Sure. Since the VW incident, many cars from several of the big automakers have been found to fail emissions tests.
> I wonder if anyone will criticize the regulations instead of shaming auto manufacturers.
It's telling that the automakers have chosen to cheat rather than call out the tests for being unrealistic -- or build a slightly less powerful car.
By doing so, they forfeit any possible sympathy from me. You don't get to cheat on a test, brag about how you passed, and then if you're discovered, claim that the test was too hard. Too late.
[1]: https://jalopnik.com/heres-how-much-horsepower-volkswagens-l...
The skeptic in me should have known better. One manufacturer was blowing everyone else out of the water? German engineering? A seriously nifty gearbox? Are those enough to explain the difference? Apparently not.
Maybe VW isn't the origin of this, they could have seen another manufacturer doing something similar, decided to join in and took it too far.
I forget if it was VW or Mercedes, but one of them branded theirs as "blue-tec" or something that doesn't sound like you're handling piss bottles. Let the mechanic worry about that.
There literally wasn't any dealer or provider that could do anything before it hit 20 MpH limit, and the truck wound up being flatbed-ed (luckily the manufacturer picked up the bill, but still).
This definitely makes diesel vehicles less reliable, more expensive to maintain, and likely reduces their lifespan. If I purchased a truck I'd go gas.
Not sure if it would work on that vehicle, but it generally clears emissions codes and the like, even on fairly recent vehicles. Its possible it might have let the car drive another 50 miles or so.
Granted, it tends to get a "boy who cried wolf" feel to it as they've always done it, but they absolutely raised a stink about the constantly rising regulations.
“It’s sort of a case where the dog actually caught the bus,”
Gillis told me. “Now what’s it going to do?”
Referring to American car manufacturers' anti-CAFE wishlist being adopted by Scott Pruitt's EPA. The wishlist was submitted as a sort of bargaining piece, the idea being that industry demand something extreme expecting the incoming administration to meet them halfway. Except Pruitt just accepted it without reservation[1], and the industry was caught flat-footed. So now they're actually _repudiating_ some of their arguments.
The dirty little secret of the car industry is that efficiency and safety regulations help drive the upgrade cycle. When every car from this year has feature X, then all used cars instantly become out-dated and even unsafe in the minds of consumers. And the timelines set out by the regulators help to coordinate competition in a way that would be illegal otherwise. For example, if a new efficiency or safety standard is still 5 years out, then everybody knows to a high degree of certainty how each competitor will time and stage their rollout (not too early, not too late). The benefits may not exceed the overall costs of the regulation, but the industry is built around the system and pulling the rug out creates chaos.
[1] I guess this was a case of the Trump administration taking industry's rhetoric literally and not seriously.
If you then pretend to meet those requirements even though they were too high, you get zero points.
They do that, too. You can probably imagine the response the HN crowd would give, which is pretty much the same response the news media would spin it with... money-grubbing rich companies trying to escape from beneficent, unambiguously good laws so they can make more dirty, polluting money. It doesn't play well, so they don't make this argument in public. But if you live in Michigan, you can find plenty of engineers who grouse about the standards in various ways, and not just "they're hard". (Believe it or not, engineers have families too, and like them and their families to not die in the cars they quite likely drive themselves.)
Between the media's drive to drum up antipathy towards the automotive companies for both their own ideological reasons and simply because stories about big corrupt companies sell, and the ever-present and unavoidable politics (of all kinds) involved in any sort of standards setting, there's so much noise that on those occasions where literally impossible regulations are created, the system is not very good at dealing with it. I am speaking neutrally here, because in the real world, balancing between costs and benefits of regulations is a very hard problem and I'm not really yelling at any particular party here for not getting it perfect. It's a systemic problem.
I rather strongly suspect that if we could get a perfect judge that the current set of regulations is probably already impossible to comply with at all; failing that it probably can't be complied with economically. I seriously doubt emissions are the only problems, they're just the ones people are motivated to test. I bet if Consumer's Reports or a similar organization set up a full legal compliance suite they couldn't buy a single car from a dealership lot that complied completely with everything. I think they'd be close on most measurements. But I bet every vehicle would fail something, and there'd be a non-trivial number of rather substantial failures.
(For an example of the latter, noise regulations on how loud cars can be as they pass you at various speeds are really easy to fail on a specific car. A particular bit of trim that came loose during shipping or something can fail you out very easily. Now, this one is less important in the grand scheme of things than emissions, but it's an example of a regulation that could pass at the test site but fail on many or even most cars in the field.)
It's not like that late 1970s and early 1980s when cars became smaller and had anemic engines in order to meet with new regulations.
You are assuming away the very question I'm asking, though; are those cars actually in compliance? If not, you don't have a point. (I don't mean "you are wrong"; I mean, you literally wouldn't have a point to your post.)
It is the competition that pushes you to such extremes. If others are doing it, then what is to stop you.
Too much regulation and court procedures are preventing others from coming out and blowing the whistle on themselves.
If the reg's were never put into effect, and companies never given citations, it is institutional failure. And very unfair to all entities who are suddenly scolded at not meeting the criteria.
VW presumably started it. Other companies eventually competed. And all of a sudden everyone is now in violation.
It is like cheating on a test. One kid starts it. Teacher does not care. Kid does not get scolded. Competition gets intense. Rest of kids start cheating too. The axe falls, sometimes on the dull, slow kid, and then everyone falls in line. But then teacher goes back and sees who else cheated in the past, and the entire class is outed. How is this fair again?
"The penalties for murder are too harsh, so people aren't confessing to many unsolved murders."
Well, yeah. I would not blame "the system" for this, however.
For the record, there have been cases where criminals have come forward for crimes after statute of limitations expired. I am not sure it if was in particular to murder though.
You can compare it to "you are allowed to murder anyone you want, as long as you confess afterwards" and see that that's not the best public policy if your goal is to reduce murders.
What's wrong with the regulations? It seems that they're designed to prevent cars from spewing toxic shit into the atmosphere, something that seems to be an admirable goal.
I think we can agree that the goal is to reduce dangerous emissions, but if we're not going to have regulations that state a limit and perhaps a penalty for abuse, then how?
So "cheating" starts to look more and more worth the risk.
Granted, I don't think we are quite at that point yet, and don't take this to be implying that we should not have environmental regulations here, just that we need real information about what's possible and how, and there needs to be a 2 way conversation with the manufacturers to evolve the regs with what's possible.
That's not really a worry. Governments are well aware that people need cars that they can afford. Governments are ultimately elected by the people, and messing around with transport makes you unpopular (the recent backlash at the possibility that fuel duty will be unfrozen in the UK is an example).
These things are related. If the people think that they can't get the car they need because of the government this will turn in to loss of votes. See fuel duty example again.
> Look at the cost of safety features that have been implemented in cars the last 10 years; some for marginal benefit (rear-view cameras).
Regulations are rarely perfect. It seems from my searched that backup cameras are net better (~300 people killed, 18,000 injured in backup incidents) and that cameras will help drop some of those figures, but not by a huge amount. I guess we'll just have to wait and see how the figures play out in the future.
However, some regulations have had a significant effect, for example seatbelts.
> These features increase the cost, making it hard for lower income people to afford the cars.
The tech will come down in price, and the car companies still want to sell cars to lower income families and so will at worst absorb some or all of the cost at the price of a slightly lower profit.
And as someone else pointed out in a different thread, emissions from cars has a significant negative effect on people's health, particularly in urban and inner city areas where these lower income people are more likely to live.
we can reduce the emissions to zero by banning all cars, would you support that regulation?
>then how?
Improvements to technology the lessen the dependency on those energy sources.
Regulations will not solve the problem, no matter how draconian you desire to make them. Regulations will just increase the cost of goods furthering the economic divide and harming the people that can least afford the changes
That's ridiculous, of course not.
> Improvements to technology the lessen the dependency on those energy sources. > > Regulations will not solve the problem, no matter how draconian you desire to make them. Regulations will just increase the cost of goods…
Regulations will drive technological solutions, and if it weren't for regulations around emissions then car manufacturers have proved that they will quite happily sacrifice the health of everyone in the search of profit.
> furthering the economic divide and harming the people that can least afford the changes
Oh please. Car manufacturers will always sell budget cars to people with small budgets, because there's a market for it.
I can't promise that there isn't some bias in one direction or another, I just found it interesting, and the conclusion is very pithy.
So buy second hand perhaps?
I bought my car for £5000 second hand (yes, I can afford a new car, but why bother, they depreciate so fast in the first few years it hardly seems worth it) and it's a nice car. It's way more than I could have paid for a perfectly serviceable second hand car. I checked, £700 was the cheapest of the same manufacturer as mine, and it's 5 years newer too.
>>> quite happily sacrifice the health of everyone in the search of profit.
> All yes, the evil for profit corporations...
Wait, so it's OK to pump shit into the atmosphere as long as you make a profit?
Is the bar really so low for communism that believing that we shouldn't be poisoning large amounts of the population gains you membership?
Corporations and companies are optimised for one thing, profit. They do this at the expense of the climate and the health of people. Hell, this is a comment on an article about how a car company cheated emissions tests so they could sell more cars. Emissions that kill people.
Do you really believe that we would have the current emissions levels if there was no regulation?
> Well comrade
Oh please drop this shit. Resorting to name calling just suggests that you don't know what you're talking about or have no real point.
> show me all the innovations that regulations directly have inspired. I would be interested in the that list.
If you lower emissions limits over time car manufacturers will have to innovate to meet those targets, right? I mean, car companies aren't going to do this themselves are they, see cheating on the emissions tests, again.
> I always forget how must support for communism there is here in HN circles...
I'm not a communist.
In constant dollars, the average cost of a new car from the beginning of the emissions & safety-regulation era (say, 1970..) has about doubled. This is a nontrivial chunk of income. As a brit, you might live someplace where cars are optional. Many Americans have no such choice...
Likewise, the low-hanging fruit has already mostly been picked. A new 1964.5 Ford Mustang, with the engine turned off, sitting in a garage, releases more toxins than a modern car does while traveling at highway speeds. The 90/10 rule absolutely applies, as it does to safety. We're coming close to having to install catalytic converters inside the engine itself to minimize the lightoff time, which is about the only place you can find NOx/VOC emissions to clean up nowadays.
Not only were there upfront costs to recover for emissions & fuel economy, there were the knock-on effects on performance and reliability that took the better part of two decades to solve.
I always forget how libertarians think that anyone who holds views that don't completely conform to their ideology is necessarily a communist (or "collectivist").
NOx gas emissions from cars cause and worsen respiratory diseases, especially in urban areas where it is especially concentrated, thus ALSO harming people that can least afford it.
I'd also note there are plenty of cheap vehicles that do meet these regulations.
The regulations were ineffective because the EPA is unable to do its job. They test cars on a dyno in a climate controlled room instead of in the real world. They are embarrassingly vulnerable to defeat devices because they don't actually try to find defeat devices. Shitty nominees, corporate lobbying, and frivolous lawsuits have neutered the EPA from the inside and outside.
Realistic regulations are good because they prevent resource rich companies from externalizing their failures onto others.
Unrealistic regulations cause industries to give up on things that our population needs to survive.
For example, in the past if you got bit by a coral snake you could get antivenom. In the present, over ambitious regulation says that you die when you get bit by a coral snake. Because the alternative to death (using under regulated antivenom) is apparently worse?
If you want to you could regulate that cars run off of happiness and that their exhaust contains no pollutants. But the result would be that either everyone cheats on the tests OR that there would be no more cars. Including the trucks that bring us food and other useful products.
So I don't really see the point of the coral snake thing, interesting though it is.
> If you want to you could regulate that cars run off of happiness and that their exhaust contains no pollutants. But the result would be that either everyone cheats on the tests OR that there would be no more cars. Including the trucks that bring us food and other useful products.
Well, I'm not suggesting that at all so again, not really relevant.
I'm suggesting that the emissions regulations that we have are fine. Cars can and do pass these without cheating so they're clearly not unrealistic.
If anything, widespread cheating shows the importance of regulations. It shows that companies are willing to lie to both regulators and the public. For something that is extremely difficult for the consumer to test themselves like emissions, it shows that an independent regulator is required to keep companies honest.
To test cars made before 2009, they put a probe in the tailpipe. It's like the regulators have sold out, and gone full capture.
The whole point of regulations is to go against what the market will buy without them. If people bought low emission cars without any outside forces then you wouldn’t need any regulations. Of course, in reality that path leads you to smog-choked cities and lots of dead people.
Low-emission might not be a priority, but people still think of it, and some governments measures target the most-polluting vehicles to discourage their use.
If we want companies to follow the law, then those that violate emissions standards should face harsh punishments. For example, they could be banned from selling vehicles in the US market for one year, all of their lineup should need recertification under more strict oversight, and they be required to fix or buyback the offending vehicles. And personal liability for senior executives.
The major problem the US has with all automotive regulations is GM and Ford get their lobbyists to write the laws with loopholes that cater to them. For example, CAFE standards that are based on vehicles footprint and are different for passenger cars vs. "light trucks." While the regulations are "fair" on paper, but in practice, they are much more lax for the types of vehicles domestic automakers sell.
You forgot the two biggest factors - cost and efficiency. Most people doesn't want big or necessarily fast cars. Most people want cheap cars that go a long way on a little fuel. However, it's difficult to make cars that are cheap AND fuel efficient AND environmentally friendly.
People might want big, fast and safe cars, but they don't get to have them at the expense of the health and wellbeing of everyone else.
No it doesn't. Driving a car faster is less safe, all other factors being equal, but simply making a faster car doesn't make it less safe. Look at Mercedes's performance cars, which typically lead the market in safety features. An example off the top of my head is the carbon cone built into the front of, I think, 2000-era SL500s. They could dissipate a tremendous amount of energy, making that fast car significantly safer than most other cars on the road at the time.
(Of course when you push the limits of the car, all bets are off again.)
We do have racetracks, and people want to drive regular cars fast on those racetracks.
that's to say, if emission testing was done differently, maybe we would have caught these cars earlier. Now it seems likely every single non-electric car on the market is polluting more than advertised/allowed, which begs the question if there is a systemic issue here. I tend to agree that there is.
I don't think criticism of regulations should replace shaming of auto manufacturers, but it might be more effective.
> One way to reconcile these seemingly contradictory statements is the following. The actual programmer & designer of the software is the supplier of the engine control units (ECUs), in most cases Bosch. The software that they supply actually already contains these cheating routines. These routines are delivered as a part of the software packages, and can be turned on/off with some flags.
It is up to the auto company how to set these flags.
Well, they do.
Here's a list of some car manufacturers who do or did emissions cheating:
- Volvo - Volkswagen - Renault - Jeep - Hyundai - Honda - Citroen - Fiat - Chrysler - Ford - General Motors - Toyota - Nissan - Mercedes - Mitsubishi
(Which pretty much sums up to "all car manufacturers")
In EPA terminology, a defeat device.
Everyone was cheating in Europe, because European emissions rules were/are weak and you could get away with a defeat device provided it was for "engine protection".
The difference with VW was that they tried to pull the same thing in the USA, which had much stronger rules and a clear prohibition against defeat devices.
Also, yes, regulations should be better matched to real world performance.
https://www.ucsusa.org/clean-vehicles/electric-vehicles/life...
Yes, EV's have higher energy and emissions numbers embedded in their manufacturing, but that gets more than offset by the much lower emissions of fuel. Breakeven is the first 6-18 months, depending on battery size and emissions makeup of your local grid. Even in "coal-powered car" country.
> EVs are powered by electricity, which is generally a cleaner energy source than gasoline. Battery electric cars make up for their higher manufacturing emissions within eighteen months of driving — shorter range models can offset the extra emissions within 6 months — and continue to outperform gasoline cars until the end of their lives.
As for waste, there is battery recycling, but the more interesting part is second-life storage use. Battery may not have the energy density required for transportation, but you can still use them fine as a cheap powerwall-like product. Cheap because the cost of the batteries was already paid for by the first owner of the car.
Emissions regulations have made great progress in cleaning up auto emissions, but now politicians keep squeezing the numbers without realizing some of the limits are becoming impossible. So everyone starts cheating, because otherwise we would have no combustion powered cars.
Insane irony is that ships and even some buildings burn horrifically impure "bunker fuel" or wood, and with car emission limits so low these sources are the vast majority of harmful emissions. Its like cities in Cali forcing citizens to make drastic changes to conserve water, when over 90% is used by farmers.
There's another way of looking at this, and that's that maybe diesel just isn't clean enough for consumer cars?
But at this point the limits are just politicians pulling levers. There's not enough science involved to debate which pollutants we care about and what the lowest realistic limits are.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/lianeyvkoff/2015/09/28/all-to-s...
yes, this is a common process by which private costs are offloaded onto the public so as to increase the private benefits of exploitation of public goods.
it's legalized theft.
The numbers may have been accurate _for an engine with the 'limit emissions' mode enabled_ but it's still fraudulent if you do not make that explicitly clear.
For VAG this wasn't a case of the test not being quite the same as regular driving, it was VAG deliberately detecting a tests and altering the way the engine worked to avoid failing.
Intent matters. You can’t set out to cheat a test, succeed, and then say that it’s legal because you succeeded, any more than you can steal from a store by hiding an item under your coat and then say that it’s legal because you disguised it well enough to fool the guard.
If you think the test is bullshit, then you make that case separately. You don't lie about how you're passing it and then when caught say 'but it's the test's fault!'.
I'd encourage you to watch that, and still see if you say that it wasn't fraud.
VM gamed the test in order to produce results that were not achievable by consumers, with the intent to deceive people.
VW built their car to produce a specific test result to get buyers to buy the car. It fits the description at the link below all too perfectly.
Also, the government regulation on emission is going to get tighter and tighter due to incentives to push for EV adoption. So arguing emission test method is a moot point.
“The engine will fundamentally perform differently when you’re testing it because it will detect the test” is not common sense and is not a reasonable interpretation of how to comply with the rules.
I agree that a better method would be to attack sensors to a random (and ideally, concealed from OEM) sample of cars and charge automakers per unit of detected emissions. That would force them to optimize for real world driving, which is much harder to game.
What stinks seems to be the way the regulations are being implemented moreso than what sort of detours the manufacturers can take to avoid them.
I won't be surprised when we see more auto makers added to the list, however I wonder if anyone will criticize the regulations instead of shaming auto manufacturers.
Here's a non paywalled BBC article: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-44763905