally, but I'm sure there are libertarians who think they have a right to pollute...
no proof, just a statement though, but the same phrasing is seen all around the net, even on the DPF wikipedia page (without source though)
A whistleblower has demonstrated that there are circumstances where they will short-circuit the chain of command and attempt to attract external intervention. The only way a corporate hierarchy can react to such a person is to see them as a risk to be managed; ideally by not hiring them. Large scale corporations have hiring processes with all sorts of weird informal risk-mitigation measures built in (which is usually expressed as discrimination on weird traits).
So people with that sort of whistle-blowing initiative who want to be employable need to build a strong informal network of people who will hire them because they think they understand what circumstances would trigger that behavior and that they are not present in the hiring corporation.
-- Some CEO probably.
It's about using a convenient 4,000 layoff to get rid of them too.
(Or worse, not even that, but just blindly getting rid of them, with no particular consideration).
They should be celebrated and/or promoted, not included in lay off lists...
He wasn't working for VW when he helped discover VW's fraud. He was working for a non-profit!
I'm not sure other companies would jump to hire him, that's not how capitalism works...
https://www.whistleblowersinternational.com/what-is-whistleb...
No way in hell that he is getting hired in that industry.. and even if he is - no way that he'll have any kind of access to incriminating information.
So you're saying that no one in the auto industry is ethical, and that they deliberately hire unethical people? Out of the millions of employees across the country and globe? Deplorables, all of them?
That's rich. Silicon Valley is hypocritical and out-of-touch.
If your company is so ethically bankrupt that you can't afford the risk of someone who would only reveal things that are of critical importance to the public, then maybe you aren't the "good guys" anymore.
The thing is -- everyone has something to hide, which is why that adage is wrong. But not everyone is hiding a scheme they've cooked up to flaunt laws (and lied to regulators for years when they came knocking) which resulted in tangible deaths as a result. If you are worried that you have a scheme like that on your books, then yeah you should avoid hiring whistle-blowers.
His career has taken an ironic downtown, ironic enough to land him as the centerpiece in a NY Times article. That will certainly help his profile.
Exactly.
Fortunately, a great many companies are not hiring him, so it’s not like not hiring him will expose that we’re doing tons of illegal stuff.