VW Scandal - What's the story in Ireland ?

bladespin wrote: »

Issue is not how green or not so the car is, it's just not what they were sold.

BTW you do understand that Hybrids are just as bad for the environment than diesels don't you?

Of course, hybrids like any other manufactured produce have an environmental footprint. However hybrids like petrol cars don't directly emit NOX.

bladespin wrote: »

This is true, but their footprint is very significant, even compared to the dreaded diesel

Not the Prius vs Hummer comparison.. It was busted several times already...

bladespin wrote: »

worse again most owners aren't aware how to drive them in order to benefit from the tech - proper tree huggers.

And what that would be?!

bladespin wrote: »

I wouldn't compare those two fro sure but they both have a similar impact on the environment in their own way, the materials used to build, run and eventually recycle them all have a cost.

A few before you did...

I see a few sailing along the motorway each day, not exactly their favoured stomping ground rendering them considerably poorer than a diesel of similar size, but I'm guessing they're happy in the knowledge of what they're doingfor the environment.

You'll also see then darting from the lights, that's petrol baby, yeah the bad stuff, not the leccy.

You can do exactly the same with a diesel or an ordinary petrol - and achieve more/less same fuel efficiency improvement. Sufficient to say that those don't make any sense, as no-one is driving them as efficiently as possible?

Hybrids are more efficient if driven the same, average way. I don't know why - maybe because of the LCD constantly showing you energy flows and charts with fuel consumption - but Prius does encourage to drive even more efficiently. But it never stopped me from flooring it if I wanted and witnessing faces surprised how fast it can be...

dar83 wrote: »

And this, is the problem with Ireland today. :rolleyes:

On the other hand, I'd argue that our failure to punish companies for illegal, unethical, deceptive or anti-consumer behavior is a problem.

Publicly traded companies are amoral by their nature. If the manufacturers mend their ways, it will be because the US-VW payouts put the fear of god into them.

Ok folks, time for mechanic school

I always put diesels as worse than Petrol, because we studied the emissions components of both in depth during the college phases of the apprenticeship. It annoyed me no end how cheap diesels were by being taxed "by emissions".

Nox emissions are the worst emissions. By far.
They're created by combustion temperatures reaching over 1200 degrees. This happens in both petrol and diesel cars, but is combated by the EGR. By circulating a loop of un-burnable exhaust gases, you reduce the amount of oxygen available to the reduced amount of fuel during cruising, thereby reducing combustion temperatures slightly. This is also to combat the release of, among the Nox gasses, Nitrous Oxide. That too is produced over 1200 degrees, but when that burns, the combustion temperatures explode upwards of 1500 degrees in some cases, facilitating the creation of hugely increased levels of Noxious emissions. Exponential upward spiral.

Remember the old days when reducing the fuelling by turning the carb lean would melt the insides of your engine? That was because of the heat. So much oxygen was available to the fuel at hand that every scrap burned. Not as good as is sounds because the resulting heat facilitated everything above. Not enough to race with in 5 second bursts, just enough melt your engine over a few journeys....

It's a trade off.

Sounds mental but you need to burn more fuel to create less heat, as the fuel molecules absorb heat during combustion whereas the air doesn't do it as well.

In a naturally aspirated petrol, that ideal ratio is 14.7 parts air to 1 part fuel. It's the best compromise between emissions and performance. And the EGR is easily capable of keeping everything in check during cruising.

While conventional petrol engines generally run a compression ratio of 11:1, diesel engines run around twice that. A little less in the case of turbocharged ones. Not only that but diesels run as lean as 30 parts air to 1 part fuel, sometimes going beyond 60 parts air....

The level of heat generated during the combustion here is way over the threshold necessary to produce Noxious gasses. But due to the shape of the piston and the design of the combustion process, the heat is contained in a sort of "air cusion" in which no fuel burns - way more effectively than in a petrol - so the diesel engine is better able to handle and dissipate the heat. But emissions are still there. And I'm afraid EGRs just can't cope. They lose their effectiveness with soot accumulation for a start and even without that, they generally can't allow the necessary volumes of exhaust gasses into the circuit to keep the heat in check because A: most of the gasses will be in the "air cusion" simply keeping the heat from getting to the metal.
And B: because the volume necessary would actually cost you noticeable power loss...

So!!! What do you, a diesel offering manufacturer, do in a market where people buy cars on how little fuel they inject in relation to the oxygen at hand how little fuel they use?

Why, you lie!.
And far more manufacturers than Volkswagen have been lying, just you wait

In the meantime the only way to reduce those emissions is to increase fuelling. Significantly.
If your new Volkswagen was doing 60 mpg, it will need to now do 50mpg to follow the environmental laws they said they were following. That's what will happen with the "fix" they're being recalled for.

Which may piss you off because the 03, 1.6 petrol Renault Laguna I had did that all day every day

Now, at the end of the day, diesel uses less fuel in most cases. That's why you don't exactly see many petrol engined Nissan Patrols on the roads...
If you got one for that reason, then good on you. If you pontificated to people about how you got one for the environment however, then get stuffed and join the delusional hybrid crowd, who's lithium mining, transport and processing makes a greater environmental impact than the actual manufacturing of most small cars, alone..

grogi wrote: »

That's absolutely not true. In order to reduce the emission of NO and NOx, selective catalytic reduction is used.



Without changing the engine mechanically - yes, you're right. Running on "rich" mixture reduces NOx, but increases variety of PM emissions..

Current emissions devices can't actually cope with the emissions created by burning the amount of fuel these cars were sold on.
I highly doubt VW are going to replace every vehicles emissions equipment from the exhaust port to the rear bumper, over simply remapping the ECU's fuelling mixture.

grogi wrote: »

That's absolutely not true. In order to reduce the emission of NO and NOx, selective catalytic reduction is used.



Without changing the engine mechanically - yes, you're right. Running on "rich" mixture reduces NOx, but increases variety of PM emissions..

Actually it is true. ANY kind of emission control needs energy to work. Catalytic converters need some unburnt fuel to stay on the working temperature, DPFs need unburnt diesel to regenerate, the urea used in the SCR needs energy to be manufacured, etc. And all this energy means higher CO2 emissions.
Any filter on the exhaust will make the engine less efficient, it will burn more fuel in order to push the gases through those filters, again increasing CO2 emissions.