Cool. Thanks. I think I either figured it out or maybe launched a new satellite to orbit Pluto.
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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.
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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? |
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For those that fairly passed the official tests, yet exceeded limits on the road, the fault lies with the law makers. Quote:
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. |
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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. |
Or just stick with the current system, but take away 14% off the final figures. The industry average is 86% by that I mean on average, cars get 86% of the official figures, some less some more. Tends to be the modern cars with the bigger discrepancies, with all the fuel saving tech that works wonders in the lab.
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A Much Improved Fuel Economy Test Cycle
In my view, if we had fuel economy tests performed by a separate agency, rather than by the manufacturer on "the honor system" (trust me, I'm doing it exactly like everyone else), we'd at least have more comparable numbers. And as trollbait said, getting everyone to agree to the same methodology is the hard part. |
Government tests are better than reviews and user reports for comparing different models' fuel economy. The others simply have too much variance in the road and weather conditions to be of value.
Having an actual neutral party do the testing would be nice, but the people wouldn't want to pay for it. The EPA only tests about 10% of the models available, because that is all they can do with the resources they get. |
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There would be all sorts of methodology details to work out, but it could result in a dramatically improved system. I'm sure the manufacturers' lobbyists will oppose anything other than self-testing honor-system, which is what we have now, and why we have the scandals we have now. |
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What you propose is close to how meat inspections are handled in the US. The inspecting is handled by the USDA, but the cost doesn't come out of the general tax revenue of the government, but by fees paid for by the meat plant. There is enough layers between what they pay, and the meat inspector, that there shouldn't be any conflict of interest. The issue applying that to the EPA for car testing is in the needed facilities. It was years before the EPA got a 4 wheel test dynamometer. Before that, they had to physically disconnect one set of wheels on AWD cars for testing. The EPA has some pretty strict rules, that were recently clarified, for the condition of the test car, including the amount of wear on the tires. Much of what NEDC allows isn't under those rules. Then the EPA does spot testing of a sample of models available, and reviews the data submitted by the manufacturer. The only shady bit is that the EPA allows a hand built car to be tested. The reasoning is to allow testing to be done before production gets under way. The cars can't be sold without the window sticker. |
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https://badges.fuelly.com/images/sig-us/421548.png |
At least here in the states the term 1/2 ton or 1 ton doesn't really mean a lot. The one ton van I had with Fedex would actually carry about 3,500 pounds. A fair bit of that was used up by a full tank of fuel and my overweight but even all in and ready to go to work I could still carry 2,900 plus pounds legally.
I never carried more than about 2,250 except for one time I took 3,142 pounds 11 miles when the shipper claimed it was 1,800 pounds. I knew it was more than that but without a scale I didn't know just how much until I got to Fedex and they weighed it. |
I just measured the distance from the rear axle housing to the bump stops to determine how much weight I was carrying, after being on the county's scales with myself and 6 gallons of gas and being within 50 pounds of max gvw. It came to 1.5 inches on my 99 F150 (v6 manual stripper work truck, bought new for $13.5k).
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