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Since the VW Diesel emissions fiasco has been so huge in German media during the last few days, I’d like to hear the perspective of an American from the industry on the topic. Have you even noticed it? VW has been caught cheating with the diesel emissions tests. Basically, the software in the ECU has some sort of way to recognize that the car is currently being emissions tested, and then adjusts the engine to a more emission friendly operating mode with less power and less NOx emissions, while during normal driving circles, it emitts much higher NOx gases and doesn’t conform to the required standards of certain states. So they stopped selling these vehicles now, that they are being prosecuted and can be expected quite a high fine (some say around 18 billion USD). The CEO of VW has just declard his resignation over this scandal.
Here’s the thing: In Europe, VW and other European car makers have “bought” themselves laws which allow them such cheating. So it’s normal that the car has much different (worse) values for fuel economy and emissions than what it’s being tested as. Heck, the car manufacturers are even allowed to provide the test data themselves! So they may have thought, if they can do it here, they can do it overseas as well. But they didn’t buy the according US laws (which they’d have to do separately in every state anyways), and so it was illegal.
However, it is said that this is quite common (at least it is over here in Europe). So if the EPA had tested other diesel cars without urea exhaust gas processing systems (called “AdBlue”), they may have found similar results as well. Unfortunately, the BMW and Mercedes they tested had AdBlue systems, so they did abide by the laws. But are there independent tests? Like, from some car society that isn’t connected with any automaker, nor with any government, so they can really test the hell out of things without having to fear any repercussions?
All this would make an interesting topic for an ETCG1 video, and I would really like to hear Eric’s opinion about the whole emissions (cheating) issue, and also how it is in general in the US.
But feel free to provide me with answers in this thread as well! 😉
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Hey Eric, here’s something you might find interesting to read on the topic:
http://www.theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/ICCT_NOx-control-tech_09032015.pdf
(Also attached to this post)
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