PSA Group Offices Raided By French Police Amid Emissions Investigation

According to this story...

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/cars-tested-uk-exceeded-lab-160001411.html?.tsrc=applewf

..."All cars tested by UK exceeded lab emissions limits on road". Assuming it's true, we should be seeing a lot more reports that vehicles that run "clean" during an in-lab-only emissions test, have emissions that are far in excess of lab-legal level during actual use.

As far as I know, there are no laws governing emissions during *actual* use, so this is not illegal. According to law, all you have to do is pass an in-lab-only test without using a "cheat device", and you're good to go. That's a stupid law, if you ask me, because it results in "clean" labs and dirty air outside, polluted by many hundreds of millions of vehicles that have dual personalities.

THis law was done that was to be able to replicate the conditions for testing for all cars tested - something you could never do in the real world. Now - I suppose you could make a lab test more representative of real world conditions - but manufacturers have won that case in the past by complaining that the government was providing a moving target.

And to complain that it results in dirty outside air ignores that while the cars do not meet the same standard outside that they do in the lab - they are Leagues cleaner than cars from 20 and 40 years ago. The cars don't have dual personalities (unless their software does it) - they ALL exceed the Lab Test in the real world. This is the same with MPG testing.

Yet - one of the main reasons why the USA has become energy independent today is that cars use about 1/2 of the gasoline per mile today than they did in the 1970's. WE are actually using much less gasoline than people think.

Good points Tom. Both The Steve and I drive diesels with rather complex urea systems and they are light years cleaner than their predecessors and very fuel efficient for their size. I know it took Jeep a few years to get my clean diesel to meet USA requirements, and a year of tweaking as it hit the field to get to where my 2015 is today. Word is private groups have determined Jeep has a clean bill of health versus the VW situation. The standards do get tweaked as we learn more from real usage and if manufacturers are given enough lead time to develop and implement the technology to meet them they complain less.

The solution for MPG and emissions is to do steady state testing at 25, 55, and 70mph for MPG and emissions with the only correction being aerodynamics. That would simplify things tremendously.

TomM wrote "THis law was done that was to be able to replicate the conditions for testing for all cars tested - something you could never do in the real world."

That was the INTENTION, I am sure. In reality, it created a specific set of conditions, the actual test conditions, for which a vehicle's emissions systems can be tuned to pass the test. This article...

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/daimler-shares-slide-u-emissions-091040675.html?.tsrc=applewf

...talks about Mercedes shares sliding on news of a U.S. emissions investigation (Apr 22/16) because while they pass the test with flying colors, they produce far more pollutants in real life. Ditto with the cars tested in the UK.

In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice (or a lab test and real world use), but in practice, there's a world of difference between theory and practice.

@TheSteve. I am curious as to what point the increased cost of the product and decreased fuel efficiency required to market a diesel that meets a tighter emission standard would have swayed you not to buy your Q5? If it had been 10% more expensive and 10% less fuel efficient would that have killed the deal? 15%, 20% etc.

Should all the anti pollution effort continue to just go after motor vehicles, while cruise and cargo ships, continue as is. Just one of these ships in a year emits as much NOx as the USA fleet of offending VW's. Power plants are up there as well. How about home furnaces?

Vette71: I don't know what numbers ($ or emissions) I would have had to see to decide not to buy a Q5 diesel in Feb 2015, but I do know that paying the hefty premium for a 3.0L diesel over a 2.0L gas engine was not an easy decision for me.

Also, I believe focusing on road vehicles while ignoring other, much larger polluters, is foolhardy. For example, the 5 largest ships combined generate more air pollution than all the road vehicles on Earth, and that's just one example. There are many more that tell us the focus on road vehicles is motivated much more by politics, which are motivated by commercial interests and their lobbyists, than independently verifiable REAL sources of pollution. The VA Coal Lobby is incredibly powerful.

And this is the company that wants to return to the USA?