Cool. Thanks. I think I either figured it out or maybe launched a new satellite to orbit Pluto.

If there is no painful repercussions to VW for cheating the emission regulations, they or someone else will just do it again.

The actual damage from the extra pollution was small, but the damage to diesel's reputation was big. Along with the fools rolling coal, this is another reason for the public to shun diesels in the US. While cleaning up the emissions involves more work than a gasoline engine, renewable diesel seems to be more likely than renewable gasoline. I don't want diesel cars to disappear from North American roadways because of some bad actors.

The legacy coal plants in the US are dirty because they were grandfathered under more lenient pollution regulations. Most are approaching 60 years of age, if not older. Because of current regulations it is cheaper to build natural gas plants or windmills than new coal. Natural gas has exceeded coal for the US national grid.

The percentage of coal in the US has hit a low, and it likely isn't going to make any gains. New plants are expensive, and the old ones are shutting down. Some from lawsuits over the levels of pollution they produce.

It's kind of unfair, when you think many manufacturers have been caught out, VW may have raised the alarm so to speak, but they weren't the worse offenders at all. I just read about the real world N0x tests they've been doing, graded A to H, only 6 Euro 6 diesel engines were as compliant as they should be, and guess what, they were all VW group diesels. So in the real World, the VW diesels would appear to perform better than most in terms of pollution etc. The media feeding frenzy who have witch hunted VW probably won't report this now. More info here:

New EQUA NOx emissions rating launched | Next Green Car

According to this article https://finance.yahoo.com/news/cars-t...?.tsrc=applewf, "All cars tested by UK exceeded lab emissions limits on road".

Sadly, with respect to Dieselgate, VW's crime is cheating on a useless in-lab-only test, as there is no law for exceeding lab-levels of pollutants in real world use :-( Dumb laws, if you asked me.

To me and most others, it's strikingly obvious real world driving is going to cause more pollution because the lab test is a false scenario. In the NEDC test cycle, it's conducted on a rolling road, top speed is 39 MPH and the average for the whole test is something like 29 MPH. Things like wind resistance, traffic and weather probably don't even come into the equation. For some of the test, the engine even switches itself off, they should have changed it years ago and adapted it with the ever changing car market.

That lab test is a piss-take, unhelpful bollox and tricked me into buying a car I wouldn't have otherwise touched. It is therefore in any manufacturers interests to cheat as heavily as possible. The ONLY reason I considered, then bought the i20 was the 94 mpg extra urban figure. As I would never have put any money Hyundais way under any other circumstances, they have used the fake claim as a hit and run one off blag sell on me. #@€%ers!
The sooner it has been replaced by something even slightly more accurate and truthful, the better! The US posted figures/actual figures seem comparable, can't we just adopt whatever method they use?!

Don't worry Ben, the RDE tests conducted in real world conditions are beginning next year. Some manufacturers have already started doing thier own tests to help win back potential customers put off by the "emissions scandal"

This is why fuelly is such a great site, probably the biggest collection of "real world" data you could ever wish for, car makers should take averages from here and use them instead of conducting time consuming and costly tests of thier own. Only today I was trying to get an idea of the Real World fuel economy figures for a certain car, and there it was in black and white, input by real owners averaged over almost 1,000,000 miles. What more could you ask for?

VW's crime was blatantly cheating the official test.

For those that fairly passed the official tests, yet exceeded limits on the road, the fault lies with the law makers.

The two core test cycles of the EPA are still based upon driving patterns from L.A. in the 1950's. The top speed may come close to 60mph, but the average is in the 25 to 30 range. These results are used for CAFE, and they likely aren't too far off from NEDC.

The window sticker numbers were adjusted downward from nearly the beginning though. At first, it was a flat percentage, but now it involves the 3 new test cycles to come up with the adjustment factor for the car.

So the EPA window sticker likely comes the closest to real world results. The core tests could be improved to better reflect current driving patterns for CAFE and emissions, but it will take an act of Congress to make that so.

I know Canada and Korea use the EPA test cycles, but it involves politics to get the EU to use it.

This site has some good information on the EU tests:

Mind the Gap! Why official car fuel economy figures don’t match up to reality | Transport & Environment

They do take into account wind resistence by changing the rolling road set up, but as with everything else in the test Manufacturers can modify their cars to reduce this. For example by taping up all the shut lines and increasing tyre pressures, ensuring that the pistons on the brake calipers are pushed away from the discs and anything else you can think of. On top of that the testing site has a special surface designed to reduce rolling resistence which is used when setting up the rolling road for a particular car.

Because the current test uses fixed parameters it's easy for manufacturers to optimise their vehicles to perform well in the test.

Hopefully the new testing regime will start to produce more realistic figures.

Oliver.

I have to agree. When I was shopping for a new car, I narrowed it down to an Audi Q5 3.0L diesel. I saw Youtube videos making allegations about how good the fuel economy is. Evidently, when people make claims about how good their fuel economy is, they often believe the computer-displayed value on the dash is accurate!

In any event, I then discovered Fuelly, and saw the wealth of real-world information available there. I set my expectations according to actual, real-world use, as reported by Fuelly users, rather than the reports of car reviewers (who might believe a dash readout as actual fuel economy without stating how they got their numbers and formed their beliefs), or government-mandated methodologies that might not reflect real-world use or which might be influenced by the manufacturer's cheating (e.g., VW was charged with falsifying fuel economy numbers by cutting lubricants with diesel to reduce friction, and taping up seams to reduce air turbulence).

I based my purchase decision in part due to Fuelly's users and their reported fuel economy. After getting my vehicle in May 2015 and driving it in a manner that helps me be fuel efficient, I quickly rose to the top of the Fuelly numbers, and I recently got the No.1 spot for my Q5.