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It's going to be difficult to prove that VW cheating led to asthma deaths and pollution. It's easy to say that VW is the root of all evil, but the most popular
by Glawen 7y ago
It's going to be difficult to prove that VW cheating led to asthma deaths and pollution. It's easy to say that VW is the root of all evil, but the most popular vehicles sold in the US are pickup trucks, which have a diesel engine variant.
But pickup truck are not classified as cars, so their emissions were complying to the higher truck limits of 0.4g/mile of nox, unlike VW which was supposed to comply to the stringent car limits of 0.07g/mile. And of course they found that cummins diesels also cheated (less blatantly).
And anyway, the US is still the biggest contributor on earth of air pollution, and I doubt that it comes from the few VW vehicles sold there
- bumby 7y agoThis is an interesting point, but I need to dig more on it. On the surface, trucks significantly outpaced car sales in the U.S. [0]. But there's some added nuance needed. Only 13% or so of trucks are diesels [1] and the sales numbers include SUVs as trucks. I personally don't know of a single person (or model for that matter, although I'm sure they exist) who drives a diesel SUV. The numbers are further complicated because SUVs used to be classified as station wagons in the U.S. U.S. emission laws used to heavily favor gasoline vehicles vs. diesel although I think this gap has narrowed recently. I believe the converse is true in Europe which is why there is a disparity between the regions in terms of diesel usage [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/199981/us-car-and-truck-sales-since-1951/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/199981/us-car-and-truck-... [1] https://news.pickuptrucks.com/2018/09/diesel-pickup-sales-are-revving-up-study.html https://news.pickuptrucks.com/2018/09/diesel-pickup-sales-ar...