VW Emissions Scandal

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I guess the point is where  and how will the electricity be produced ? And the impact of producing electricity for a greater number of vehicles.  Can sustainable development keep pace with the population growth and consumption rates?

Why? Because electric cars are already awesome (and getting better) and their ongoing penetration in the market neatly fits with the move to renewable sources for electricity. It is the beginning of the revolution. In 10 years, non-electric cars will start to appear out-dated. It's not the whole answer, of course. Just another piece.

To reduce the environmental impact of transportation, we also need to live locally and travel less. The sprawl of our cities is the true environmental vandal. Oh, and ease back on the whole breeding thing. A lot.

Get the electric car sooner, and re-assess your life-choices that require you to drive such long distances. A Tesla Model S easily does 400km and can do over 600km between charges.

I saw today two answers to the problem, the first one was electric 

The other answer at the IAA in Frankfurt was a bit extreme...

Hmm?  I'm not sure.  What I do know is that if anyone claims they are saving the environment by driving an electric car is sadly very ignorant and misinformed about many things.

So where does most electricity produced come from?  Vast majority is produced from other energy sources such as coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear energy or hydroelectricity.  A very small portion is produced through natural means such as wind or solar etc.

Whether you drive a car with an internal combustion engine or an electric car you are creating demand for fossil fuels at least to some degree.

Do you really think the cost to our environment is really different between the two if you follow the complete life cycle cost of each?  Everything has a cost to it and there is no such thing as a zero cost product.  To produce either requires very energy intensive manufacturing which uses fossil fuels, electricity and water.

Where do all the metals, rubber, plastics come from?  What is the cost to the environment to produce lithium ion and then dispose of it?

If you buy a car of any sort, you are contributing to some form of pollution and placing demands on our environment.  I realize that it is soothing and very vogue these days to many to think that you are somehow reducing your global footprint.  In my opinion, anyone of this persuasion is just blowing wind. Maybe they should use this wind to power more wind turbines.

If you are a true environmentalist, stop creating demand by buying any product that has a cost to our environment to produce and ends up in a landfill in a few short years.

Nice!

To make a parallel: the moral is Buy used Naim and have it refurbished?

Looks like this has a life cycle, too (unless taken over or licensed to a corpiration that can make it mass market.

Oh wait.  Didn't Porsche (majority shareholder of the VAG group) announce its Mission E concept last week and say that to make it work hyper fast rechaging is necessary.  Also, there is the BMW i series. I can see the smaller of the i series playing a part in cities in the same way as the bike hire scheme in London, for example).

in the meantime, I'm all for donating my urea to help the micro innovations in diesel 

This is what I was meaning in my point about sus dev earlier.  If one is an optmist you believe that technology can bring about the efficiences needed on keep up with consumption and population growth without irreversibly depleting the planets resources. If you are pessimist, then an uncomfortable (for developed and rising economies) change is needed hard and fast.

Oh come on Debs, this strategy applies to civil servants as well, and not just those at the top, as well you know !

Population reduction is not going to happen by free choice. It might follow some disaster. The rich will get richer and the poor, whilst getting better off will be much poorer by comparison with the very rich.

Ingenuity will step in sometime in the next 50 years and give mankind another kick-start, similar to farming 10,000 years ago and the Industrial Revolution of 250 years ago. Don't ask me what, but i'm pretty sure it will happen.

Then when we least expect it, a catastrophic event such as affected the dinosaurs, will occur and put this VW scandal into perspective.

Meanwhile, electricity generation will continue apace mainly burning fossil fuels with a modest amount coming from "renewables" including hydro, tidal, wave, wind, solar, bio...........assuming we have enough resources to build hydro, tidal, wave, wind, solar and can manage without the food that isn't produced due to bio...........

I am a happy diesel driver (powerful diesel), so I hope this thing is not going to affect the future of diesel cars for us. I believe in general that diesel can produced in an acceptable way if everybody keeps to the rules. I don't understand by the way that there is not generic by European Union controlled testing process (this is finally something the European Union could show value). 

There is a standard unified European & USA emissions regulation & the testing methods for that is set in the regulations. The current standard for Europe is known as Euro-6 & came into effect Sept 2015, when all new cars & commercial vehicles must have an engine that is Euro-6 compliant. This Euro standard is applied to all engines & has been in effect since 1993 when Euro-1 was introduced, since then we have gone through improvement stages Euro-2, 3, 4 & 5. Engines are type approved by an independent testing authorities approved by the EU – not the engine manufactures. It needs to be understood that these tests against stipulated engine conditions & carried out in an engine test laboriory with the engine mounted on a brake test bench & coupled to calibrated instrumentation.

It is not in a car or anything remotely like real world road conditions test.

Additionally EU cars (not just engines) are tested via the new European driving cycle procedure, where emissions are measured under laboratory conditions on rolling roads.Government agencies act as witnesses to the tests.

This VW issue is questioning how accurately manufacturer's figures reflect real world driving standards - and whether or not they can be trusted.  Its not questioning if the engine is Euro-5 or 6 compliant.

Additionally the way new & used vehicles are tested locally in Europe varies, & I believe its the same in USA, California it seems has a tougher test standard that other states.

In Europe emissions testing is to be standardised & more reflective of real world driving & new testing procedures are proposed for introduction in 2017. These new tests are to be carried out on the road using portable test systems mounted on the vehicles.  

Thanks for the clarification, was a gap in my knowledge. Anyhow it's odd that also the usual tests on consumption are deviating sometimes up to 40 percent of real usage which is a shame.

It’s not just the motor industry that misleads the public.

The efficiency figures quoted for condensing boilers don’t reflect real world conditions. The high efficiency figures are obtained by running the boilers at very low flow/return temperatures, far lower than they would be run at in practice.

The mnfts consumption figures are accurate,  the question is how the test conditions compare with real life,  or maybe it should be how your driving compares with a computer controlled test in a laboratory.  

But don't be mislead by the mostly uninformed press "headlines" on this VW issue;  emissions don't have much effect on fuel consumption,  but it seems the press have made it so. And also - as I understand it - the test default mode they found forced the engine to run with artificial low emission in test mode but with the engine in normal power mode the engines fully complied with the previous level Euro - or as in the USA, the EPA standard - but we did not all die of NOx poisoning in those days did we?   This is issue is about a deliberate fraud, not polluting the planet.

Taken from the BBC news website:  VW said last week that 11 million cars within the group could be affected.  Audi and Skoda say they have a total of 3.3 million cars fitted with the software that allowed parent company Volkswagen to cheat US emissions tests.

Some 2.1 million Audis affected worldwide include 1.42 million in western Europe, with 577,000 in Germany, and almost 13,000 in the US.

Czech-based Skoda said 1.2 million of its cars were involved, but has yet to give a country or model breakdown.

The Audi models affected include the A1, A3, A4, A5, A6, TT, Q3 and Q5 models, a spokesman told the Reuters news agency.

I find it incredible that corporate deception on this scale could have been allowed to happen within VW Group.  Just as incredible is the thought that VW are alone in this fraud - I suspect there will be more revelations in due course, hopefully not though.

Agree with Mike-B that the tests themselves are fundamentally flawed in terms of representing anything like real world economy figures.  Whilst it is apparent that no-one manages to replicate the official economy figures, it has been noticeable over the years how some manufacturers' engines seem to get closer in road tests to the official figures than others.  Makes me wonder what games have been going on here too!

Whatever damage this inflicts on VW Group, there will likely be even greater pressure brought to bear on manufacturers to move away from the increasingly expensive to produce diesel engines towards petrol/ battery power, etc.  Doesn't bode well for long term residuals, as if they didn't have enough problems already!

Peter

Shame people don't have the same opinions about politicians, this is jus a car company

It's a car company that conned customers who have some recourse in law when a seller cons them. And good luck to them. I don't know what will happen at agency/government level but I don't suppose that VAG will come out anything but bruised. Industry wide, it might be more a case of not so much being punished for deception as being punished for being stupid/arrogant enough to be caught, but caught they have been. I don't see any analogy with dishonest/immoral/greedy politicians. I don't see how one relates to the other. Are you saying that because many politicians who you dislike are beyond your reach that VAG should allowed to sort it out without penalty?

No he's saying Politicians produce more NOx than stated on their 'party approved' rosettes (or something). Personally I think the Audi 'indicators not working in real-life' scandal needs addressing first...

I have to say, I am rather cynical about all of this. I think that most people were sold and bought diesel cars on the fact that diesel was cheaper than petrol and that you could go further on a tank of diesel. I think their eco credentials were always a poor second.

I have always refused to have a diesel car because 80% of my driving time is in built up areas. And it has always been accepted that the pay off for the fuel efficiency has been particulate emission. As a city dweller and a cyclist that particulate emission has always been the thing I have never been able to accept as the compromise. Greenpeace have highlighted this from day one and some local authorities will charge you more for resident parking permits if you have a diesel.

However, and despite the detailed information that is coming out I am still unclear about what the actual difference this subterfuge is causing in environmental terms. VW and maybe others have lied and that is clearly unacceptable and yes some cars are issuing 6 times more noxious stuff than they say they were supposed to but what does that actually mean. If anyone can explain this I would be grateful to understand.

At the moment it seems to be real headline stuff..............'England over run by refugees' stuff rather than a discussion about whether the difference, which may still be unacceptable, is actually very small.

My read is that the cars go into a "special" mode when they detect a test cycle. I doubt that any other country save US (California) would do this cycle on any MOT type test so actually removing it seems a waste of time. Or just make an overide code to all who wish it. No need for a re-call AFAICS.

Here in the USA, the class action lawyers have started filing lawsuits. When those are settled, the lawyers will get a billion or two and the people who were actually affected will get a coupon good for a thousand dollars off their next VW.

I have been involved (as a defendant) in a class action lawsuit in the US recently. I asked our counsel what percentage of the settlement (around $28 million) would go to the plaintiffs' legal firms. He said it was expected to be around $9 million. This was much less than I was expecting. I thought they'd pretty much take all of it.