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I work in this industry, so I've been following it from the start. I've run test cells and written software to analyze the results from the emissions cycles tha

I work in this industry, so I've been following it from the start. I've run test cells and written software to analyze the results from the emissions cycles that the government uses to validate the emissions compliance. I have worked around and for a very large diesel engine manufacturer who I am convinced does not cheat on this test. You'll understand why, below. I recently leveled-up my career, and I now work with the person who originally setup such testing at this manufacturer, and one of the two people who literally wrote the spec, which is one of the most thorough technical documents I've ever laid eyes on. These are 2 of the highest-caliber engineers I have ever met in my 25-year professional career, both in terms of intelligence and capability, and in terms of integrity and trustworthiness. This quote from the article pisses me off: "What I understand now is that the people we entrusted with the power to protect us essentially decided not to bother. Instead, they have allowed carmakers to spew whatever they want into our air." Really?! The government commissioned the spec. The government mandated that engine makers make their engines comply, and validate this compliance with internal testing. The government then paid independent testers to validate the manufacturer's results. Excuse me, but what more did the author expect the government to do? The regulators entrusted this process to expert engineers, and expert testers. Did the author expect people who could invent the spec and create a test cell to do the validation to go to work for the EPA directly, and do the paperwork, instead of the engineering? Did they expect them to escrow the code, and validate that there was no cheating? Possible, but, again, you're asking a very specific skillset to give up DOING, and instead REGULATING, and that doesn't usually work. The fault of this scandal lies -- of course -- with the manufacturers, but the fault also lies with the legislators. To control diesel engine emissions within the spec requires an array of very expensive after-treatment components. That can work in the class-8 heavy trucking industry, but you can't even fit it into a passenger car, let alone make it affordable at gasoline car prices. To think that cars could use diesel engines, be cost-competitive with gasoline-fueled alternatives, AND pass the ridiculously-low emissions standards that lawmakers have arbitrarily decreed was simply wishful thinking.

ip26 8y ago
I guess it depends a little on whether you feel like the spec writer or testers should have anticipated cheating, and attempted to detect it or not. If the job of a tester includes catching cheaters, or if a good spec should be very hard to cheat, I'm not sure missing that falls at the feet of the legislators.
wil421 8y ago
How can VW create an engine, cheat, and sell it to Chrysler? Then Chrysler has to put a urea tank to meet emissions. How did some brilliant engineer writing the spec or the third parties not notice?
- TheRealDunkirk 8y ago
  An SCR (and EGR, and DOC, et. al.) is a "given" in this equation. There's no hope of passing emissions without it. Even on gas engines, you still need a catalytic converter to pass.
  - wil421 8y ago
    My point is VW sold a TDI engine in the US. The same engine was sold to Jeep and used in the Grand Cherokee but with extra emission controls like urea. If I worked at Jeep or one of the 3rd party testers I would’ve made a lot of noise about VWs lack of a urea tank.
ummonk 8y ago
>To think that cars could use diesel engines, be cost-competitive with gasoline-fueled alternatives, AND pass the ridiculously-low emissions standards that lawmakers have arbitrarily decreed was simply wishful thinking. The emissions standards are perfectly sensible for maintaining good air quality. It definitely looks like it is wishful thinking for diesel engines to meet those standards and be cost-competitive with gasoline-fueled alternatives, but there is nothing wrong with that. Gasoline engines may simply be the more suitable technology for passenger cars.
- Reason077 8y ago
  > It definitely looks like it is wishful thinking for diesel engines to meet those standards and be cost-competitive with gasoline-fueled alternatives The technology that would have brought "Dieselgate" diesels into compliance with EU emissions rules was said to cost manufacturers something on the order of US$100 per vehicle: Selective catalytic reduction (SCR) with a refillable AdBlue (urea) tank. However, prior to Dieselgate there is alleged to have been collusion between the major German automakers and a secret agreement not to install it on small vehicles. This collusion, rather than the emissions cheating itself, is the focus of ongoing criminal investigations in Germany. (Cheating on emissions tests itself was not actually illegal in Europe, because the legislation was created with loopholes). As of 2019, AdBlue is becoming common on new small diesel vehicles in Europe.
  - alkonaut 8y ago
    The Euro6 standard was launched back in 2014, following the Euro4- and 5 standards that most of the diesel-gate cars adhered to. Most cars manufactured from around 2016/17 are Euro6, and as far as I’m aware Urea tanks are in use on most or all. I honestly don’t understand why it would have been an issue to have it before. My diesel tank is 65L and it takes me over 1000km. Even if they had made a 10L Urea tank and shrunk the gas tank to make room for it, the range is still more than enough. Filling it takes 5 minutes once every 1-2 years and costs about the same as windshield wiper fluid. Can’t see why that would make the car unappealing either.
    - 8y ago
topspin 8y ago
"Excuse me, but what more did the author expect the government to do?" It is not some outrageous expectation that the $8,000,000,000+/year, 14,000+ employee EPA and/or DOT independently verify the real world emissions performance of passenger cars and other vehicles. The cars were so grossly out of compliance that anyone with a ordinary field emissions testing machine could have caught it. If, as is very likely the case, the regulators had no technical resources among their hordes of lawyers they could have asked any number of publicly funded universities to perform the actual investigation and go beyond the agreed upon and easily fooled test regime. The discovery was actually made by US academics with very limited financing. This institutional pencil whipping is SOP at EPA. GOA had a gasoline powered alarm clock (among other improbable devices) Energy Star certified as part of an investigation in 2010. Energy Star certifications are literally pencil whipped through an automated system with no human review. When the EPA found itself answering for their part in the emissions scandal in public hearings there was no defense. They didn't even try to cite limited budgets[1] -- the go-to excuse every time some regulator comes up short -- as a cause. They just failed. That's difficult to accept for some, and so all manner of rationalizations are employed to dilute that simple truth. But I'm not among them. [1] https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4787386/blaming-budget https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4787386/blaming-budget
- TheRealDunkirk 8y ago
  I still shake my head at this. If you wrote laws that said manufacturers of a particular thing had to do X, and expected them to adhere to it internally, and then paid expert testing facilities to validate those results, why would you EXPECT that you would have to do additional testing to validate the validation? And further more, why would you think that merely testing the test would lead to a different result? You can say that the Euro V is "not representative" (as someone else did in this thread) of normal driving, but the FTP test's torque and RPM curves were lifted from real-world driving through hilly areas. It most definitely is representative. I don't know about the Euro V. So I don't get it. In this scenario, what people are asking the EPA to have done was load up vehicles with mobile emissions equipment (which is a very difficult thing to do, by the way), and validate that the TEST ITSELF correlated with real-world driving. Granted, this is an interesting exercise, but one that I would expect the EPA to - again - pay someone else to do. Given the engineering that went into the spec on the US side, I wouldn't expect that this was something they should have needed to do. You can say that they were the regulatory body in charge of this, and therefore should be responsible for catching cheaters, but I don't see how a reasonable person can find that the EPA was intentionally negligent in this matter.
stefan_ 8y ago
Why do you think escalating emissions standards exist? The entire purpose is to gradually retire whole technologies! It is essentially deprecation. The ultimate goal is always reduce to zero, you will find very few emissions in our continuous world that are somehow safe at arbitrary cutoff X but unsafe above.

ip26 8y ago

I guess it depends a little on whether you feel like the spec writer or testers should have anticipated cheating, and attempted to detect it or not. If the job of a tester includes catching cheaters, or if a good spec should be very hard to cheat, I'm not sure missing that falls at the feet of the legislators.

wil421 8y ago

How can VW create an engine, cheat, and sell it to Chrysler? Then Chrysler has to put a urea tank to meet emissions. How did some brilliant engineer writing the spec or the third parties not notice?

TheRealDunkirk 8y ago
An SCR (and EGR, and DOC, et. al.) is a "given" in this equation. There's no hope of passing emissions without it. Even on gas engines, you still need a catalytic converter to pass.
- wil421 8y ago
  My point is VW sold a TDI engine in the US. The same engine was sold to Jeep and used in the Grand Cherokee but with extra emission controls like urea. If I worked at Jeep or one of the 3rd party testers I would’ve made a lot of noise about VWs lack of a urea tank.

ummonk 8y ago

>To think that cars could use diesel engines, be cost-competitive with gasoline-fueled alternatives, AND pass the ridiculously-low emissions standards that lawmakers have arbitrarily decreed was simply wishful thinking. The emissions standards are perfectly sensible for maintaining good air quality. It definitely looks like it is wishful thinking for diesel engines to meet those standards and be cost-competitive with gasoline-fueled alternatives, but there is nothing wrong with that. Gasoline engines may simply be the more suitable technology for passenger cars.

Reason077 8y ago
> It definitely looks like it is wishful thinking for diesel engines to meet those standards and be cost-competitive with gasoline-fueled alternatives The technology that would have brought "Dieselgate" diesels into compliance with EU emissions rules was said to cost manufacturers something on the order of US$100 per vehicle: Selective catalytic reduction (SCR) with a refillable AdBlue (urea) tank. However, prior to Dieselgate there is alleged to have been collusion between the major German automakers and a secret agreement not to install it on small vehicles. This collusion, rather than the emissions cheating itself, is the focus of ongoing criminal investigations in Germany. (Cheating on emissions tests itself was not actually illegal in Europe, because the legislation was created with loopholes). As of 2019, AdBlue is becoming common on new small diesel vehicles in Europe.
- alkonaut 8y ago
  The Euro6 standard was launched back in 2014, following the Euro4- and 5 standards that most of the diesel-gate cars adhered to. Most cars manufactured from around 2016/17 are Euro6, and as far as I’m aware Urea tanks are in use on most or all. I honestly don’t understand why it would have been an issue to have it before. My diesel tank is 65L and it takes me over 1000km. Even if they had made a 10L Urea tank and shrunk the gas tank to make room for it, the range is still more than enough. Filling it takes 5 minutes once every 1-2 years and costs about the same as windshield wiper fluid. Can’t see why that would make the car unappealing either.
  - 8y ago

topspin 8y ago

"Excuse me, but what more did the author expect the government to do?" It is not some outrageous expectation that the $8,000,000,000+/year, 14,000+ employee EPA and/or DOT independently verify the real world emissions performance of passenger cars and other vehicles. The cars were so grossly out of compliance that anyone with a ordinary field emissions testing machine could have caught it. If, as is very likely the case, the regulators had no technical resources among their hordes of lawyers they could have asked any number of publicly funded universities to perform the actual investigation and go beyond the agreed upon and easily fooled test regime. The discovery was actually made by US academics with very limited financing. This institutional pencil whipping is SOP at EPA. GOA had a gasoline powered alarm clock (among other improbable devices) Energy Star certified as part of an investigation in 2010. Energy Star certifications are literally pencil whipped through an automated system with no human review. When the EPA found itself answering for their part in the emissions scandal in public hearings there was no defense. They didn't even try to cite limited budgets[1] -- the go-to excuse every time some regulator comes up short -- as a cause. They just failed. That's difficult to accept for some, and so all manner of rationalizations are employed to dilute that simple truth. But I'm not among them. [1] https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4787386/blaming-budget https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4787386/blaming-budget

TheRealDunkirk 8y ago
I still shake my head at this. If you wrote laws that said manufacturers of a particular thing had to do X, and expected them to adhere to it internally, and then paid expert testing facilities to validate those results, why would you EXPECT that you would have to do additional testing to validate the validation? And further more, why would you think that merely testing the test would lead to a different result? You can say that the Euro V is "not representative" (as someone else did in this thread) of normal driving, but the FTP test's torque and RPM curves were lifted from real-world driving through hilly areas. It most definitely is representative. I don't know about the Euro V. So I don't get it. In this scenario, what people are asking the EPA to have done was load up vehicles with mobile emissions equipment (which is a very difficult thing to do, by the way), and validate that the TEST ITSELF correlated with real-world driving. Granted, this is an interesting exercise, but one that I would expect the EPA to - again - pay someone else to do. Given the engineering that went into the spec on the US side, I wouldn't expect that this was something they should have needed to do. You can say that they were the regulatory body in charge of this, and therefore should be responsible for catching cheaters, but I don't see how a reasonable person can find that the EPA was intentionally negligent in this matter.

stefan_ 8y ago

Why do you think escalating emissions standards exist? The entire purpose is to gradually retire whole technologies! It is essentially deprecation. The ultimate goal is always reduce to zero, you will find very few emissions in our continuous world that are somehow safe at arbitrary cutoff X but unsafe above.