EA288 confirmed across the board by year end

Blonde Guy said:

So, where we are now saves 160,000 lives per year compared to unregulated exhaust.

In 2020, the standards would save 230,000 lives per year.

It looks like we are nowhere near the line of diminishing returns, and that several more generations of pollution control regulation would be desirable. How will we know when to stop?

The new regulations save 70,000 lives per year, and raise the cost of a car by $1200, all of which comes back in fuel saving. What if it was only 700 lives per year? Would it still be worth it?

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This is a bit distorted.

The standards as they are now WITH THE VEHICLE MIX THAT WE HAVE NOW (including older vehicles that meet older standards) might save whatever amount of lives.

Removing a pre-1996 vehicle from the roads removes more pollution than you could ever get by going more stringent than today's (or, perhaps, Euro 4 standards some time ago).

Illustration of the concept. You have 10 old baseline-case cars on the road. Each one emits, say, 100. It doesn't matter what that represents. Total car emissions are 1000. Total other emissions from other sources (regarded as uncontrollable in this mental exercise) are also 1000. Total nasty stuff in the air, 2000.

Replace one of those cars that emits 10. Total emissions are now 1910.
Replace one of those cars with something that emits 0. Total emissions are now 1900. Scarcely any difference.

Now replace ALL of those cars with something that emits 10. Total car emissions are now 100. Big difference. Combine with the uncontrollable other emissions and it's 1100. A little less than half a reduction. Not bad.

But perform the impossible and replace all of those cars with something that emits 0. Still have 1000 units of crap in the air ... not much improvement.

Now for the wrench in the works. Suppose it costs 10 units of crap in order to manufacture that car that emits 0 because you have made the manufacturers bend over backwards and done something that is essentially impractical in today's technology.

Oops. That further reduction to 0 has actually gotten you nowhere (and cost a whole bunch of money in the process).

Excellent points. To piggyback a little ....... revisiting the "cash for clunkers" program, the idea helped remove some of these "crap" vehicles from the roadways. The upside was it replaced these vehicles with newer vehicles that pollute less. The downside is that inevitably when the goberment enters the market the price rises (ie the existing incentives were reduced) as the program moved along.

In essence, the cost factor (ie why people choose to drive older vehicles) cannot be addressed solely by the goberment. Additionally, adding more cost for emissions equipment at this juncture tends to lessen the ability of people to want to transition from these older vehicles into a new vehicle --- price sensitivity. Excellent economic issues......

That's another good point. To continue the above mental exercise, if the car that emits 10 is affordable by everyone, then it's feasible to replace all of the 100-emitters (except the odd rare one to be kept for posterity - but these cars are hardly driven, so they don't really matter).

If the car that emits 0 is so expensive that (essentially) no one can afford it, then none (almost) will be sold. So people keep their old cars on the road. Result: no progress - and counterproductive (by a lot) compared to the case where a slightly-higher-emitting, but affordable, solution is implemented.

Perfection is the enemy of the good.

And then you get into the whole, emitting 100 of a certain pollutant (such as NOx) is actually better for the environment than emitting 10 or 0, but emitting any more than 0 is considered bad - not because of the environmental harm that the non-zero emitters supposedly cause, but because the higher emitters are also more efficient implementations of a certain technology (internal combustion) that the legislature doesn't want to succeed, and banning the higher emitters reduces the efficiency of that technology.

Question . In the mk6 tdi's we have a dpf that catches the soot so it doesn't go out the tail pipe correct ? But when in regen is all that soot just being burned off and then going out in to the atmosphere anyway ? Along with the post injection as well ? Wonder if one would fail a smog test if an active regen occurred during the test ?

It's being burned off in a way that it doesn't go out into the atmosphere as soot - well, at least not as big particles, I forget whether it turns into microfines (if it does, then the DPF is a hilariously misguided idea), or actually gets broken down into something else.

So dumping diesel fuel onto a superheated exhaust component is cleaner than combustion ? Sounds kinda fishy without knowing all the details , but if getting around emissions testing was the goal, burning all the crud off all at once would be one way lol!!

bhtooefr said:

It's being burned off in a way that it doesn't go out into the atmosphere as soot - well, at least not as big particles, I forget whether it turns into microfines (if it does, then the DPF is a hilariously misguided idea), or actually gets broken down into something else.

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I certainly don't understand how burning something twice makes it cleaner either.

The way I understand it is most of the nasty stuff comes from incomplete combustion hence reburning can transform some of the nasty stuff into something a little better. Perfect combustion would produce nothing but carbon dioxide and water. This could only be achieved though by feeding pure oxygen to the motor. Of course that is very unlikely to happen. Instead we use regular air which contains many more compounds than just oxygen. All these compounds get transformed by the heat and pressure inside the engine chamber.

Soot gets trapped in DPF and turned into ash during regen. Ash stays in DPF until. . . . . .

Soot is condensed, unburned crap. Ash is what's left of the unburned crap after post combustion incineration .... The byproducts of incineration minus the captive "particles" are still there .... Particles will fall to the ground, gasses will rise to the sky !

pknopp said:

I certainly don't understand how burning something twice makes it cleaner either.

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Soot is particles of unburnt carbon and heavy mangled hydrocarbon molecules which have been partly broken down, lost most hydrogen and polymerized into dense hard gunk.
If that goes out in the air and gets into your lungs, it will stick there and your body will have a very hard time to eliminate it. Most often it will just encapsulate them and they stay with you forever (or until one of them cicks off a tumor formation).
Bigger particles can be less dangerous because they dont go so deep into the lungs and air pipes have mechanisms to eliminate dust. The very small ones will get nested in betwee the cells of the lung tissue, and will eventually poison some cells enough to cause a tumor.

If you burn them at sufficient temperature and with sufficient oxygen, they burn completely to carbon doxide. So what you see in the exhaust during a regeneration is that the temperature rises and it's richer in CO2 for a while.

There was a study in Europe a few years ago that showed that particle number emissions increased substantially during regen, but the PN was still less than the Euro 5/6 limit of 6X10**11 particles/km (Karlsson measured 1.39X10**11 particles/km in this study (http://www20.vv.se/fud-resultat/Pub...100/Publikation_000076/MTC5505_Slutraport.pdf - page 19)).

Thanks for the explainations.

thebigarniedog said:

Excellent points. To piggyback a little ....... revisiting the "cash for clunkers" program, the idea helped remove some of these "crap" vehicles from the roadways. The upside was it replaced these vehicles with newer vehicles that pollute less. The downside is that inevitably when the goberment enters the market the price rises (ie the existing incentives were reduced) as the program moved along.

In essence, the cost factor (ie why people choose to drive older vehicles) cannot be addressed solely by the goberment. Additionally, adding more cost for emissions equipment at this juncture tends to lessen the ability of people to want to transition from these older vehicles into a new vehicle --- price sensitivity. Excellent economic issues......

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Cost is not a factor - there are plenty of well made fuel efficient cars that are very affordable.

The auto industry always throws out exaggerated costs for proposed pollution or efficiency technologies, and then grudgingly adopts them at relatively modest cost after they lose the argument.

Imagine what the atmosphere would look like today if the clueless, bloated, incompetent, anti-business big government bullies didn't regulate fuel efficiency and pollution standards.

I like breathing clean air. It feels good.

timwagon said:

Cost is not a factor - there are plenty of well made fuel efficient cars that are very affordable.

The auto industry always throws out exaggerated costs for proposed pollution or efficiency technologies, and then grudgingly adopts them at relatively modest cost after they lose the argument.

Imagine what the atmosphere would look like today if the clueless, bloated, incompetent, anti-business big government bullies didn't regulate fuel efficiency and pollution standards.

I like breathing clean air. It feels good.

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I'm an avid cyclist. Every once in a while I get passed by a vintage car, say a 1950s or 60s American car or a vintage British roadster. The fumes from those things are just awful! You can practically chew the air when they pass, and it tastes and smells like unburned gasoline. Yet modern cars go and the exhaust is unnoticeable.

Nothing wrong with good robust emission controls.

Good robust emissions controls are definitely a good thing.

Overboard emissions controls, that significantly hurt efficiency, massively increase cost (resulting in older cars that actually do have bad emissions performance staying on the road longer), reduce reliability, and don't actually help the environment, on the other hand...

bhtooefr said:

Good robust emissions controls are definitely a good thing.

Overboard emissions controls, that significantly hurt efficiency, massively increase cost (resulting in older cars that actually do have bad emissions performance staying on the road longer), reduce reliability, and don't actually help the environment, on the other hand...

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The Nissan Versa meets all current pollution standards, gets 38 mpg on the highway, and costs $11,000.

I just don't buy the contention that "expensive emissions controls" are keeping older cars on the road. The lousy economy is keeping a lot of older cars on the road, not the EPA or CARB.

Well, the modern emissions controls don't really target port-injected gasser emissions all that much, except for hurting lean-burn - which would get that Versa into the 40s.

It hurts the really good stuff - DI gassers and diesels - a lot more, though.

Safety standards aren't helping matters, either - that Versa should cost $7000-8000, really.

bhtooefr said:

...It hurts the really good stuff - DI gassers and diesels - a lot more, though....

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The new Mazda3 Skyactiv gasoline direct injection engine is rated at 40mpg highway , and that number will probably go higher on the next full Mazda3 redesign.

You can have clean burning internal combustion vehicles with high mileage.

And we do.

And the Skyactiv-G that we get is 12:1 compression instead of 14:1 compression, and doesn't get the stop-start or some of the lean burn modes that the rest of the world gets.

So, instead of 40 mpg highway, it'd get 45 mpg or more if our emissions laws were more sane.

timwagon said:

Cost is not a factor - there are plenty of well made fuel efficient cars that are very affordable.

The auto industry always throws out exaggerated costs for proposed pollution or efficiency technologies, and then grudgingly adopts them at relatively modest cost after they lose the argument.

Imagine what the atmosphere would look like today if the clueless, bloated, incompetent, anti-business big government bullies didn't regulate fuel efficiency and pollution standards.

I like breathing clean air. It feels good.

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As Jimmy Fallon likes to say "Thank you, all you democrats who saw the light and voted for these regulations.

When I moved to So Cal way back in 1980 most summer days the smog was so thick where I lived you couldn't see three blocks. Now here in 2012 with millions more cars on the road I can see the mountains from my home (20 miles plus) almost everyday. Thanks, my lungs appreciate it as do my eyes.

You realize those of the other party want to roll back most of them and eliminate the EPA. Are they nuts or what?

timwagon said:

The Nissan Versa meets all current pollution standards, gets 38 mpg on the highway, and costs $11,000.

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Yeah, but then you have to drive a Versa.

I had one for a rental for two weeks last year, and there's no way I would consider buying one.

atc98002 said:

Yeah, but then you have to drive a Versa.

I had one for a rental for two weeks last year, and there's no way I would consider buying one.

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They are a modern interpretation of the Yugo and other eastern bloc ****boxes.

GTIDan said:

As Jimmy Fallon likes to say "Thank you, all you democrats who saw the light and voted for these regulations.

When I moved to So Cal way back in 1980 most summer days the smog was so thick where I lived you couldn't see three blocks. Now here in 2012 with millions more cars on the road I can see the mountains from my home (20 miles plus) almost everyday. Thanks, my lungs appreciate it as do my eyes.

You realize those of the other party want to roll back most of them and eliminate the EPA. Are they nuts or what?

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Dan, this is and has been a really good thread. Please do not crap all over it with your political writing. The only thing you will achieve is having it locked. kthnxbai

Somehow Europe (and perhaps Canada) has been able to maintain a higher quality of diesel without massive amount of pollution.

pknopp said:

Somehow Europe (and perhaps Canada) has been able to maintain a higher quality of diesel without massive amount of pollution.

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Which is why it would be advantageous to unify our standards with Europe. It would remove the artificial barriers that prevents us from getting the really cool diesels available here.

thebigarniedog said:

Which is why it would be advantageous to unify our standards with Europe. It would remove the artificial barriers that prevents us from getting the really cool diesels available here.

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Dont we send them most if not a good bit of their diesel fuel?

I'm betting VW is building this engine in part to stay competitive. BMW has a 2.0 with 180/280. This engine reportedly works very well in the new 5 series with the 8 speed auto. I'm hoping the big car/small engine trend comes to the US: at least the 528i is here with a 2.0L gasser which performs well and gets an EPA 34 MPG highway. Not too shabby for that size car. I'm guessing the diesel would do about 20% better.

More is not better always. I would have bought my Golf with a 1.6L diesel in a heartbeat. And a 1.4L Polo Bluemotion even sooner. The Golf is a bigger car than I need.

thebigarniedog said:

Which is why it would be advantageous to unify our standards with Europe. It would remove the artificial barriers that prevents us from getting the really cool diesels available here.

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Simplification of standards would also reduce costs, resulting in more choices at a lower cost to the consumer.
Free market policies seem to be primarily focused on access to cheap labor- IMO.