Falsifying emissions

[DaveW]

When the diesel emissions falsification came up I wondered how many other manufacturers are doing it, plus how many modern petrol/gas cars also have fuel injection and similar Engine Control Units (ECU's) whose software can also be tweaked to produce false emissions data? Therefore who is examining these, or are diesels being uses as a smokescreen to not investigate manufacturers petrol/gas powered cars? Not just cars either, but also trucks and busses.

"A US investigation has been widened to other car manufacturers as campaigners warned that the practice was likely to be widespread across the industry."

"So far the scandal has only affected diesel cars, but campaigners warned it was likely that manufacturers were also cheating on carbon dioxide emissions from petrol vehicles. Former government advisor Greg Archer, of the Transport & Environment think tank, said: “It is probably not limited to diesel and not limited to emissions. There has been a lot of anecdotal evidence about carmakers using these defeat devices.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ ... -risk.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engine_control_unit" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The chief of Volkswagen's head has fallen over the matter, but you can bet the heads of all the regulators around the world who are supposed to be picking such cheating up will still keep their jobs since public servants are seldom sacked for incompetence. It took a Non Governmental Organisation (NGO) simply running the cars around the streets with an exhaust emissions analyser on to find it, no expensive government laboratories with rolling roads needed, just on street driving measuring the actual emissions:-

"An NGO, the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), performed independent – and crucially on-road – emissions tests, on the VW Passat, the VW Jetta, and a BMW X5. These tests followed five routes on similar lines to the EPA simulations: highway, urban, suburban and rural up/downhill driving. The emissions performance of the Volkswagen, but not the BMW, cars was so much worse than expectations that the ICCT ran further tests on a dynamometer. In these circumstances, the cars passed with flying colours. It was at this point that the ICCT contacted the EPA."

Surely that's the real world way all cars should be being tested by the regulators in future, both diesel and gas/petrol to record their emissions, no rolling roads needed? I would not be surprised if many gas/petrol vehicles are found equally polluting if this method of inspection were used.

[jmoney]

It's kind of funny that I was recently thinking about this as well. I am sure that Volkswagen is not alone and that there are other companies probably do this as well.

[DaveW]

I wonder if anybody has checked the emissions on this one?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-34341017" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[cortez753]

It's not hard to tune cars the way you want them to run. If you need to pass emissions take the tuned chip out, put the stock one in, pass emissions put the tune chip back in. Many shops offer this as a service. Emissions is a joke.

[DaveW]

Yes the buyer can always get the ECU firmware modified as quite a few firms offer to do this. I think the authorities are more concerned about new cars from the manufacturer since most drivers do not bother modifying or tuning their vehicles these days as everything is controlled by "black boxes".

Personally I think the authorities should be testing all cars, not just diesels, since the firmware used on gas/petrol vehicles is just as capable of being tweaked by manufacturers to provide false emissions readings. Good to see the authorities have at last got off their backsides and moved out of the laboratory and their rolling roads and are going to test cars under actual driving conditions.

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/us-te ... 27052.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

As cars age it seems petrol/gas fuelled cars usually do worse than diesels in emissions tests, at least in the UK (in the following link MOT = Ministry of Transport Test, something all cars over 3 years old have to take each year in the UK)

https://www.leasingoptions.co.uk/news/m ... esels/4327" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Interestingly one way to reduce emissions is:-

"Cleaner Petrol and Diesel

A method of pollution reduction currently being utilised involves the use of cleaner petrol and diesel. It is cheaper to improve conventional fuels than to use many of the alternatives and no investment is needed for new storage tanks and service stations. Ultra low sulphur petrol is now widely available in the UK."

"City Diesel

City diesel is a petroleum based lower emission diesel developed in Sweden but now available in many European Countries including the UK. Exhaust emissions from vehicles fuelled with city diesel compare favourably with exhaust emissions from equivalent vehicles fuelled with conventional diesel. The main benefit of city diesel is that its combustion reduces particulate emissions by 34 - 84% depending on engine type, duty cycle, test basis and type of particulate measured. An additional benefit of city diesel is that it is a low sulphur fuel, which is necessary for the optimum running of oxidation catalytic converters."

http://www.air-quality.org.uk/26.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[DaveW]

BEFORE.jpg (24.15 KiB) Viewed 2619 times

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/vw-emissions-s ... ed-1520698" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34377443" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

"There are ways to make such cheating harder in future, and they should be made standard forthwith. From 2017, European regulators will require cars to be tested on the road as well as in the laboratory. Currently, the software used by American carmakers is protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, so researchers and testers cannot access it. Had they been able to, the scam might have been spotted sooner."

[DaveW]

Everybody's doing it now?

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/ ... -real-life" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

"Televisions typically consume up to 10% of a typical household’s electricity use, according to coolproducts, a coalition of NGOs which campaigns for energy-saving product designs. The group says that across Europe, TVs now account for as much energy use as the combined electricity consumption of Sweden and Portugal, and that this figure is growing."

[DaveW]

http://consultev.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06 ... -cars.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.whale.to/b/simons.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34425306" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;