Cummins pickup truck engines tricked air quality controls, feds say

The fundamental problem with all the emissions testing is the gap between "as it's supposed to be done" and "as it's actually done." The people actually doing the work tend to be, more or less by definition, "car people." And they reasonably enough tend to avoid the more "engine abuse" ends of the test spectrum when they can do so - which does reduce the effectiveness of the tests in some cases.

For older diesels (my '97 7.3 Powerstroke, for instance), the "snap test" is supposed to involve flooring the throttle and letting the engine bounce off the rev limiter, while the sniffer sees how much smoke you emit (with a comically high pass limit - something like 40% opacity, which is really "a very dark exhaust plume"). The one and only time my engine has seen the rev limiter in my car was when I emissions tested it shortly after buying it, and did the procedure as written. Every other time I've tested it, someone else has run the test, and they'll bring the engine up quickly (but not floored) into the test RPM range, which doesn't involve going to redline - think 1800-2000 RPM instead of 3500 RPM. They way they do it, you pretty much can't fail if you drove the truck there, unless you've got a check engine light glowing or obviously missing emissions control equipment (no bulge in the exhaust pipe where the cat should be).

Because the people doing the test, very reasonably, don't want to be responsible for older engines throwing rods out the side of the block, and there is zero reason to have a lot of the older diesels at redline, no matter what you're doing (I'll let the engine spin to 3k when I'm pulling a heavy trailer up a long grade, otherwise I never even see 2500 RPM).

And there's also the various "ways around the test." A friend who used to have a rather fun to drive car noted that his sniff tests always resulted in the emissions profile of his mechanic's very clean, stock, Honda Civic.

There's only so much you can do, unfortunately, when people are motivated to go around the edges of the system. And I'm not sure "clamping down massively" accomplishes much at this point.

I though it was when the car is on a dyno only the drive wheels turn while the other 2 are stationary.

I guess the EPAs awards aren’t that great.

I wonder if they also run cars sloppy when it detects something that resembles a drive-cycle for fuel economy testing. e.g. Stop charging battery. Limit A/C or turn on mild heat to reduce radfan load. Limit power steering force. Dim lights 10%. Limit acceleration (gotta be a big one).

Probably enough data out there to identify offenders by comparing real world fuel economy data to official fuel economy.

"A $327.5 million settlement has been reached with Bosch, the supplier of the emissions software that was installed in some 2.0-liter and 3.0-liter Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche diesel vehicles. The Bosch Settlement follows similar settlements with Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche (called the “2.0-liter Settlement” and the “3.0-liter Settlement”, or together, the “VW Settlements”)."

As long as it's out of sight it's okay.

It's easy to produce a lot of power, it's not easy to do so reliably and within emissions specs. That's where the cost comes in, and where customer expectations come in. If VW is going to be offering a 110 kW 2.0 liter engine, well, Mercedes-Benz can't come in and offer a 90 kW 2.0 liter engine just to meet specs. At the end of the day, margins are fairly thin and regulators are compliant. It's cheaper to just cheat the emissions than make the engine meet emissions specs.

The convenience factor is diesel exhaust fluid (AdBlue); the stuff really does work very well. However, dispensing it at the most effective rate in regards to emissions would mean it has to be topped up between service intervals; very inconvenient. Increasing the tank size is a non-starter because packaging space in modern vehicles is at a premium. So the dirty secret (at least for Mercedes-Benz, confirmed by one of their engineers) is that they calibrate it to last service intervals; not to meet emissions. It's only in rare cases where the owner has to refill the tank themselves.

In regards to the AdBlue situation, if you're in Europe where there are a lot of diesel passenger vehicles and also a lot of diesel trucks and buses, next time you're in the city or on the highway, pay attention to the characteristic diesel stink, either as a pedestrian or a driver. You're never going to smell it from a truck; it'll always be a passenger vehicle. :)

"Hold up, I need to get a large soda--the urea tank is getting low."

Renewable energy sources also have their own impacts on the environment - the mining for raw materials, the cement production used for wind turbines (look up the amount of concrete per MW nameplate - it's quite staggering), etc. One may reasonably argue that these are less important impacts than CO2 emissions, and make one's arguments (I think quite reasonably so), but to round all these to zero for renewables is dishonest, at best. The same goes for the amount of mining required for the raw uranium to be refined into nuclear fuel - quite a bit of earth has to be extracted and processed to get the fuel quantity. Again, I think it's lower impact than fossil fuels, but it's certainly not zero - by quite a large amount. Is "Filling a mountain valley with acidic mine tailings" an "environmental impact"? I'd argue yes, though plenty of people seem to not care, as long as it puts less CO2 on the air. Hence my observation that a lot of people are laser-focused on "CO2 emissions only."

As far as mining goes, EVs require a rather substantially different mix of raw materials than ICEs - so "pounds of earth removed per pound of car" are going to be substantially different. Again, you can argue (and people have, fairly reasonably) that this is a tradeoff worth making, but you can't pretend that "Because the cars weigh about the same, they have the same production impact," when one has a thousand pounds of lithium ion battery pack.

My opinion is that LiFePO4 based PHEVs are the current optimum, but I'm aware I'm in a minority there.