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It is more than apparent that EPA and CARB are furious after getting caught doing the Sergeant Schulz. What made the Sergeant Schulz joke funny was he knew EXACTLY what was going on. However, in EPA/CARB cases, it was no joke (clueless). The fact that the EPA and CARB testing measured nothing, further shows that they were asleep at the wheel. From a consumers point of view, to pay for a test that measured nothing, ...fraud comes to mind .
I think CA has gone over the top in trying to be eco friendly. We have lots of alternative energy from Wind, Solar and Thermal. Yet we have the highest electric rates in the nation. So far the Solar explosion has cut some people's rates. But soon that will end. The Electric utilities need a certain amount to guarantee you electricity 24/7.
I can tell you that I always have plan "B" and "C" ready to go. And they all include some sort of diesel vehicle. the worst period was when I sold my Passat diesel and bought that stupid GMC hybrid PU truck. Never again will I go hybrid. EV maybe, diesel for sure.
Too eco-friendly? Is that like too rich and too thin?
VW news seems to have paused a bit. Guess everyone is waiting to see what the fix will be and we may know that by the end of next week. Or at least by the end of October.
And another test appears to shed some light on why Mazda hasn't gone diesel in the US yet.
It’s not just VW: Official tester claims four more diesel car giants break toxic emissions limit (dailymail.co.uk)
The other three were BMW, Ford and Mercedes.
"Last night, the researchers said the huge discrepancy between real-world diesel emissions and the legal limits set by the European Commission was ‘extremely concerning’ – and suggested that Volkswagen was not alone in finding ways to pass laboratory tests."
I am surprised that there has been a serious lack of comparisons with gasser compliance and tests/testing.
Again the AQMD results showed the utter bankruptcy of the notion that only diesel cars throw off N0x.
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/10/04/ford-we-didnt-cheat-like-volkswagen.aspx?source=eogyholnk0000001&utm_source=yahoo&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=article
Off-topic, one station had ULSD @ $5.30 US per gal in Paris, France. (1.40 per liter)
It's likely far deadlier and costlier in Europe, where more VW diesels were sold, engineers said.
Nitrogen oxides can travel hundreds of miles, so pollution spewed in Pittsburgh can be felt on the East Coast, Adams said."
AP Analysis: Dozens Of Deaths Likely From VW Pollution Dodge (AP.org)
"The part of the country that might have been most harmed by the Volkswagen fraud is California, which has the worst air quality in the nation" (Columbus Dispatch)
Being pretty far downwind helps me breathe a bit easier, except for all the coal rolling pickups and diesel pumps all over the valley watering the pecan groves.
"Volkswagen's promise to deliver a fix for its rigged diesel engine "in the next few days" refers to vehicles sold in Europe and other foreign markets, not the U.S., according to a company source.
But a company source, who spoke on condition of anonymity with TheDetroitBureau.com later in the day, said the promise only refers to VW diesels sold in Europe and some other foreign markets, not the U.S., where the fix will be more complicated.
The source said the retrofit in the U.S. is likely to require separate solutions for three different versions of the WA 189 diesel engine sold over the seven years since it was introduced, and may also require hardware changes in addition to altering the software."
VW's Promised Fix for Diesels Doesn't Apply to U.S. Vehicles: Source (NBC)
motorwayservicesonline.co.uk/Lancaster
Do you get that same feeling @ airports, where aircraft emissions controls are utterly lacking and jet fuel used in enormous quantities? Jet fuel is allowed far higher ppm sulfur than cars @ 15ppm, nominally delivered @ 5 to 10 ppm. Do you feel the same at US roadside rests? In my experience there are far more diesel trucks at roadside rests with little to old grandfathered emissions systems than cars? Lots of big rig drivers still do the old-school idling, when they really should shut it down. Cruise ships bunker oil is in and around 25,000 ppm sulfur. Needless to say bunker oil is between 833 to 5,000 x's worse than ULSD.
I have spent about five years in around and.under bombers,tankers, fighters, many other types of military aircraft with absolutely no bad lung effects. I have even been under fighters run at full military power.
So in theory, people that have worked around aircraft operations etc. should show much higher problem rates against people in the normal population. I wonder why there's never been any studies ?
Take a look at this page on Fuelly.
http://www.fuelly.com/car/volkswagen/passat/2015
I counted 18 TDIs and 2 vehicles that did not list their engine. The two without engines listed had mpgs of 42 & 42.6. Want to wager which engine they had? So where are all the RUG engines? They out sell the TDIs. Are these Passat owners ashamed of their cars? Or maybe they don't care about mpg as much as TDI owners or Prius owners…..
The EPA site only listed a handful of cars for the TDI & Altima (5 & 11). Not what I would call a good sample. Fuelly does have more samples, but, I would argue there are a lot of people there that are into mpg. Unless we can get complete data on city/highway percentages and other conditions we are not going to get a true average. It was also interesting to note of the people that listed their mpg on the EPA site the best number went to an Altima with 43 mpg while the best TDI was 41 mpg.
And as to the being a major cause of GW.. Ha ha ha. Climate change is the result of many things, some man made some natural. I try for a moderate carbon foot print. Before about a week ago I suspected significant temperature changes would not happen till after about 2050 and that I would have passed beyond the veil. Then I saw this posting. http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2015/09/warming-arctic-ocean-seafloor-threatens-to-cause-huge-methane-eruptions.html There is hope yet that I might see some significant temperature increases and maybe some sea level changes by 2030 and all the chaos that will ensue.
Also noticed that the new 2016 Chevy Volt has 294 pound-feet of torque. A whole bunch more than the 2.0L diseasel engines.
LA, SF, Silicon Valley, where it would fit the EV narrative? Almost totally useless. In our 56 miles R/T commute, we are 11% shy. Even that is optimistic. It's a no-brainer to say that in 28 miles taking anywhere from 40 minutes to two hours, the range would be far less than 50 miles per charge.
I've seen some communities where they have golf cart lanes. So you should petition your city to use golf carts, if all you do are short trips.
Tesla's can do sub 4 second 0 to 60 times. So what ?
Going forward, the 2016 VW TDI's are in compliance. 2003 VW Jetta TDI, 2012 VW Touareg TDI, 2014 MB GLK 250 BT are in compliance, to name a few.
Good post by the way, the article indicates what I've been saying: that the EPA, CARB and other agencies were totally asleep at the wheel ! They, of course were more PC about it .
So chicken little on !
"You have power, you have energy, you have emissions: You get to choose two of them," said Don Hillebrand, the director of energy systems research at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, and the former president of the Society for Automotive Engineers.
"After exhaust comes out of a gasoline engine, the air is actually cleaner than the background air in Chicago," Hillebrand said.
Diesel cars produce much more NOx than gasoline cars.
"The temperatures and pressures under which a diesel engine runs the most fuel efficient and the most peppy are also the conditions that will convert the maximum amount of oxygen and nitrogen into NOx," Herner told Live Science."
Volkswagen Scandal: Why Is It So Hard to Make Clean Diesel Cars? (livescience.com)
In a nutshell, gasoline is more refined, more uniform and thus easier to scrub than diesel. And that's why you can ignore gasser NOx emissions. Compared to diesels, there isn't any, and you don't need urea to get it that way.
More logically, you should have some kind of additional scrubbing system for the 97% gassers pvf ! Or perhaps the 97% plus is the issue.
Reminds me of one of Margaret Thatcher's saying: (the problem with socialism is ) "sooner or later you run out of other people's money"
Paradoxically, the very link that you posted (world emissions ranking) shows the narrative to be totally fubar. (WW2 technical term) Or is the very definition of Chicken Little.
The environmental [non-permissible content removed] narrative of : suv's, the world oil shortages, geo political instability, and less dependence on foreign oil has been totally discredited. They are so embarrassed on many to all issues, that they literally have to try to KILL the US FRACKER economy and the middle class jobs and industries they bring to markets! Way to go!?
Why do we want to throw the bums out, when those oppressed folks elect/re-elect the very ones doing the oppression, they rail against??( Even the Republicans get it.) The environmental [non-permissible content removed]'s advocate EV which is CODE for 59% plus coal and nuclear and a less than half of 1% wind & solar! ?
John Cougar Mellencamp was on the something with his song, "hurts so good ".
Would anybody care to guess, why in my enlightened CA municipality, they still ( decades later) will not allow me to put in a solar installation? Keep in mind that @ $35,000 for the installation, it makes no /ZERO economic sense . @ my current electrical billing usage and penalty rates, it will still take 27.5 years to break even. This does not count the permit fees and EIA ( environmental impact study- isn't that an oxymoron? ) that I would have to do. Another issue might be: why would anybody in their right mind want to own a 35-year-old solar system ?
I can't even make this stuff up!
Parts of the EU are at 50% diesel and they have real smog problems.
It's going to be easier and more economical to keep cleaning up the gasser fleet that continuing to push diesel tech.
In fact, making the PVF 97% plus gassers is one of the reasons we got in the trouble that we are in ?! Most people on this board STILL don't see why that 23% diesel cars will actually demand FAR less barrels of oil, not more than 97% plus gassers. However, it is apparent that has never been the EPA narrative! Burn MORE, while lip syncing LESS is the operative reality.
I would not mind if the diesels were banned for passenger cars. But then the EU was created to sell diesel cars from Germany to all over Europe
So if gassers are 97% plus of the passenger vehicle fleet, y'all have a lot of killing to do, don't you? Killing diesel will only put your problem ever closer to 100%!! ?
EV is defacto coal and nuclear. Just in case anyone is in denial, both are @ 59.5% . We all know how clean those are! ? Oh and we are@ less than one half of 1% wind/solar.
Ships, Rail locomotives, Agricultural vehicles, Semi-trucks, Long range buses, heavy trucks and construction and mining vehicles , heating oil , marine engines, power generating compressors.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/volkswagen-hold-extraordinary-board-meeting-164444135.html
Got to love all this gloom and doom ! I'm surprised Goodwin didn't mention chicken little! So when does western civilization, as we know it end?
FF to a short time after the fix. Higher diesel % sales, higher diesel % PVF & I will still be driving mine. Zzzzzzzzzzzzz
VW could not even buy a fraction of the (FREE) press it is getting from the VW fiasco, Goodwin law!! If they don't take FULL advantage of this, VW deseves to die !
"Engineers used software to pass emissions tests, salvage diesel engine project, reports say....
Bild am Sonntag reported that several engineers at VW have confessed to installing special software in 2008 to pass emissions tests. Ulrich Hackenberg, the suspended head of research and development at premium brand Audi, was still head of technical development at the VW brand at the time.
The decision to use defeat device software came as project engineers determined there was no way to meet both emissions standards and cost controls, a hurdle that threatened to bring the marquee engine project to a halt, Bild said.
The solution was a so-called defeat device that relied on software to disengage emissions controls when an auto wasn’t being tested, breaching emissions rules and prompting a raft of government investigations and lawsuits since the EPA cited the violations last month.
More executives
Volkswagen has also found more executives are involved in the scandal than previously acknowledged, a group bigger than just a few developers, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung reported, citing officials close to the supervisory board."
http://www.autonews.com/article/20151004/OEM11/151009927/vw-plans-special-board-meeting-wednesday-to-elect-poetsch-chairman
"Engine Shortfall Pushed Volkswagen to Evade Emissions Testing
By JACK EWINGOCT. 4, 2015
FRANKFURT — Volkswagen began installing software devised to cheat on emissions tests in 2008 after realizing that a new diesel engine, developed at great expense, could not meet pollution standards in the United States and other countries, people with knowledge of the automaker’s internal inquiry said on Sunday.
Rather than stop production of the engine and throw out years of work and investment, managers decided to cheat, the people said, confirming a report in Bild am Sonntag, a German newspaper. They did not want to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue.
It remained unclear who was responsible for the decision, which has created a crisis at the world’s largest automaker. The deception will force the company to undertake costly repairs on as many as 11 million affected vehicles and has tarnished Germany’s image as a bastion of engineering prowess.
In late September, Volkswagen suspended three top managers who played prominent roles in engine development, but the carmaker has not publicly disclosed the reasons for the suspensions.
“We are working intensively to clarify what occurred,” a company spokesman said in a statement. “Thoroughness comes before speed. We will provide information as soon as we have facts.”
Volkswagen is expected to disclose some of the findings from its internal inquiry this week. By showing that it is aggressively investigating what led to the fraud, the company may be seeking to limit further damage to its reputation and future car sales.
After interviewing engineers who participate in engine development, internal auditors have determined that the illegal software was installed beginning in 2008, according to the people familiar with the inquiry, which is still at a preliminary stage....."
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/05/business/engine-shortfall-pushed-volkswagen-to-evade-emissions-testing.html
http://www.wsj.com/articles/volkswagen-evaluating-emissions-scandals-impact-on-companys-finances-1443980626?mod=yahoo_hs
Speaking of the electrical power grids...MONOPOLY? Say it ain't so! Let's see .039 cents per kWh vs my penalty tier @ .37 cents per kWh is 9.5 times more expensive!!! Does anybody here want to remain cluesless on why the push to switch?
http://www.wsj.com/articles/vegas-casinos-fight-to-buy-their-own-electricity-1443999633
Volkswagen has plunged 50%. Will it ever recover? (CNN)
So, ya, lots of money, but GM and Toyota have mostly recovered from their recalls and BP came back from the Gulf spill and is still hanging on with low oil prices. VW has almost 600,000 employees worldwide and it's unlikely that any political unit will try to make them close shop (any more than the US did with GM and FCA). I suppose a Ch. 11 could be possible for the parent corporation (or whatever the EU equivalent is) if they run out of credit (like GM) but mostly they need a plan and someone who can execute. That's gonna be tough with their weird ownership.
Re utilities, better short them too. One battery breakthrough and they are toast. Most of them are going full-on to try to kill solar (including mine). They just don't know it's a losing battle. Any issue with the greens and Tea Party holding hands is bad news for Buffett and Duke Energy.
Perhaps I should not be surprised, but there's literally no outrage at the electricity costing 950% greater than wholesale??? Again, that is .039 cents versus $.37 per kwh!!!
So if a gallon of gas wholesale (RBob) is $1.39, 950 % puts gasoline @ $ 15.01 per gal.
And we whine like bratty children when the price of gasoline goes up 5 cents.
This is logical! ? (proposed in an earlier post)
http://news.yahoo.com/britain-says-vw-owners-not-face-higher-car-141226096--business.html
Re utilities, better short them too. One battery breakthrough and they are toast. Most of them are going full-on to try to kill solar (including mine). They just don't know it's a losing battle. Any issue with the greens and Tea Party holding hands is bad news for Buffett and Duke Energy.
The energy companies keep pushing the CA PUC to cut the amount they have to return to the solar panel owners. I would guess they will win some concessions soon. Of course the water companies are pushing everyone to use less water, and as soon as they did, an increase of 17% went into effect. Less water more money. And of course the water utility has an energy surcharge that continues up and up.
I could get together with the Green Tea Party as they are loosely called. Grass roots push back against the likes of Sempra, Duke, Buffett et al.
Debbie Dooley was one of the twenty-two organizers of the first nationwide Tea Party protest, in 2009. A preacher’s daughter from Louisiana, she is a co-founder of the Atlanta Tea Party, on the board of directors of the national Tea Party Patriots, and, since 2012, has been a fierce solar-power advocate.
Dooley had teamed up with the Sierra Club to form the Green Tea Coalition. Later, that coalition helped defeat an effort by Georgia Power to impose heavy fees on customers with rooftop solar systems.
http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/green-tea-party-solar
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV is seeking to lure customers away from Volkswagen AG with rebates of as much as 1,500 euros ($1,700) in Italy amid the German competitor’s woes over cheating on emissions tests.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-05/fiat-chrysler-offers-1-700-cash-for-volkswagen-clunkers
Car dealers stay away from VW diesel cars after emissions scandal
http://www.wsj.com/articles/kelley-blue-book-volkswagen-diesel-car-values-decline-13-1444147701
Either way, I guess I'll have to keep the 2009 Jetta TDI to 240,000 miles.
It is hard for me to imagine that they're going to ship back the TDI configured cars to the factory's to put in gasser powertrains.
And, I think there will be significant incentives on the TDI's going forward that will likely result in price parity with the TSI engines.
I leased a VW New Beetle in 1999 and kept it for a year or two after the lease was over. I got an email from that dealer this past weekend indicating that there is a $2000 incentive for current or past VW owners on any lease or purchase.
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2015 Subaru Outback 3.6R / 2024 Kia Sportage Hybrid SX Prestige
This is PURELY a guess. I think the way that we are forced to drive the 2009 Jetta TDI in daily commute traffic, that it mirrors total compliance! i.e., N0x footprint is essentially the same, as when the car is hooked up for testing.
If I were in the market, what Kia and Hyundai are doing seems pretty to very cool. However for me, without TDI options, even as good as they are, it would not be enough incentive. Basically the math on 12 years (@15k per)/180,000 miles stays the same.
They are just trying not to be the tallest midget, both figuratively and literally.
As you know, Honda lost a CA small claims court precedent-setting MPG case. It took a Fed override to pull Honda & the rest of the industry's' fat out of the fire.
So really it's totally insulting to the normal citizen/consumer to say that the Fed, State and locals dont or doesn't know. They do !
Essentially by suspending a citizens right to sue, they are/have defended somebody(auto industry) they know to be totally guilty !? Why? Because I think so? Hell no! They were found guilty in a court of law, albeit, small claims court.
Essentially an injured consumer cannot sue in small claims court for damages he/she/transgender actually incurred.