Vehicle makers say US fuel economy standards put a million jobs at risk

[freebeard]

Government regulation is not the appropriate tool to alter the perceptions of the car-buying public.

If electric cars were sold as 'not stinky' 'not smelly' and 'not noisy', that would do more good.

Here's a Jalopnik article on unintended consequences:

Volkswagen TDIs Could Be Future Classics

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Actually I'd expect the new managers of EPA to take a less stringent approach on the Volkswagen emissions scandal.

[oil pan 4]

Let's hope so.
Come on so NOX is a tiny bit over the limit but it gets over 40mpg no matter how you drive it or how hard you beat on it.
OK if you are pulling a trailer in sub zero temperatures it might get under 40.

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

Come on so NOX is a tiny bit over the limit but it gets over 40mpg no matter how you drive it or how hard you beat on it.
OK if you are pulling a trailer in sub zero temperatures it might get under 40.

Another aspect that I usually point out when it comes to Diesel is the adaptability to alternate fuels, that can decrease not only the overall emissions but also the dependence on oil supplied from war-torn areas and 3rd-world dictatorships that hold a hostile stance toward America.

[RedDevil]

Current concerns over here are not so much with NOx but tiny particulates.
Those have been found to be more damaging to health than we thought.
That, plus the automakers test cycle emission spoofing to get the levels within legal range while in normal use they go way over, even more than 5 times the limit.

Tiny particulate emission is far worse on direct injection engines (both diesel and gas). The old 'smelly' diesels had an abundance of larger particles, but as it turns out those are less damaging than our modern engines.

[Lemmy]

The EU imposed emissions testing is a joke.

A recent study in London showed that normal diesel passenger cars used in the live environment were emitting more crap than the EU lab figures for buses. Thanks EU.

We were sold a pup with the financial inducements to go diesel (fortunately I never did, don't do sufficient mileage to make it pay), further compounded by a testing regime that bears no relation whatsoever to actual emissions performance.

And then they're are the likes of VW Group. Throughout their history they've proven they're liars, with lower morals than Charles Manson, and Muppets are still queuing up to buy their products.

With the state of politics and the behaviour of manufacturers I can see no easy way out, at least in Europe.

[freebeard]

Throughout their history? This impugns the character of, at the very least Major Ivan Hirst.

But, yeah; the guy that decided to go water-cooled [to suck up to bureaucrats] was all that.

[Lemmy]

The Good Major was ok, as far as I'm aware.

During the war they were involved in war crimes involving forced labour. They then lied about it for 50 years, only finally coming clean in the Nineties when so many of the survivors had eventually succumbed to old age, it had thus reduced their compensation bill to a minimum.

https://www.thenation.com/article/vo...-blood-crimes/

Volkswagen's Wartime Travesty - CBS News

Snopczyk versus Volkswagen AG, Newark, New Jersey, USA.

And reports of their grudging, indirect admission...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/19.../06/iantraynor

OK, it was war, the Nazi's were a bad lot, and bad things happened. Had VW's management given an early and sincere apology then fair enough, but they've continued to acknowledge it publicly right up to modern times, indicating that they've learned little and place their public commercial image above their moral obligations.

Then they get caught defrauding governments and the buying public over emissions, a fraud which will have contributed to countless unknown deaths through air pollution illness. What did we expect from an organisation founded by the Nazi party?

[freebeard]

[checks to make sure we're in The Lounge]

Yeah all those things happened; except 1999 isn't 'right up to modern times'

I'd have gone with stiffing Ledwinka and not sciencing the **** out of the emissions regulations. We'd have been running sintered ceramic engine cases and water/ethanol 'go juice' since then.

[Lemmy]

1999 is modern times. Many of us are still driving cars made before that year.

Of the 14 board members, 5 were in the role in 1999. This means people in positions of power and authority within the company today were at the helm when the lies and evasions of the past were spoken, all in the cause of protecting the firms image.

And those same people were in positions of power and authority while they lied about emissions, a deadly lie that will have resulted in human beings losing their lives. That only came to light in 2015, which is indisputably modern times.

To bring things back to topic and keep it relevant, without intense scrutiny and regulation car manufacturers can not be trusted to do what is right for society, humanity, or the planet. The will cheat, deceive and lie in order to reduce expenditure (be it on compensation or developing cleaner, more economical technologies) and thus protect profit margins. When manufacturer whine about jobs being at risk they should be very firmly reminded by governments that the economy, lives and then planet take precedence and in any case, they're full of scaremongering s***.

I pick on VW simply because they're a superb example of a firm with a history of peddling lies and taking the lives of human beings through such behaviour, therefore why should we listen when they make such claims? Yet fools still queue around the block to give them money in exchange for their products.