Volkswagen faked diesel emission tests, will be fined billions

[RickRoll]

Essentially:

• diesel cars produce soot and nitrous oxides, which kill people around them
• in Europe we focus on reducing CO2, which favours diesel, but doesn't factor in the deaths due to emissions
• The Americans OTOH, focus on dangerous emissions, and don't care so much about CO2

Volkswagen have spent a lot of money developing their diesel technology, whereas Japanese and American manufacturers tend to stick with petrol and hybrid cars.

It turns out that that Volkswagen cars in America far exceed the legal limits for dangerous emissions, but the car was programmed to detect when it was running on a rolling road (for emissions testing), and basically drastically reduce power and fuel efficiency, in order to cut emissions.

Now around half-a-million US Volkswagen diesel car owners are going to have their cars reprogrammed, so that power and fuel efficiency are reduced, and VW is going to have to pay billions in compensation, both to owners and the US government.

A further 10.5 million cars might be affected around the globe.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34325005

live and learn.

I did have company car eligibility back in the day, but it wasn't worth it even then (didn't drive big miles for work). Interesting that emissions are a factor.

best way to reduce emissions is of course to drive less. But UK transport policies don't encourage that unless you live in London.

4merly, those aren't the emissions in question in the VW case - cars are taxed on locally harmless CO2 (albeit a global contributor to climate change), rather than nitrous oxides and soot, which cause deaths in the vicinity of where they are produced. Cars with very high tax due to high CO2 emissions - petrol V8s - actually emit less of the nasty stuff than lower taxed disesl cars.

The problem with VW is that their cars emit more soot and nitrous oxides, not to do with co2....

Sky News talk about 'the faulty engines'. They're not faulty are they? They are the engines which have been used to commit fraud, if anything they are the fraudulent engines. I know it doesn't have the same ring, but it's more accurate. I don't like that they are minimising this.

It is all very strange. Governments and leaders seem to have known about this for a long time and all of a sudden it was broken. You have to wonder if there is anything political behind it.

I am appalled by the VW issue particularly as I own a bluemotion one. However from my observations of driving round my local town there are more obvious smelly fumes from other makes of car and vans. I followed a van with black smoke coming from its exhaust this morning and had to turn the air con off while I followed it. This happens on an almost daily basis. Why aren't vehicles with obvious fumes given hefty fines? Are these modern VW cars actually giving out more fumes than older diesel cars? I am as keen as anyone for VW to fix their affected cars promptly. However I think that even if all the VW cars were fixed tomorrow you would still see a whole load of other cars giving off obvious fumes and what is being done about them?