by "dieseldub" (dieseldub)
Published 09/22/2017 at 20:42
by "dieseldub" (dieseldub)
Published 09/22/2017 at 20:42
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Greenpeace posted the video below a few hours ago, showing them illegally boarding a ship, applying stickers on various vehicles pleading VW to ditch diesel and also stealing numerous keys to diesel VWs.
My username might be a giveaway that I’m a bit of a fan of the plucky little VW diesels, so I may be somewhat biased here, but will do my best to remain impartial considering.
First, watch the video:
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Now, I’m going to dissect this some. First and very obviously, VW had the whole dieselgate scandal we’re all well familiar with by now. It’s been going on for just over 2 years now since that went public. VW deserved some punishment there, and the U.S. dished it out quite well. They’ve been paying billions in restitution and buying back affected cars, not to mention applying updates to the affected cars that remain on roads. Surprisingly, VW seemed more than willing to do so to try and mitigate the image issue. Most automakers would have fought tooth and nail til the bitter end, denying culpability at every turn. I guess ze Germans haven’t talked to enough American lawyers over the years to know how to speak without giving away too much information and implying guilt of any sort.
Anyway. The reality is that the current crop of VW diesels still being sold overseas have had to comply with much more rigorous testing meant to be very difficult for the software to detect that it’s being tested by using mobile emissions analyzers while the vehicle is being driven on public roads.
If anyone has bothered to look at today’s regulations vs. say pre-tier 2 here in the U.S., you would see that diesels, which once were allowed a little relaxed target for NOx, now suddenly had to meet not only the same targets as gas engines, but that target was also 10 TIMES closer to zero than they were in 2006. EU regulations were a little more relaxed. The numbers are as follows:
2006: 0.7 g/mi allowed.
2007 and up tier 2 bin 5 (which VW’s diesels were supposedly complying with): 0.07 g/mi.
Now, here in the U.S., the little diesels never caught on big. They’ve been selling here in small numbers since 1996 since their switch to “TDI” (Turbo Direct Injection) and had a break after 2006 to work on the new, cheaty “clean” diesels, which wouldn’t come out until model year 2009.
In Europe, it’s a whole different story. In the early 90s, diesels were viewed as being far cleaner than gas engines, and in many ways they were. Plus, they’re far more efficient. As gas engine emissions controls and fuel injection systems advanced, they became much cleaner. But, in those early days, diesel still being cleaner at that moment (they could pass emissions regulations without catalytic converters, let’s just put it that way) various European governments went about incentivizing the adoption of diesel engines. They taxed the fuel so its prices were always artificially lower than gasoline. The more efficient a vehicle was the less tax you’d pay on the vehicle itself, whether it be via yearly registration or just a tax tacked onto the purchase price, varies depending on country. Some countries tax gas engines based on displacement and are far more lenient towards diesels.
With fuel already being taxed abysmally high in the region, diesel became an extremely popular choice because it was vastly more affordable, and technology was advancing to the point where they were actually pretty nice to drive, too.
20 years on, and air quality in Europe has gotten worse, not just because there’s more human activity but also because these old diesels are not at all clean, especially when there’s a massive amount of them in a densely populated area because they made financial sense to buy instead of gas engines.
But the current regulations make diesels just as clean, and in some cases cleaner than gas engines. Diesels never emit damaging VOCs from the transport and refueling process. Diesel vehicles don’t even have evaporative emissions equipment like gas engines because the fuel is an oil, not a volatile liquid that constantly off-gases. Modern diesels are also equipped with particulate traps. You don’t see them emitting any soot anymore thanks to those, and most of them have a tailpipe so clean you could swipe a white glove on the inside of it and it wouldn’t come out dirty.
Can’t say the same for their gasoline counterparts. Especially the direct injected kind. How many times have you been behind a modern gas vehicle that suddenly steps on the throttle an you see this quick gray cloud come out the tailpipes of the thing? You ever see one of VW’s cheaty diesels do that with all its emissions equipment still intact? Nope.
When you actually start to look at the target numbers of regulations and how close they are to zero, I’m amazed that engineers have been able to make these engines so clean. And that’s my argument. These modern diesels that Greenpeace is imploring VW to ditch? They’re amazingly clean vehicles. And it’s a false narrative to imply that they’re any dirtier than their gasoline counterparts.
VW doesn’t need to ditch diesels, it needed to not cheat on emissions when for a little more money in equipment on each car, they could have genuinely met regulations. What diesels have now is an image problem largely thanks to VW, but their reputation as being impossibly dirty vehicles when applied to the current generation is false at best. It’s verging on malicious now on Greenpeace’s part.
I keep hoping for a day when rationality and evidence makes a return to public discourse on such subjects, but it seems the world just gets more polarized and entrenched in opposing ideals and automatically believe in what backs up their beliefs rather than any moment of discernment and discussion that the world might not be as black and white as they’d like to make it out as being.
"DipodomysDeserti" (dipodomysdeserti)
09/22/2017 at 21:01, STARS: 0
Anyone who thinks vehicle emissions (diesel, gas, electric...) will ever be anywhere close to zero is just a complete fucking moron. Also, just because you can’t physically see pollution doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Where’d you get your chemistry degree, Trump U? I once owned a BMW diesel. It was a complete piece of shit. Apparently not cheating on emissions means your engine fills up with diesel soot every 30k miles. Wonder where all that soot goes once the dealership walnut blasts it out...
"dieseldub" (dieseldub)
09/22/2017 at 21:04, STARS: 1
Before I fully respond, what does PZEV stand for?
And would you say that 0.07 g/mi is in fact very close to zero, especially when compared to 0.7 g/mi?
"DipodomysDeserti" (dipodomysdeserti)
09/22/2017 at 21:10, STARS: 0
PZEV stands for “most people are poorly educated as to what goes into making and operating a vehicle, and thus are easily duped by slick marketing”.
O.7 g/mi of what? Uranium? Doesn’t matter. What comes out of the tailpipe is onky a small portion of a vehicle’s overall emissions. Also, 0.7g per mile is nowhere even close to zero. Figure 10k miles per year and you have 7k grams of whatever being put into the atmosphere by every vehicle every year. That’s a lot of shit.
"dieseldub" (dieseldub)
09/22/2017 at 21:16, STARS: 3
NOx.
And 0.7 was the old standard. 0.07 is tier 2 bin 5, which is what the diesels are supposed to adhere to now. There’s an extra zero in front of the seven, in case you missed that (which it appears you have).
And PZEV is not marketing, it is an EPA/CARB term and also requires the automaker to warranty all emissions equipment upto 150,000 miles in order to obtain that certification.
I work in the industry and I study this shit a lot. You sure you want to dance?
"themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles" (themanwithsauce)
09/22/2017 at 21:25, STARS: 3
I was reading until I hit the point where you said something to the effect of asking when the last time I was behind a gas engine that spat out smoke. I get it was designed to make me think that DI gas card are dirty, buuuutttt..... The answer is “Aside from old cars with a bad catalytic converter, never”. Ask me the same about diesel and I can tell you for a fact that quite a few of the MkV VW tdis I see in the area are smoking already. Oh sure, if *all* the equipment is in place I won’t release much, but that is a very big *if* as the cars get older.
I like the TDI cars, and they are very well engineered cars, but this is very much a fanboy post. Greenoeace was wrong, no doubt about it, but the VW TDI cars aren’t clean either. Both parties can be wrong here. And if you are a fan of diesel consider this - VW ruined diesel for everyone, not just themselves. That is the real takeaway for me from the fiasco. All diesel will be heavily scrutinized and regulated and we can all point to VW for the blame. Just like GM diesel motors in the 80s ruined diesel for a while, so has VW done the same.today. Ironically, GM ruined it by being horrible while VW ruined it by being too good.
"ranwhenparked" (ranwhenparked)
09/22/2017 at 21:40, STARS: 3
Sorry, but you can’t just storm a ship and damage and/or destroy private property because you have a grievance against the government.
"dieseldub" (dieseldub)
09/22/2017 at 21:53, STARS: 0
I work on them for a living, there absolutely is more particulate emissions coming from modern GDI gas engines than there are DPF-equipped diesels.
Also, most of the mk5 TDIs you see smoking are probably early mk5s. 2005.5-very late 2006 production vehicles with the BRM code TDI. PD motor, no DPF, and they like to eat cams... and then smoke a lot because the engine isn’t getting the correct airflow. Trick is to look at the TDI emblem. Blue I = commonrail clean diesel. Silver I = old PD engine when it comes to the Mk5s. Except mine... because it was rear ended and apparently the blue I emblem was all the body shop could get *shrug* So, now my dirty BRM code TDI has the blue I TDI emblem AND it smokes if I get on it hard... especially after it’s been idling for an extended period of time.
Even the cars with cracked DPFs you won’t see visible soot emitting from the tailpipe, but the pipe itself will in fact be coated black, just like an older diesel and GDI engines... and it’ll probably be setting a P0401 EGR incorrect flow code because it also clogged the low pressure EGR filter... But anyway.
My point is when it comes specifically to particulate emissions, gas engines are in fact worse at the moment because they do not have particulate traps and they do in fact emit visible soot particulates, as well as damaging smaller particulates that lodge themselves further into your lungs than large particles. Don’t worry, gas engines are going to get particulate traps soon enough too... It’s absolutely in the pipeline.
"Brian McKay" (brianmckay)
09/22/2017 at 22:12, STARS: 0
I can’t. Greenpeace can.
"fintail" (fintail)
09/22/2017 at 22:14, STARS: 0
Deal with ‘em like some do with Somali pirates
"fintail" (fintail)
09/22/2017 at 22:16, STARS: 2
I see a number of 2010 era Audi and VW with visible smoke, certain x45i BMWs smoke in a way that would make my unrestored 1960s MB fintail blush, and some 1990s era Hondas will smoke when neglected. Definitely gasoline smokers on the road, indeed.
"Probenja" (probenja)
09/22/2017 at 22:25, STARS: 0
Diesel is really tempting, specially in my country where it’s 75% the price of gasoline and there is a lot of distance between cities, thankfully the high price of maintanence and initial cost of diesel cars means that it hasn’t gotten as popular as in Europe so most cars are still gasoline. I feel like if Europe hadn’t adopted Diesel so rapidly we wouldn’t be in a situation where VW (and most manufacturers) had to cheat in order to stay competitive and now we are pretty much rolling back the changes to sell only non-downsized gas engines and electric vehicles, the future sounds a lot like the 1900's!
"DipodomysDeserti" (dipodomysdeserti)
09/22/2017 at 23:21, STARS: 0
Yeah “partial zero” is definitely a very scientific term and not total marketing BS that they stick on the back of Subarus. You cited not being able to physically see soot on a tailpipe as evidence that emissions aren’t being produced. I don’t want to dance, because you’d probably step on my toes.
"DipodomysDeserti" (dipodomysdeserti)
09/22/2017 at 23:24, STARS: 0
But can you do so if you have a grievance with the owners of said property and not “the gubmnit”?
"themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles" (themanwithsauce)
09/23/2017 at 01:31, STARS: 0
Okay, as a chemist I have to ask, define “particulates” in your own words. Are they nitrates, carbonates, oxides, or hydrocarbons? I am fully aware that due to the differing natures of combustion, the exhaust output of diesel and gasoline engines will be different. I am also aware of how catalytic converters function so I can assure you that direct injection has nothing to do with the emissions of cars in a chemical sense. It only improves efficiency. It introduces nothing new to the chemical reaction. I would further argue that by and large, gas engines do NOT emit visible soot particles. Most people on here would attest to that. You really want that to be the case, but it just isn’t. Especially not when compared to diesels.
So already I doubt what you say because you acted in the main article like DI somehow fundamentally alters the reaction that happens in the combustion chamber when it does not. If for some reason you are seeing clouds of smoke from a gas car, that is a catastrophic failure of the catalytic converter or the piston rings are letting some blowby happen.
Also let’s rewind a bit to when I told you about the local TDIs smoking. Maybe they are the “early” cars you talked about. But in that case, does that not prove the point you were trying to deny? That these vehicles are way dirtier than VW led us to believe? And certainly dirtier than similar gas vehicles? I am going to be more vigilant to see if the local “smokers” have these blue badges or not. I would not be surprised if they do.