DaveinOlyWA said:
Are you trying to make this defensible? WOW!! just WOW!
My take? VW is done, who's next?
hmmm? not sure I have heard "that" excuse and there were many. I think the biggest issue was providing more power to the engines and that was the cause of the excess pollution.
Well, you made a decision on somebody else's prosecution without even knowing what did they do wrong. Shame.
For those who are interested, long story no-so-short:
NOx can be either stopped by A - Lean NOx Trap or B - Selective Catalyst Reduction; LNT, SCR
VW chose A as it is cheaper and it can give good results when driven very carefully (aka emission testing procedure).
This doesn't work in real life well enough to get to latest NOx limit. It just doesn't. Plus making it work (when tested on rollers)
actually requires extra fuel to be burned in exhaust pipe - total waste of fuel and additional pollution (all pollutants except NOx).
So official fuel economy ratings (EPA city, highway, combined) are actually way worse than in real life driving, as no extra fuel is burned.
To reach latest NOx limits, MORE fuel must be burned if NOx treated by A. As ALL MANUFACTURERS are around 700% above
NOx limit in real life anyway, VW though that they won't bother burning any extra fuel and let rather less CO2, PM, CO out than
reduce NOx by adding lots of other pollutants. Which, actually, is reasonable. "Fix" to those vehicles can be done this way:
a) reduce maximum power and b) burn lots of extra fuel (NOx appears when very little fuel is used by engine, more you use, less NOx).
Why I like whan VW did is because NOx limit is just made up. It's just a number on the paper. And in this case, a mistake was made.
Whoever made/calculated that number didn't know unreasonable limit was introduced years ago. Unreasonable as in "how much
hidden pollution will happen if it will be applied".
Just stating difference in EU and in US.
EU -
0.5 in 2000,
0.25 in 2005, 0.18 in 2009, 0,08 in 2014 - as we see, gradual reduction over the years
US -
0.25 in 1994,
0.03 in 2004,
0.04 in 2017 - we see massive step and then 25% retreat in 2017.
In addition to that mistake introduced in 2004, testing procedure itself is nonsense. Actual pollution in real life is, on average,
7x more than these numbers state. And all others get away with it. Not VW due to "cheat software", which main mission in real
life was to stop burning extra fuel to get NOx level down to 7x above legal limit (like all others) as it is useless. It's better to burn
less fuel (therefore less fuel made, less fuel transported by truck to station) rather than try to reduce NOx. If I knew (and every
car manufacturer actually knows that) that EVERY diesel on the road is exceeding NOx limit by 700%, I would also write a code
that would stop burning fuel for fun. It's like shooting a horse with broken legs - it's better this way even though it seems cruel.
What actually happened is just pure absurd. In terms of Hippocratic oath "First, do no harm". Actually more harm was made.
Totally fine vehicles were scrapped. This is very very bad in terms of the whole "environmental game". Which is the second proof
that whole story was not about environment. First one was incorrect NOx limit (as in "do no harm", which it does).
Third proof is the fact that real emissions (compared to limits) are
still way more than the limit allows. Therefore limit is more
like a "reference" rather than actual limit. Funny part is that somebody actually went to jail for breaking the limit "too much".
Fun fact: did you know emission limits are being rolled back to more relaxed numbers soon due to new real driving measuring
procedures and that current limits are mostly not achievable by manufacturers.
https://www.autovistagroup.com/news-and-insights/just-15-euro-6-diesels-pass-real-world-emissions-tests