EPA says Volkswagen cheated on emissions with 482,000 diesel cars

Marty McFly

jimgoose wrote: »

Same as that. You might as well be talking to the wall once Paddy gets De Chape Tax into his cliggín, though. :pac:

I drive a diesel but with expensive tax were do I fit in?

jimgoose

Marty McFly wrote: »

I drive a diesel but with expensive tax were do I fit in?

You're obviously a mutant. Away with you, to Smoker's Corner!

Tea 1000

Everything should run on electricity. That comes from the socket in the corner of the room, and that's generally very clean!

colm_mcm

Tea 1000 wrote: »

Everything should run on electricity. That comes from the socket in the corner of the room, and that's generally very clean!

What's crazy is that it's cheaper to buy oil/gas to heat your house. There is very little done to convert houses to using electricity.
This is a situation where you don't need charging pints, batteries, range anxiety etc. they can't even manage this, so how are we expected to drive electric cars without artificial incentives.

dr.fuzzenstein

Tea 1000 wrote: »

Everything should run on electricity. That comes from the socket in the corner of the room, and that's generally very clean!

Absolutely. Now mention coal and turf being burnt for this clean electricity and get "Boooo, rabble, rabble, rabble!" as reply.
Further mention that coal produces far more waste material* AND radiation than nuclear and they go mental and say things like "Ireland! Green! Nuclear Illegal! Rabble rabble!" and then I like to mention we are using nuclear power already, brought to us by the kindness of our very good friends, the British.

So, we go green by burning turf like the 19th century is going out of fashion, stand tall and proud with our hands on our hearts, saying "No Nuclear Here!" whilst buying it on the sly from the Brits and then say "dem electricic cears, dey're so much cleaner than your deaaasel, I know, bloke down the pub told me!", but it's OK, because we have a few token windmills here. One day Ireland will be 100% wind powered. Should there be no wind, every citizen will be required to get out and push.
The above describes everything we excel at here, ignoring the real problem, finding a convenient scapegoat, repeated and prolonged bouts of back slapping whilst not doing a damn thing to solve the actual problem and shouting down anyone who might say "actually, now that I think of it..."

*
what you think those scrubbers do? The don't magic the dirt away into pixie dust

edit:
sorry, feeling ranty

Boskowski

Just to drive this off topic for a moment. Back home in Germany they now have a grid with a serious enough percentage of renewable energies, more than just a few token percent. Windmills, solar, dams etc. Can't remember the exact % figure but I think it was in the high 20ies.

Which apparently has its own problems. You have big surges from these sub grids for want of a better word when the sun shines when its windy or both, but you have equally hard drops when its not. So there are great swings in supply and demand from these sub grids on a permanent basis. When the sun shines all that surplus needs to go somewhere while if the weather is unfavourable you quickly have to ramp up other sources. Apparently it had the grid on the edge on more than one occasion this summer.

dr.fuzzenstein

Boskowski wrote: »

Just to drive this off topic for a moment. Back home in Germany they now have a grid with a serious enough percentage of renewable energies, more than just a few token percent. Windmills, solar, dams etc. Can't remember the exact % figure but I think it was in the high 20ies.

Which apparently has its own problems. You have big surges from these sub grids for want of a better word when the sun shines when its windy or both, but you have equally hard drops when its not. So there are great swings in supply and demand from these sub grids on a permanent basis. When the sun shines all that surplus needs to go somewhere while if the weather is unfavourable you quickly have to ramp up other sources. Apparently it had the grid on the edge on more than one occasion this summer.

Ireland is not quite there yet, but from what I heard from a friend who works in Moneypoint (and no, he doesn't work in the canteen), the same problem applies here.
A plant like that can't just adjust up and down by 20% in 5 minutes, they run at a constant speed and changes need to be planned for. They don't rev up and down like a car.
Of course the one thing that can react quick enough is Nuclear, which Germany is getting rid of due to the usual "Think of the Children!" hysterical bullsh*t perpetrated by the usual "I haven't got the faintest notion about nuclear power, but!" screaming ninnies that are prevalent everywhere and that governments like to listen to for some unknown reason.
This brings us back to VW and other car makers. Screaming ninnies scream "think of the children!", politicians say "Here I am to the rescue and banging the table like a boss!" and so engineers, who are the only people in this chain who actually know what they're doing, have to work out solutions to completely daft and braindead laws driven by populism, hysteria and ignorance.

Fiskar

What disgusts me about this is that if it were a French or UK manufacturer that did this, the Germans and that wagon Merkel would be crawling all over them, fining the firm until it went bankrupt. Other manufacturers should be crawling all over them.
Diesel as a fuel will be hard to recover from this, no one will lash out 30 grand of their own money on a car they may not re-sell in 3 or 4 years time.

Toyotafanboi

colm_mcm wrote: »

What's crazy is that it's cheaper to buy oil/gas to heat your house. There is very little done to convert houses to using electricity.
This is a situation where you don't need charging pints, batteries, range anxiety etc. they can't even manage this, so how are we expected to drive electric cars without artificial incentives.

With the way building regs are going, soon new houses will not really require any form of standalone heating 95% of the time.

colm_mcm

Yes, but people don't trade up their houses every few years and scrap the old ones

Toyotafanboi

colm_mcm wrote: »

Yes, but people don't trade up their houses every few years and scrap the old ones

In many of other countries they do, the average lifespan of a family home in Japan is around 25 years, for example. a bit like the way the irish love diesels, we also love a concrete house when in most instances timber frame is cheaper and better. Again, a bit like diesels, hopefully it's a mindset that can be reversed.

Lissavane

Fiskar wrote: »

What disgusts me about this is that if it were a French or UK manufacturer that did this, the Germans and that wagon Merkel would be crawling all over them, fining the firm until it went bankrupt. Other manufacturers should be crawling all over them.
Diesel as a fuel will be hard to recover from this, no one will lash out 30 grand of their own money on a car they may not re-sell in 3 or 4 years time.

"Rule Germania, Germania waives the rules", to coin a quip once used in relation to Britannia.

You can sing it too.

dr.fuzzenstein

Toyotafanboi wrote: »

In many of other countries they do, the average lifespan of a family home in Japan is around 25 years, for example. a bit like the way the irish love diesels, we also love a concrete house when in most instances timber frame is cheaper and better. Again, a bit like diesels, hopefully it's a mindset that can be reversed.

And in Germany in my hometown people live in houses built in the 16th and 17th century.
The city hall building has foundations that date back to the 11th century, as does the main church and the castle overlooking the town.
The town center school is a mixture and has bits dating from the 11th century up until the 18th century.
It's only Ireland that people think "the house is 20 years old, better tear it down and build another", same with cars, 10 years old, jesus, it's a deathtrap and must be scrapped.
You obviously haven't visited Germany. or Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, not to mention the eastern countries. We have bought into this idea "it's new and shiny, it HAS to be better!". Nonsense.
As for the concrete houses, I've seen them, those 70's and 80's bungalows. Tragic. The standard of houses here is (and always has been) extremely poor, compared to a continental house, I would say 4 out of 10.

it's the Big Green Fudge: Scrap everything and replace with shiny and new all the time. We will save 20% emissions! If you mention that building all this new crap will cause ten times more emissions, you will just get a filthy look. "How dare you go against the Green Gospel!"

josip

It's good that VW dared to go against the Green Gospel then.
All that scare mongering about NOX...

Skylinehead

Fiskar wrote: »

What disgusts me about this is that if it were a French or UK manufacturer that did this, the Germans and that wagon Merkel would be crawling all over them, fining the firm until it went bankrupt. Other manufacturers should be crawling all over them.
Diesel as a fuel will be hard to recover from this, no one will lash out 30 grand of their own money on a car they may not re-sell in 3 or 4 years time.

Why would the Germans be going after the French for breaking American regulations?

Lissavane

There's an interesting graph included in this FT article http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d375385a-61f4-11e5-9846-de406ccb37f2.html

German engineering is truly remarkable.

ThisRegard

Fiskar wrote: »

Diesel as a fuel will be hard to recover from this, no one will lash out 30 grand of their own money on a car they may not re-sell in 3 or 4 years time.

People are exaggerating greatly the affect this will have on diesel. Diesel hasn't stopped becoming an efficient fuel over night.

micosoft

ThisRegard wrote: »

People are exaggerating greatly the affect this will have on diesel. Diesel hasn't stopped becoming an efficient fuel over night.

But they stopped becoming clean (as they claimed to be) overnight...

micosoft

Fiskar wrote: »

What disgusts me about this is that if it were a French or UK manufacturer that did this, the Germans and that wagon Merkel would be crawling all over them, fining the firm until it went bankrupt. Other manufacturers should be crawling all over them.
Diesel as a fuel will be hard to recover from this, no one will lash out 30 grand of their own money on a car they may not re-sell in 3 or 4 years time.

Merkel is now responsible for Irish Debt, Greek economy and now it would appear Volkswagen cars emissions in the US! Is their no end to the possibilities that you could blame her for? She probably shot down that plane in Ukraine as it wasn't' an airbus so no German kickback. The entire Syrian refugee crisis was probably instigated by the Germans so they could charge the rest of us of accommodation in Germany. It never really ends does it!

ThisRegard

micosoft wrote: »

But they stopped becoming clean (as they claimed to be) overnight...

They stopped becoming clean as they claimed to be in America. People don't by diesel for their cleanliness.

Fiskar

Skylinehead wrote: »

Why would the Germans be going after the French for breaking American regulations?

Reputational damage, French cannot be trusted etc etc. Now it would appear the Germans cannot be trusted, but no one is jumping on their back. Wait and see if the Eu will go after the engine of the German economy, lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll

Gael23

Will one of the conclusions from all this that it is not possible for car makers to comply with Euro 6 with current technology?

Eric Cartman

Gael23 wrote: »

Will one of the conclusions from all this that it is not possible for car makers to comply with Euro 6 with current technology?

not without going down in power, I'm fairly sure a 2.0 4 cylinder diesel can meet euro 6 , but not while putting out 170+ bhp out of it.

Fiskar

micosoft wrote: »

Merkel is now responsible for Irish Debt, Greek economy and now it would appear Volkswagen cars emissions in the US! Is their no end to the possibilities that you could blame her for? She probably shot down that plane in Ukraine as it wasn't' an airbus so no German kickback. The entire Syrian refugee crisis was probably instigated by the Germans so they could charge the rest of us of accommodation in Germany. It never really ends does it!

Think you said it all there, the Germans have their fingers in a lot of muddy pies at the moment

Western Pomise

Has any word come out yet on how long that VW have been fiddling the test results?

Special Circumstances

ThisRegard wrote: »

People are exaggerating greatly the affect this will have on diesel. Diesel hasn't stopped becoming an efficient fuel over night.

Petrol is penalised at approx 10c per litre for producing slightly more "deadly dangerous" photosynthesis fuel than diesel for the same amount of work.

If diesel is to be penalised for producing 10x to 40x the amount of nox then it quickly becomes uneconomical.

Quid pro quo Gormley's successors... surely that amount of unhealthy emissions is worth a 10x to 40x penalty?1x to 4x penalty? No? Or do they care more about licking the boots of German industry and less about the health of irish children, pensioners and those with respiratory conditions? (It's a rhetorical question don't worry)

Even being actually required to permanently use fap/adblue/urea at the correct concentration and with the engine re tuned to reduce nox and particulates may close the gap between the two. Imagine if diesels were actually required to have a working emissions system (dpf etc) for nct???

robbie99

Western Pomise wrote: »

Has any word come out yet on how long that VW have been fiddling the test results?

As far back as 2009.

5W30

VW were truly living the "no smoke no poke" life :pac:

jimgoose

josip wrote: »

It's good that VW dared to go against the Green Gospel then.
All that scare mongering about NOX...

No-one gives a monkey's fcuk about NOx here, least of all John Gormley!

JoeCole26

Do you reckon all this will have a knock-on effect to the price of new VW in the coming months/years. In the market for new VW but wondering if it is time to sit tight to see how all this pans out. I,myself, can't see it affecting price of new cars in a forecourt down the country.