Dieselgate Product Of Vast VW-BMW-Daimler Car Cartel Conspiracy, Fresh Report Says

Apodemus

worried_jim wrote: »

It will all be resolved in just 23 years after today.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jul/25/britain-to-ban-sale-of-all-diesel-and-petrol-cars-and-vans-from-2040

Yes, but we should legislate for the outcome we want to achieve, rather than simply against a particular technology that is not currently meeting the standards that we wish.

In my view we should set an emission limit that applies across the board - that would incentivise finding the most economic way of achieving it. If diesel manufacturers can't achieve it, then diesels die out, but we should not rule out finding a means of making the existing technology meet the newer requirements.

ChopperST

GreatApe wrote: »

Diesel gate is BS. The harms are very likely extremely over stated. 70,000 deaths a year in the EU from diesel....yeh right when directly smoking tabaco into your lungs only kills 700,000 in the EU I am expected to believe diesel cars emitting lessor toxins at magnitudes lower concentrations is on the same order as tabaco smoking...

What should have happened was that a decade ago the euro manufacturers should have been honest and said to their regulators look its difficult to cut these pollutants down but their harms are manageable and the benefit to the consumer is greater than the harms. Don't push past Euro 4 or we will have to convert to petrol which will cost the continent much more in imported oil and consumers more in costs. The regulators and politicians would probably have said ok

The alternative would have been something like the regulators saying no and the EU fleet being more heavy petrol which would have cost maybe an additional 4 billion barrels of imported and burnt oil over the decade at a cost of maybe $200 billion in payments to the arabs and russia. Perhaps even worse than that as oil price is set on the margin. If without diesel oil demand would have been 1mbpd higher then not only would the EU have paid for 3-4 billion additional barrels but everyone in the world might have had to pay a few dollars more for their oil too.

few complicated topics can be fixed to one variable. less pollutants = good. Sure if you are 5 years old but what of the hundred other variables many of which = bad?

The environmental issues aside. Is it still not a huge corporate fraud selling customers a product worldwide they believe to be compliant when it is nothing of the sort? As news of the "fix" for these engines and the issues it is causing spreads (See Watchdog two weeks ago) owners of these vehicles will start to see it impossible to sell to the second hand market. What punishment has the UK government delivered for this? Absolutely nothing. In America people are in jail and customers are being compensated (I appreciate emission laws are the key difference here but still).

VAG / BMW and whoever else is involved should be allowed to go to the wall as a consequence of fines in the UK/EU and send the message to big business that cheating your customers is not right. Companies with a more ethical stand point such as Tesla will take their place.

LHW99

I realise all-electric vehicles is an aim, but from where we live it doesn't look a good option at the moment. Mains water or gas don't exist here yet, fast broadband is a fantasy and there is no public transport. No way we could home charge at night either as we already have to run storage heaters, so the fuse box wouldn't take the extra.
I personally hope that at least hybrid technology would be allowed beyond the 2040 cut-off.

GreatApe

ChopperST wrote: »

The environmental issues aside. Is it still not a huge corporate fraud selling customers a product worldwide they believe to be compliant when it is nothing of the sort? As news of the "fix" for these engines and the issues it is causing spreads (See Watchdog two weeks ago) owners of these vehicles will start to see it impossible to sell to the second hand market. What punishment has the UK government delivered for this? Absolutely nothing. In America people are in jail and customers are being compensated (I appreciate emission laws are the key difference here but still).

Out of the 2.5 million or so new cars sold each year in this country how many of the customers do you think give a !!!! about various pollutant concentrations? Maybe 1 in 10,000?

This event is a failure of regulation, of over regulation

Lets put it this way, lets pretend the regulators and car manufacturers have a time machine and they could go back 15 years and clear up this mess by dropping diesel so the EU fleet looks more like the american fleet which is almost all petrol. Do you think that would be wise? What would the negatives be? I have already highlighted one of the bigger negatives, the fact that some 5-6 billion barrels of additional oil would have been burnt in the EU at a cost of mabye $300 billion.

So you on your mighty high horse lets give this power to you, do you accept mild toxins at very low concentrations that dissipate and have low 'half lives' or do you prefer to lumber the EU consumer with $300 billion bill instead? That is your choice. And given those option the regulators and politicians would/should have just set the regulations more reasonably. A proper cost benefit analysis should be done while clearly the regulators use BS confirmation bias reports to attach onto pollutants costs that are magnitudes higher than reality.

ChopperST wrote: »

VAG / BMW and whoever else is involved should be allowed to go to the wall as a consequence of fines in the UK/EU and send the message to big business that cheating your customers is not right. Companies with a more ethical stand point such as Tesla will take their place.

Another great idea, lets destroy Europes 200 billion euro a year industry and hand it over to the Americans.

ChopperST

GreatApe wrote: »

Out of the 2.5 million or so new cars sold each year in this country how many of the customers do you think give a !!!! about various pollutant concentrations? Maybe 1 in 10,000?

This event is a failure of regulation, of over regulation

Lets put it this way, lets pretend the regulators and car manufacturers have a time machine and they could go back 15 years and clear up this mess by dropping diesel so the EU fleet looks more like the american fleet which is almost all petrol. Do you think that would be wise? What would the negatives be? I have already highlighted one of the bigger negatives, the fact that some 5-6 billion barrels of additional oil would have been burnt in the EU at a cost of mabye $300 billion.

So you on your mighty high horse lets give this power to you, do you accept mild toxins at very low concentrations that dissipate and have low 'half lives' or do you prefer to lumber the EU consumer with $300 billion bill instead? That is your choice. And given those option the regulators and politicians would/should have just set the regulations more reasonably. A proper cost benefit analysis should be done while clearly the regulators use BS confirmation bias reports to attach onto pollutants costs that are magnitudes higher than reality.





Another great idea, lets destroy Europes 200 billion euro a year industry and hand it over to the Americans.

No need to posture your posts so aggressively its a discussion forum at the end of the day.

Totally agree the vast majority of consumers don't care. However there is an assumption at the point of purpose that product complies with all necessary legislation which for years they did not.

With regards handing the auto industry over to the Americans. VAG as one of the world's leading auto companies have had a huge opportunity to electrify transport and they have intentionally avoided doing so purely based on profit margins (wanting people to pay for expensive servicing of ICE vehicles etc.) they have had a huge opportunity to be a market leader here and missed the boat massively. A well built EV is superior in practically every way to a ICE vehicle for the vast majority of people. For the reasons you highlight we need to shift away from big oil, this won't happen overnight but it shouldn't stop us trying should it?

This is my city - http://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/news/leeds-named-hotspot-for-air-pollution-deaths-as-epidemic-costs-local-nhs-480m-1-7698344

Should we not do something about the local pollution?

With respect to the argument of increased oil use, modern small engine turbo petrol cars are more fuel efficient than 2 litre TDIs so I don't think the argument really stacks up. The transition to electrification will involve a petrol, hybrid and electric mix.

To be honest I think VW have destroyed their own business without the help of Tesla. I don't think they will fail as they are too big to do so but we will see a big player in the auto industry go to the wall due to the inertia to see the writing on the wall for the combustion engine.

GreatApe

The EU will protect its car industry it employs too many people to let it go. Even if that means making EVs illegal or uneconomic in some way.

EVs so far are not that green. An additional load on the grid uses marginal power station capacity. So even if a grid is green, like the UK with part nuclear part solar part wind the actual charging is gas or coal which emit pollutants too. While the grid is greening it is still coal and gas heavy. Especially if the UK does not replace its nukes and retires them in the 2020s as Germany is doing with its own nukes.

While I believe EVs will win out, in the short term there are no compelling EVs at mass market prices. Specifically I'm thinking of the sub £15k market. A Tesla model 3 might well cost £40-45k in the UK

One way around the Hugh cost is to utilise the vehicles for many more miles so self drive is the key technology. With self drive the capital cost of a car is not the important metric the capital cost per mile is and if an EV can be made to do 500,000 miles over 5 years as a robo taxi then a high price of £50,000 for the car can be justified. £50k for a human car used 6,000 miles a year and scrapped in ten years can't be justified in economic ground only the very rich can afford that.