Trump's EPA Budget Would Eliminate Emissions Testing - Can The Automakers Be Trusted?

The Trump administration would nearly eliminate federal funding for the EPA's budget for light-vehicle emissions and fuel-economy testing but will seek to raise fees on the auto industry to pay for some testing, a government document shows.

The cuts would slash by more than half the staff of the EPA department that conducts vehicle, engine, and fuel testing to verify emissions standards are met and mileage stickers are accurate. The department's work helped lead to Volkswagen AG's 2015 admission that it violated vehicle emissions rules for years.

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TheSteve - 4/5/2017 12:49:45 PM

-1 Boost

Who need facts when you have a powerful marketing machine? VW is just one example of a car maker telling you one story (e.g., "Clean Diesel" ad campaigns) while doing something very different. Take away the EPA's independent testing and replace it with The Automakers' Honor System. What could possibly go wrong?

TheSteve - 4/5/2017 4:43:22 PM

+2 Boost

joneshamilton: You seem to have bought into the belief "less than 100% perfect = ready for the scrap pile." I don't share that belief.

VW's excessive emissions were discovered by chance, by two vacationing (but obsessive) emissions analysts from the Far East (India, I believe). Without an EPA to go to, I doubt telling VW would have made much of a difference. Without the clout, will, and resources of the EPA and CARB to then go after VW (a wealthy and powerful Giga-Corporation), investigate them, and prosecute them, it's doubtful that the two emissions analysts' discovery would have amounted to much.

The Administrator of the Republican Party's changes aren't designed to reduce pollution. They're designed to make it easier for big business to make more profit. On that, they will succeed.

SanJoseDriver - 4/5/2017 2:41:46 PM

+2 Boost

Emissions testing will be irrelevant in a decade or two anyway, don't think this would impact much in the long run.

MDarringer - 4/5/2017 11:22:21 PM

+1 Boost

Amen

RandumAxis - 4/5/2017 10:42:14 PM

+2 Boost

Not that facts matter these days, but it wasn't an emission analyst from the far east, it was a non-profit in the US:

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-34519184

"I'm just a simple engineer from Michigan," says John German, the man who helped discover the Volkswagen emissions scandal. John German is the US co-lead of the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to reducing vehicle emissions. To put it simply, Mr German and his team abandoned standard emissions lab tests and instructed researchers to take their cars - a VW Passat and Jetta, and a BMW X5 - out on the roads to simulate ordinary driving conditions.