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The CO2 amount should remain the same—the issue is with other pollutants that cause smog. The only reason that CO2 might go up is if the fix involves increasing
by organsnyder 11y ago
The CO2 amount should remain the same—the issue is with other pollutants that cause smog. The only reason that CO2 might go up is if the fix involves increasing fuel consumption. However, you might not even need the fix in Ireland, as many European countries (as I understand it) have laxer smog requirements to begin with.
Regardless, though, I wouldn't buy a VW product right now, wherever I lived.
- tadfisher 11y agoEuro standards are backwards; they have stricter CO2 emissions regulations, but are lax on NOx. I'd imagine they don't have a lot of smog events like what happened in California during the 60s and 70s.
- organsnyder 11y agoI wouldn't call them "backwards". They're opposite of the US, but that's because they're optimizing for reducing a different pollutant. Smog is certainly undesirable (as an asthmatic, I know that from experience), but CO2 may well have more dire long-term costs. Of course, the optimal situation would be to tightly regulate both pollutants.
- ars 11y agoI would definitely call them backwards. The amount of extra CO2 from a car running a better NoX system is utterly irrelevant compared to how much CO2 is emitted. Trading CO2 for NoX is completely indefensible. NoX is really really bad for the environment.
- sampo 11y ago> Euro standards are backwards; they have stricter CO2 emissions regulations, but are lax on NOx. In Europe, people don't commute as much, and as long hours, in cars, so I would guess NOx levels in city air don't get as high as in the US cities. So maybe there is no need to have as strict NOx emission limits for cars in Europe.
- 001sky 11y agoNOtwithstanding the other comments here, in europe the % or diesel cars is already very high. so europe is optimizing for diesel allowances, and the usa is optimizing also for its own local issues.
- hencq 11y agoThe main difference is that Europe has separate regulations for Diesel and Gasoline cars, while the US has regulations independent of engine type. You are right that this leads to lax regulations on NOx. That said, the new Euro 6 regulations for Diesel cars should bring Europe closer to US levels. This is actually an area where TTIP might improve things a lot by aligning different emission standards.
- walshemj 11y agoThat was an explicit goal cut CO2 by pushing diesel and ignore the heath effects of NoX