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New VW post 2008 diesels had "defeat device" software to avoid emissions scrutiny.
NY Times:

The Environmental Protection Agency issued the company a notice of violation and accused the company of breaking the law by installing software known as a “defeat device” in 4-cylinder Volkswagen and Audi vehicles from model years 2009-15. The device is programmed to detect when the car is undergoing official emissions testing, and to only turn on full emissions control systems during that testing. Those controls are turned off during normal driving situations, when the vehicles pollute far more heavily than reported by the manufacturer, the E.P.A. said.

“Using a defeat device in cars to evade clean air standards is illegal and a threat to public health,” said Cynthia Giles, the E.P.A.’s assistant administrator for the Office of Enforcement and Compliance. “Working closely with the California Air Resources Board, E.P.A. is committed to making sure that all automakers play by the same rules. E.P.A. will continue to investigate these very serious violations.”

The software was designed to conceal the cars’ emissions of the pollutant nitrogen oxide, which contributes to the creation of ozone and smog. The pollutants are linked to a range of health problems, including asthma attacks and other respiratory diseases.

The state of California has issued a separate notice of violation to the company. California, the E.P.A. and the Justice Department are working together on an investigation of the allegations.


Pretty damning behavior by VW if true. I wonder if any other manufacturers are doing similar nefarious things. :-(

Cheers,
Scott.
New how would the software know
when the car is undergoing emissions testing, compared to unusual activity during normal driving - jackrabbit starts, stomping on the gas to avoid a collision, slamming on the brakes to avoid a collision, etc?




Satan (impatiently) to Newcomer: The trouble with you Chicago people is, that you think you are the best people down here; whereas you are merely the most numerous.
- - - Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar" 1897
New It's plugged in
Serious question: When is the last time you had an emissions test, and how old was the car? Anything sold since 1996 has had the connector. They just plug you in and run the test - no tailpipe sniffer any more. I'm sure the computer knows when something is plugged in.
--

Drew
New Found another article.
VW aren't the only ones. Some manufacturers have their cars' ECU go into "emissions testing" mode when the non-driven set of wheels are stationary whilst it is apparently being driven.

Wade.
New Re: It's plugged in
Haven't been required to take an emissions test since I moved to the land of cowgirls over a decade ago.




Satan (impatiently) to Newcomer: The trouble with you Chicago people is, that you think you are the best people down here; whereas you are merely the most numerous.
- - - Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar" 1897
New Re: how would the software know
Curiously enough, I spent a year and a half working on gadgets that plugged into OBDII ports and read trouble codes. The EPA tests are government mandated and and they are supposed to work in a specified manner so they are testable anywhere. The extra private test functions (eg. oil life remaining) are proprietary and can work any way the manufacturer wants. The OBDII protocol is polled; they can tell when it's plugged in to a tester. The conclusion is obvious. The germans have a LOT of proprietary tests and other functions.
"Religion, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable."
~ AMBROSE BIERCE
(1842-1914)
New Wonder who ratted that one out...
Aprilia, ~15 years ago, couldn't get their flagship RSV Mille to pass emissions tests so the thing was sold with a neutered fuel mapping. It turned out the unrestricted mapping was aboard as well and snipping a single wire uncorked the lot. EPA was not too happy with that...
New Ouch. Seems the CARB had it figured out.
At the end of the NY Times piece:

Richard Corey, an executive officer on the California Air Resources Board, credited “dogged detective work in the lab” for the discovery of the software, which he said resulted in the admission from Volkswagen that the company was using the devices.

E.P.A. officials declined to reveal why they chose to initiate the investigation.

The Volkswagen case is not the first federal investigation into the use of defeat devices. In 2007, the federal government reached a landmark settlement requiring Casper’s Electronics, of Mundelein, Ill., to stop selling the devices, and to pay a $74,000 civil penalty. The company had sold approximately 44,000 defeat devices through its website and retailers since 2001.


Cheers,
Scott.
New I heard a similar story even further back.
Don't think it was Aprilia, but I don't remember. They met regulations by putting an extra baffle in the inlet manifold or something similar. Which was dead simple to remove and "improved" the performance tremendously.

Wade.
New Reuters: VW could face $18B in fines.
Reuters:

Volkswagen AG (VOWG_p.DE) faces penalties up to $18 billion after being accused of designing software for diesel cars that deceives regulators measuring toxic emissions, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said on Friday.

"Put simply, these cars contained software that turns off emissions controls when driving normally and turns them on when the car is undergoing an emissions test," Cynthia Giles, an enforcement officer at the EPA, told reporters in a teleconference.

Volkswagen can face civil penalties of $37,500 for each vehicle not in compliance with federal clean air rules. There are 482,000 four-cylinder VW and Audi diesel cars sold since 2008 involved in the allegations. If each car involved is found to be in noncompliance, the penalty could be $18 billion, an EPA official confirmed on the teleconference.

A U.S. Volkswagen spokesman said the company "is cooperating with the investigation; we are unable to comment further at this time."


If this wasn't some sort of error, they should be made to pay every cent.

Grr.

Cheers,
Scott.
New Are diesels even a good idea?
I've been hearing for years how Europe has access to "cleaner, more efficient" diesels. Now I wonder if they actually are better.
--

Drew
New Rolling back
Most of that was due to much lower taxes on diesel fuel compared to gas. Now that taxes are on a more equal footing, and diesel is about as expensive as gasoline, people are going back to buying gas engined vehicles because the cars are less expensive to buy.

Diesel engines are more efficient and (low sulphur!) diesel produces lower levels of harmful gases compared to gasoline, but it produces lots of soot (even without coal roller mods...). Filters were then mandated to combat that, but they still emit enough fine particulates to cause problems when an atmospheric inversion is present.
New TANSTAAFL.
Europe had better diesels than the US years sooner because our fuel had too much sulfur in it which wreaked havoc on the magic pumps, injectors and emissions systems. My 2004 TDI has a "PD" engine with each injector having its own built-in pump. Common Rail systems seem to be better in terms of simplicity and lower emissions, but they required low-sulfur fuel. We have only had that since December 2010.

(I think VW possibly also didn't want to license the necessary common-rail patents for a while, or something. They have a common rail system now.)

AFAIK, diesels sold in the US are as good as European ones now (but they still have an advantage in the array of sizes available, number of car models which offer them, etc.).

(At least as I understand it,) Due to the higher compression ratios of diesels, they naturally have more NOx than gas engines. Emissions control systems have to work harder to counteract that.

But the higher compression ratios also give you higher efficiency.

So, there's a tradeoff.

Since smog and ground-level ozone are directly created by NOx, it's a big deal if a diesel car is turning off its emissions controls.

VW really, really messed up in doing this.

Mercedes and BMW (and Chrysler and ...) diesels aren't sold as magic super MPG machines the way VW pushes theirs, so maybe they didn't feel the pressure to do similar emissions cheating. Or maybe they were smart enough to realize they'd eventually be caught and the risk wasn't worth it. But I hope CARB and EPA are checking them (and everyone else) to make sure they're not fudging their numbers all the same.

Cheers,
Scott.
New years ago in alaska diesels were exempt from emissions testing
we used to buy used diesels and drop souped up gas engines in them. A diesel notation on the title was golden
you can kill people for America at age 18 but need to be 21 to buy a beer
New It's all OK now. The CEO said he's sorry!
BBC:
"I personally am deeply sorry that we have broken the trust of our customers and the public," Martin Winterkorn said.

He has launched an investigation into the device that allowed VW cars to emit less during tests than they would while driving normally.

The company's shares were down 19% in Frankfurt by lunchtime.

VW has stopped selling the relevant diesel models in the US, where diesel cars account for about a quarter of sales.
So, it's time to punish the innocent. Find the engineer that followed the spec he was given and coded the fraud.

But, a $37,500 fine for any single vehicle is a bit steep.
Alex

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

-- Isaac Asimov
New As I read it, the $37,500 is per day of non-compliance, not per car.
http://www2.epa.gov/enforcement/rcra-corrective-action-enforcement-authorities

But that's only $110M (365 x 37500 x 8 years). But maybe they can stack the penalties on top of each other, or something.

This is a big Biden deal, and VW needs to fix it.

There was a story that I read yesterday that VW may pull out of the US market. I assume they will do everything in their power not to have to do that.

Cheers,
Scott.
New Of course, the stories explicitly say per car, so ... :-/
Reuters:

Volkswagen can face civil penalties of $37,500 for each vehicle not in compliance with federal clean air rules. There are 482,000 four-cylinder VW and Audi diesel cars sold since 2008 involved in the allegations. If each car involved is found to be in noncompliance, the penalty could be $18 billion, an EPA official confirmed on the teleconference.


I need to fully wake up before posting. :-/

Cheers,
Scott.
New Yah, what he said! :)
Alex

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

-- Isaac Asimov
New I think it's absurd to imagine that such a plan could possibly be implemented
without the full recognizance of the whole CIEIO fraternity-of-thieves. Unlike the *stupidities around ignition switch designs, at every stage of this idea, from concept to full-implementation: this was a premeditated, misanthropic and clearly illegal game, known to corporate-Many.

* stupidities like: failing to note that some people cary oodles of keys, flashlights and such in company with their ignition key, all of them dangling--I know one such as this
--so the load on key/lock slot and pin assemblies can exceed any one-key calcs of wear rates by orders/magnitude. Duh.

Let's see if they decide--based on Max-$fines alone--to throw the US/VW franchise under the (Audi?) bus ... after all, Bernd Rosemeyer got creamed in one of those original Auto Union monsters (whose handling you had to gauge while sitting like a bus-driver at the far front.) The Peoples' Car was spawned IIRC about the same time. But can Audi develop less-l33t models for the proles? (We know that BMW wouldn't even try.)
New is it?
no idea if true, was talking to a retired petro chemist who claimed that the epa's goal over the years was to make USA diesel unburnable to force manufacturers to move to a different fuel system. He spoke at length about the properties of the fuel and what the epa demanded as opposed to the rest of the world. Perhaps that is why only a few manufacturers sell diesels here, and they have to game the system.
you can kill people for America at age 18 but need to be 21 to buy a beer
New And is your "retired petro chemist" a Tea Party member?
Someone who hates the government, hates the EPA, and believes in the "free enterprise" system to work perfectly?




Satan (impatiently) to Newcomer: The trouble with you Chicago people is, that you think you are the best people down here; whereas you are merely the most numerous.
- - - Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar" 1897
New no, catholic liberal
you can kill people for America at age 18 but need to be 21 to buy a beer
New I've never met a liberal
that wanted to eliminate the EPA. He's a Republican at the least; he's just not brave enough to admit it.




Satan (impatiently) to Newcomer: The trouble with you Chicago people is, that you think you are the best people down here; whereas you are merely the most numerous.
- - - Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar" 1897
New your loss
you can kill people for America at age 18 but need to be 21 to buy a beer
New You claim to be a "liberal" and yet support a Nixon created entity?
New Hey, even crooks can do something good
once in their lives




Satan (impatiently) to Newcomer: The trouble with you Chicago people is, that you think you are the best people down here; whereas you are merely the most numerous.
- - - Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar" 1897
New Doesn't smell right.
Ebsco from 2000:

Tight Sulfur Cap on Diesel Fuel Draws Major Industry Opposition
AUTHOR(S)Hess, Glenn

PUB. DATE May 2000
SOURCE Chemical Market Reporter;05/29/2000, Vol. 257 Issue 22, p18
SOURCE TYPE Trade Publication
DOC. TYPE Article
ABSTRACT Deals with the opposition of major industries on the plan of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to require the removal of sulfur from diesel fuel. Details on the plan of the agency; Impact of the plan to the oil and trucking industries; Comment from Carol Browner, EPA administrator.


A good EPA page from that time frame with a PDF on their thinking and the proposed rules and reactions to it is here.

FWIW.

Cheers,
Scott.
New dunno about smell but sulpher burns hot, take it out harder to burn
you can kill people for America at age 18 but need to be 21 to buy a beer
New Not the way it works.
What is clean diesel?:

Effective Emissions Control Technology

Introduction of ultra-low sulfur diesel fuels for both on- and off-road applications has been a central part of the new clean diesel system designed to meet near zero emissions standards. With the introduction of lower sulfur diesel fuel, a number of exhaust treatment systems such as particulate filters, exhaust gas recirculation (EGR), selective catalyst reduction (SCR) and diesel oxidation catalysts (DOC) can further reduce emissions from diesel engines. The installation of various emission control technologies may also improve emissions from older diesel engines through retrofit capabilities. Read more about retrofit capabilities to reduce emissions from older vehicles and equipment.


Sulfur makes SO2 and other sulfur oxides when burned, which cause acid rain, in addition to wreaking havoc with emissions control systems via poisoning catalytic converters and the like.

It's not an issue with how easy the fuel is to burn.

That's my understanding anyway. :-)

Cheers,
Scott.
New kinda makes my point, regulators make the cars run like crap, what the retired guy said
you can kill people for America at age 18 but need to be 21 to buy a beer
New Um, modern diesels are great compared to, say, a 1980 Rabbit diesel.
You can't have a modern diesel with crap fuel.

I'm happy we're no longer using something approaching bunker fuel in cars any more:

Britain and other European governments have been accused of underestimating the health risks from shipping pollution following research which shows that one giant container ship can emit almost the same amount of cancer and asthma-causing chemicals as 50m cars.

Confidential data from maritime industry insiders based on engine size and the quality of fuel typically used by ships and cars shows that just 15 of the world's biggest ships may now emit as much pollution as all the world's 760m cars. Low-grade ship bunker fuel (or fuel oil) has up to 2,000 times the sulphur content of diesel fuel used in US and European automobiles.


YMMV. ;-)

Cheers,
Scott.
New Burning point is no criterion for use in a Diesel engine
https://books.google.com/books?id=5mofAQAAMAAJ&pg=RA1-PA106&lpg=RA1-PA106&source=bl&ots=-62284S8qz&sig=kfTDjWhLXn93_Q0Wb-xP3PYXb40&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CEsQ6AEwB2oVChMIyc_AtfaLyAIVy3o-Ch0tyQ-6#v=onepage&q&f=false

Published by the Maryland Refining Company in 1919. Can't suspect them of being Clean Air heathens ;-) But look at all the fun they had with high sulphur content even then...
New Neat stuff. Thanks.
New very nice
you can kill people for America at age 18 but need to be 21 to buy a beer
New The CEO is really sorry now!
VW chief Martin Winterkorn resigns!

Heard on CNBC.
Alex

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

-- Isaac Asimov
New The problem is world wide -- 11 M vehicles.
Look at your favorite news source.

Mine:
Volkswagen says 11 million vehicles worldwide are involved in the scandal that has erupted over its rigging of US car emissions tests.

It said it was setting aside €6.5bn (£4.7bn) to cover costs of the scandal.

The boss of Volkswagen's US business, Michael Horn, has admitted it "totally screwed up" in using software to rig emissions tests.
Alex

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

-- Isaac Asimov
New I'm convinced there's a joke in there ...
about Germans and gas, but I'm not going to try to figure it out.
New Here's how they caught them
http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/advanced-cars/how-professors-caught-vw-cheating?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+IeeeSpectrum+%28IEEE+Spectrum%29

“Some people have mischaracterized what our role was,” says Dan Carder, interim director of the University of West Virginia’s Center for Alternative Fuels, Engines and Emissions (CAFEE). “Some have used the phrase ‘tipped off the EPA.’ But we were just working under contract.”

The contracting organization, a European non-profit, had wanted to convince European regulators to emulate strict U.S. standards for diesel emissions of nitrous oxides (NOX). So it asked CAFEE engineers to gather data from the field. They rented VW diesels, measured their tailpipe emissions on the road and compared them to measurements on the same cars made in the lab. The discrepancies were huge.

“We presented this in a public forum in San Diego, in the spring of 2014; we said, these are two vehicles; we’re presenting what we can present,” Carder says. “And EPA people were in the audience.” Meanwhile, the sponsoring group, called the International Council on Clean Transportation, published the results online as well.


Ironic... "Here, let's emulate what the US is doing. Whoops."
Regards,
-scott
Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
New Good find!
Alex

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

-- Isaac Asimov
New What I cannot parse at all, though..
Is that--in the Century likely to be called the Age of the Hacker {Everywhere!}--these perps, none of whom could be thought to be 'stupid' in ordinary sense, imagined that the inevitable discrepancy never would be Noted ???

(And, well.. the elapsed time does tell us how close they were to ... gauging the actual Interest in follow-up-testing by ANY agency! worldwide) {{sigh}}

Imagine trying for an algorithm, next: to fully assess the damage to humans and Other life-forms this scam has created: that there's some $$-Fine is handy, but what has been any sanely-calculable Real Damage as may be added-on and whose dimension may justify also Criminal Jail-time in the slammer ... in, say Libya?



..and it's such a predictably U.S. Bizness-grade scam, too! :-0
New Interesting reason
On the two wheeled side, passing EPA regs usually means leaning things out until the motor does not run right anymore. (At one time, a certain US company's products were downright dangerous to ride because of it.)

So the next question becomes, what happens to you if you forego the "fix"? The local inspection stations are likely not going to be able to pick that up unless the fixed cars are painted blaze orange. 50 state regs, so YMMV, but up here in the sticks, very unlikely. Lets see how many of these ever make it back to a dealership. (This has shades of an issue with Radio Shack scanners, back when cell phones first came out. The originals could pick up the [unencrypted] 800 MHz cell band. Units sent in for repair came back minus the upper end of their range.)

New Maybe the EPA will update their tests, too.
Maybe if they'd kept the tail-pipe measuring as well as the OBD connection VW's tinkering might've been caught earlier.

Wade.
New one piece has been around a few years
disabling a vehicle when a payment is overdue
you can kill people for America at age 18 but need to be 21 to buy a beer
New We're gonna need a bigger probe
http://www.demorgen.be/wetenschap/-nieuwe-modellen-mercedes-peugeot-en-bmw-verbruiken-helft-meer-dan-tests-aangeven-a2470577/

In short, new models of BMW, Mercedes and Peugeot emit up to 50% more carbon dioxide under driving conditions than test conditions. At this time, no allegations of outright cheating a la VW, but rather "creative interpretation" of test specs.

As some countries base road taxes at least partly on stated emissions, this has the potential to blow up in a lot of faces.
New Interesting. Thanks.
New Four more carmakers join emissions rigging list

Mercedes-Benz, Honda, Mazda and Mitsubishi have joined the growing list of carmakers whose diesel cars are more polluting than allowed under current regulatory limits, according to data obtained by the Guardian.

"In more realistic on-road tests, some Honda models emitted six times the regulatory limit of NOx (Nitrogen Oxide) pollution while some unnamed 4x4 models had 20 times the NOx limit coming out of their exhaust pipes," the U.K. newspaper said.

It cited Nick Molden, whose company Emissions Analytics tested the cars as saying: "The issue is a systemic one" across the industry.




http://www.cnbc.com/2015/10/09/four-more-carmakers-join-emissions-rigging-list-guardian.html




Satan (impatiently) to Newcomer: The trouble with you Chicago people is, that you think you are the best people down here; whereas you are merely the most numerous.
- - - Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar" 1897
New Not the same thing
VW wrote software to defeat the test during the test.

The other carmakers are simply demonstrating that the current emissions test doesn't remotely reflect real world conditions, and seemingly (at this point) are following the letter of the law.
Regards,
-scott
Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
New Should it?
In theory it seems obvious you'd want the test to simulate "real world conditions", but why is that obvious? Real people have wildly different habits and driving styles.

The benefit of a regulation is to set a standard that everyone can evaluate their product against, and improve performance against that standard over time. Whether that standard matches any particular driver's performance is a crap shoot.
--

Drew
New Point being:
"Real world tests" not matching the results of the mandated emissions testing isn't the same thing as what VW did: they made the cars secretly act differently during the tests in order to pass them. The other manufacturers' cars pass the tests without skulduggery, but still have different performance in the wild.

VW's cars didn't have the same emissions when on the same test rig with and without the diagnostics port in use.

As I recall, there is a new test that more closely matches real world performance (in aggregate, not any one individual, supposedly). The problem right now, of course, is that the current test is so wildly unlike anything you would see in the real world as to be essentially useless, particularly when it is also used to set emissions policy against pollution targets.
Regards,
-scott
Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
New Your first two paragraphs, 100% agree, it's the third I question
Of course it's possible that the test is so divorced from reality that you can substantially increase real-world emissions without affecting the test, and that would be a bad test.

But if the test doesn't allow you to predict actual emissions, as long as it roughly identifies "more" and "less" then it can work for a regulatory lever.
--

Drew
New From what I remember, the test is that bad.
I can't find the article right now, unfortunately.
Regards,
-scott
Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
New There, fixed.
http://www.demorgen.be/wetenschap/dieselauto-s-mogen-vanaf-2017-twee-keer-zoveel-uitstoten-b54d58cf/

(Could not find an English speaking linky yet.)

As of 2017, the EU will allow diesels to emit 110% more NOx than the current norm, going down to 50% more in 2021.

:-/
New Interesting.
Google Translate's version is almost understandable.

It sounds like the rules may have been inspired by the VW cheating, but they apply to everyone (and presumably Mercedes, BMW, Peugeot, etc., couldn't meet the more stringent rules earlier).

It'll be interesting to see what the EPA does.

Thanks.

Cheers,
Scott.
New The test was going to change in 2017
They knew it was flawed and it was to be replaced with a test run under driving conditions. But that decision was already reached in May, before VW's cheating and the distance between test and reality for M-B, BMW, et al. became apparent. So now that is is clear no (European) manufacturer produces anything that is even remotely able to reach the current limit, they've opted to let the manufacturers off the hook.
New Ah. Thanks.
New BBC has you covered.
EU car emissions: Tough new tests backed:
New car models sold after September 2017 will not be allowed to exceed nitrogen oxide emission levels by more than twice the technical limit.

Car makers will have until 2019 to limit the emissions on all new vehicles to that level.

By 2020, the emissions from all new models must not be greater than 1.5 times the technical limit. The same rule will apply to all new vehicle from 2021.

"The EU is the first and only region in the world to mandate these robust testing methods," EU Commissioner Elzbieta Bienkowska said.
Alex

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

-- Isaac Asimov
     VW post 2008 diesels had "defeat device" software to avoid emissions scrutiny. - (Another Scott) - (56)
         how would the software know - (lincoln) - (4)
             It's plugged in - (drook) - (2)
                 Found another article. - (static)
                 Re: It's plugged in - (lincoln)
             Re: how would the software know - (hnick)
         Wonder who ratted that one out... - (scoenye) - (2)
             Ouch. Seems the CARB had it figured out. - (Another Scott)
             I heard a similar story even further back. - (static)
         Reuters: VW could face $18B in fines. - (Another Scott) - (3)
             Are diesels even a good idea? - (drook) - (2)
                 Rolling back - (scoenye)
                 TANSTAAFL. - (Another Scott)
         years ago in alaska diesels were exempt from emissions testing - (boxley)
         It's all OK now. The CEO said he's sorry! - (a6l6e6x) - (20)
             As I read it, the $37,500 is per day of non-compliance, not per car. - (Another Scott) - (2)
                 Of course, the stories explicitly say per car, so ... :-/ - (Another Scott) - (1)
                     Yah, what he said! :) -NT - (a6l6e6x)
             I think it's absurd to imagine that such a plan could possibly be implemented - (Ashton) - (15)
                 is it? - (boxley) - (14)
                     And is your "retired petro chemist" a Tea Party member? - (lincoln) - (5)
                         no, catholic liberal -NT - (boxley) - (4)
                             I've never met a liberal - (lincoln) - (3)
                                 your loss -NT - (boxley)
                                 You claim to be a "liberal" and yet support a Nixon created entity? -NT - (mmoffitt) - (1)
                                     Hey, even crooks can do something good - (lincoln)
                     Doesn't smell right. - (Another Scott) - (7)
                         dunno about smell but sulpher burns hot, take it out harder to burn -NT - (boxley) - (6)
                             Not the way it works. - (Another Scott) - (5)
                                 kinda makes my point, regulators make the cars run like crap, what the retired guy said -NT - (boxley) - (4)
                                     Um, modern diesels are great compared to, say, a 1980 Rabbit diesel. - (Another Scott)
                                     Burning point is no criterion for use in a Diesel engine - (scoenye) - (2)
                                         Neat stuff. Thanks. -NT - (Another Scott)
                                         very nice -NT - (boxley)
             The CEO is really sorry now! - (a6l6e6x)
         The problem is world wide -- 11 M vehicles. - (a6l6e6x)
         I'm convinced there's a joke in there ... - (mmoffitt)
         Here's how they caught them - (malraux) - (4)
             Good find! -NT - (a6l6e6x)
             What I cannot parse at all, though.. - (Ashton)
             Interesting reason - (scoenye)
             Maybe the EPA will update their tests, too. - (static)
         What I was thinking, in more detail - (drook) - (1)
             one piece has been around a few years - (boxley)
         We're gonna need a bigger probe - (scoenye) - (1)
             Interesting. Thanks. -NT - (Another Scott)
         Four more carmakers join emissions rigging list - (lincoln) - (5)
             Not the same thing - (malraux) - (4)
                 Should it? - (drook) - (3)
                     Point being: - (malraux) - (2)
                         Your first two paragraphs, 100% agree, it's the third I question - (drook) - (1)
                             From what I remember, the test is that bad. - (malraux)
         There, fixed. - (scoenye) - (4)
             Interesting. - (Another Scott) - (2)
                 The test was going to change in 2017 - (scoenye) - (1)
                     Ah. Thanks. -NT - (Another Scott)
             BBC has you covered. - (a6l6e6x)

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