> It found that heavy-duty vehicles tested in Germany and Finland emitted about 210mg NOx per kilometre driven, less than half the 500mg/km pumped out by modern diesel cars that meet the highest “Euro 6” standard. However, the buses and trucks have larger engines and burn more diesel per kilometre, meaning that cars produce 10 times more NOx per litre of fuel
That is atrocious - that a single car could pollute 4x more than a large truck or bus - and it's a side of the VW emissions scandal which never occurred to me.
How did independent emissions testing not catch this - or were OBDII outputs simply accepted as accurate? The Seattle region used to have mandatory emissions testing by an independent agency, where they probe the tailpipe. This was recently ended. Were VW cars programmed to fool this testing too?
NOx isn't the only pollutant involved in localized deaths from pollution, so it's very misleading to claim a car "pollutes 4x as much as a truck" based on NOx alone.
Also, what does this have to do with the VW scandal?
Your own article explains why the cars generate more NOx per mile. They are held to lower standards than the trucks and busses after those were "reigned in" in 2011. It's not some kind of defeat device, the cars are still within regulation
> Also, what does this have to do with the VW scandal?
The entire point of the VW scandal is that their cars pollute way more than they tested. Their diesels especially - the same diesels that have been popular in Europe for decades are the ones polluting the most. And their apparent low emissions was a passive way of fighting electric cars.
The cars aren't polluting because of defeat devices, they're polluting because the standards are lax.
And this is still all NOx emissions, not total emissions.
And this whole tangent really has nothing to do with the original point. If anything is emphasizes the benefits of moving pollution generation for cars to centralized points out of the hands of the manufacturers
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/oct/21/diesel-c...
> It found that heavy-duty vehicles tested in Germany and Finland emitted about 210mg NOx per kilometre driven, less than half the 500mg/km pumped out by modern diesel cars that meet the highest “Euro 6” standard. However, the buses and trucks have larger engines and burn more diesel per kilometre, meaning that cars produce 10 times more NOx per litre of fuel
That is atrocious - that a single car could pollute 4x more than a large truck or bus - and it's a side of the VW emissions scandal which never occurred to me.
How did independent emissions testing not catch this - or were OBDII outputs simply accepted as accurate? The Seattle region used to have mandatory emissions testing by an independent agency, where they probe the tailpipe. This was recently ended. Were VW cars programmed to fool this testing too?