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You generally have the right to repair cars now... though the penalties for violating the clean air act are rather hefty. I'll also point to Illegal Tampering

• gjsman-1000 4y ago
  > I furthermore, consider the "hate EVs" because of emissions standards for diesel vehicles to be completely irrational. It's easy to waive your hands and call it irrational when it has never happened to you. If you want to experience the potential consequences for yourself, I dare you to drive from NY to LA (~2800 miles), while never exceeding 35 Miles Per Hour. Not once. Never. Enjoy the trip - you'll be almost entirely on backroads the whole way. That is the potential consequence (taken to an extreme) that Diesel truck owners live with, every day, because of emissions. Irrational? I'd say completely rational - it's ridiculous to have that sword hanging over your head, that a sensor will just blow and you're stuck. If it happens to you, you want to rip the arms off any politician in the area. Edit: As for the New York Times article, imagine if you are a business owner, delivering a product a few states away, or even just a few hundred miles. My dad, if it was not illegal, would have immediately went and did exactly as that article described, because that would guarantee that can't happen, which is important because he can't afford for that to happen. This isn't because my dad is heartless towards the environment - he'd pay $25 or $50 for a day-long emissions exemption (donated to, say, CO2 capture) to the 35MPH limit so he could rest assured that he has a quick way out if something goes wrong and he won't be trapped in the middle of nowhere.
  • shagie 4y ago
    From the post: > And then we wonder why some people hate EVs I consider that irrational. The issues with difficulty to repair the emissions systems on diesel vehicles should be something to complain to the vehicle manufacture - not the clean air act itself just as the ire of "can't fix a phone" should be focused on Apple rather than people who use a dumb phone or have a pine phone.
    • gjsman-1000 4y ago
      This is not a good argument if you have watched diesel truck progression. Even if it was easier to repair, the emissions standards are what partly caused this design mess in the first place, as they were the only reasonable way to meet the standard (all diesel trucks right now are suffering design issues like this), so it absolutely takes blame. Diesel trucks were only designed like this because of the emissions standards. Imagine a legislature mandated that all smartphones must be watertight to 200 meters deep, no exceptions. They must also be no thicker than 1/4" of an inch, no exceptions. And then if, for example, all the smartphone makers used adhesive instead of screws to do that. Your argument is that the smartphone markers are to blame for the adhesive, not the legislature. I would argue that it really is the legislature's fault. Edit @scratcheee: I would first look over how much damage the vehicle actually causes the environment and whether the standards are reasonable. Look up Leaf Blowers vs Diesel emissions for example - it's really ugly how unfairly biased towards Leaf Blowers and other small engines the emissions standards are. They can have absolutely absurd emissions by comparison without any restriction. (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/25/opinion/leaf-blowers-california-emissions.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/25/opinion/leaf-blowers-cali...) (This is another reason why, if your vehicle was shut down due to emissions, knowing that a leaf blower is doing more damage is even more infuriating and destroys credibility and faith in the standards.) After that, assuming that the standards aren't moving downward, I would have a self-service daily exemption system. Basically, send $25 or so to some complaint CO2 capture or similar organization, get a code, punch code into truck, get exception for the whole day. Obviously this adds up ($500+ a month assuming normal weekdays), incentive enough to get it fixed soon. My dad would be the kind of person who would be greatly relieved - because modding your truck to ignore emissions is awfully tempting whenever planning a long road trip. Just knowing you wouldn't be stranded if something went wrong is enough to kill the temptation. Edit @lcnPylGDnU4H9OF: Neither myself, nor my dad, bear ill-will towards EVs. Any ill-will towards them is your misinterpretation of the argument. We are, however, arguing that the stringent and very flawed enforcement of emissions standards undermines the credibility of all emissions standards, as well as faith in EVs and other marketed-as-environmentally-friendly solutions. And that, therefore, blame can be shared both ways when we see people opposed to EVs and stricter emissions standards.
• londons_explore 4y ago
  > Illegal Tampering by Diesel Pickup Owners Is Worsening Pollution The solution to this is not to make tampering hard or illegal, but instead to simply have random spot checks and hefty fines for those caught doing it. It would work like this: * The truck detects tampering has occurred, and pops up a warning (repeated once a month) saying "Warning: Your emissions system may have a fault, and should be checked by a professional. Driving a vehicle that does not meet emissions laws could incur a fine of $10k." * Each state trains a few police officers on use of a rolling road and emissions checking equipment. They pull vehicles over at random and test them. They issue large fines to those who don't pass the test (with a big discount for those where the emissions failure appears to be due to neglect rather than deliberate tampering). * Publish in local media stories of those caught, include figures of how many people air pollution has killed in the state. Make sure you get some quotes from the mother of a trucker who has died from lung cancer, etc. Soon far fewer people will be modding their trucks...
  • bluGill 4y ago
    > The truck detects tampering has occurred, and pops up a warning (repeated once a month) saying "Warning: Your emissions system may have a fault, and should be checked by a professional. Driving a vehicle that does not meet emissions laws could incur a fine of $10k." This is impossible. Anyone who can figure out how to modify ECU programming (this isn't trivial) can figure out how to turn off that notice.
    • londons_explore 4y ago
      Of course. But now they can't claim they didn't know that DIY replacing their exhaust pipe with a 'cheap' one was going to make the emissions illegal. Any garage doing this for their customers will also have a harder time in court when they try to explain to the jury that they deliberately hid a message intended to notify their customer of illegal emissions.
      • bluGill 4y ago
        If your car violates emissions the check engine light will come on. Isn't that enough - why do we need a new light for this? The scan tool will tell you why the light it one. Note that there is no general way to tell the difference between replacing replacing parts that violate emissions with the correct parts failing. That takes a mechanic looking at the sensor values and checking the entire system to see why a sensor is out of range. Besides most of the above emissions changes are specifically about changing the programming of the ECU. While you can make mechanical changes, they typically only have a small effect and so you wouldn't notice. However if you change the ECU programming you can get a lot more power out of the engine - at the expense of engine life and emissions. Which is why I say that the only people doing this to their cars will just turn off the code that turns that light on: they are already changing the code of the ECU.
• tristor 4y ago
  I don't hate EVs. I do think the way emissions standards are applied to vehicles are very stupid and actually counter-productive. The grandparent to my comment makes good points about diesel vehicles, but it's not just diesel vehicles, it's also gas cars as well. I own a small sports car. This car is designed to only run on 93 octane gas, and has three stages of catalytic converters due to emissions standards, as well as related sensors. Many parts of the US do not have 93 octane gas, only 91 octane gas, which is possible to run in the vehicle but causes it to run worse than it otherwise would and isn't great long-term. Additionally, it is extremely underpowered given its engine specifications due to the emissions controls. If I were to illegally remove the catalytic converters and instead run resonators (for sound tuning and volume reduction) and program the ECU with a module to support using ethanol fuels, I would actually reduce the emissions output while ensuring I have effectively higher octane fuel and produce 30-40 more horsepower at the wheels. Yes, removing emissions devices can actually make a car /more/ efficient and reduce emissions if done correctly. Unfortunately, the EPA has decided that people that want to do this are horrendous criminals and any shop assisting them or importing parts is doing crimes, and has made it their mission to shut it down. So the EPA and our stupid legislation ensures my car is less efficient, undergoes more wear, and sounds worse, in order to abide by emissions standards.
  • fomine3 4y ago
    I don't know why EPA should care such people. Driving a car is a privilege. Also, net CO2 emission is decreased by bioethanol by theory, but it still emits toxic materials that should be caught by catalytic converters.
  • greyhair 4y ago
    The catalytic converters reduce unburned hydrocarbons and reduce oxides of nitrogen. No amount of 'tuning' will every achieve that. So your statement on reducing emissions by removing the catalyst is provably false. People under 60 have no idea how crappy the air quality was in the late 1960 through 1980. And it really didn't improve much until the mid 1990s, when most if the old cars finally aged out and left the road.
  • tristor 4y ago