Volkswagen exec reaffirms commitment to diesel: ‘Now it is absolutely clean’

[kjclow]

In my opinion thinking that EVs will simply replace ICE over-simplifies the challenges we face. If we're serious about fighting climate change, our fundamental assumptions about how we live and work, what our communities look like, how our cities are configured all have to fundamentally change. Suburbs and commuting may have to go away. We may need to replace roads with something else...rail lines, for example. I don't think driving an EV instead of an ICE car gets us to the goal line. They still take energy to build and operate, they have their own harmful effects in mining battery materials, disposal is a problem, they still emit particulates. Lots of problems.

I visited Amsterdam about 10 years ago and was struck by how different transport is in that city compared to most North American cities. Below the airport is a train station. Outside the downtown train station is a huge network of light rail cars that go all over the city. Bike paths are everywhere. There's lots of room for pedestrians. People I spoke to consider driving as a second choice, not the only option.

Maybe it won't be that hard.

I totally agree with having to take a harder look at how we live and work. Your comparison to Amsterdam points out one of the greatest weaknesses we face in North America on making and using better public transportation. The majority of the European cities, and I assume other old world areas, were built as the main trade centers with walls to help protect their commerce. All roads lead to the city center, and still do.

Some US cities were built with this idea still in mind. Chicago was laid out with tunnels under the river so that all supplies would come from underground instead of street level. Idea was to free the streets for the people. That's where many of the Chicago subways started. Salt Lake City was laid out so they could turn an oxen team in the middle of the street. Most of the rest of our cities were just thrown up where someone made a campfire.

 

[turbovan+tdi]

The Lower Mainland, is a mess. No one thought about transportation, taking a bus anywhere is a nightmare and if I had to take transit to work, would take me half a day, and I work 30 km's from home.
We have no network and we keep building more and more homes, with no improvement in roads etc. We have literally doubled our population in 30 years and roads show it. Its a pain getting around.

 

[El Dobro]

Unless I worked in Manhattan, mass transportation is useless around here.

 

[atc98002]

I live in a Seattle suburb. If I worked within the Seattle downtown core, there are multiple options I could take to get there. But my office is just south of Sea-Tac airport. For me to take mass transit to work, it would take at least two transfers and at least 2 hours to make the trip. And their schedule can't get me to the office by the time I normally begin working, so I'd have to work a later shift, reducing the time I have at home in the afternoon. I likely wouldn't even get home before my wife has gone to bed.

It's 14.5 miles to drive, which is about 20 minutes early in the morning and 30 minutes in the afternoon. I'm home before 3 in the afternoon, so plenty of time to do things around the house, visit the grandkids up the street, or just take it easy.

In the US, for the time being, viable mass transportation is very dependent on location. When I visit FAA HQ in DC, the Metro works fantastically for me. I can stay in a hotel in Virginia, close to DCA for my arrival and departure, and be at the FAA building (right across the street from the Air and Space Museum) 15 minutes after leaving my hotel room. When mass transit works, it's great. But again, it's highly dependent where you are.

EDIT: I just used the King County Metro web site to see what my transit route would entail. Not as long as I thought, about 90 minutes. I have to walk to the stop closest to my home. Not too far (maybe a 1/3 mile) but it's uphill at a fair slope. Then it's three transfers (three different buses plus a short jaunt on the Sounder heavy rail) before another 1/4 mile walk to my building. OK, so kinda doable. But then I see the fare. $8 per trip. Looking at the trip home, it only takes two transfers and about 10 additional minutes. I know from experience that it will most likely add 20 additional minutes. But because it doesn't use the Sounder, the fare is less: $4.75.

So, $12.75 per day. I telework two days a week, so would pay this on average 12 days per month. $153 per month. I recognize that the federal gvmt will pay for me to use mass transit, but still. Driving my current car, a PHEV Niro, I'm spending about $12 for gas every 6-7 WEEKS, and that is covering all my driving, not just my work commute. So by driving myself, I save the gvmt over $150 per month, and myself over 2 hours a day that I'm not just sitting on a bus. This is the problem with mass transit.

 

[tikal]

It's not the price of the fuel where people see the differences at the pump. It's the added taxes. All fuels are priced and traded on a global basis these days. Sure some areas push one grade over another, but it's still on a global demand. If there is a hiccup in one area of the world, (Middle East), it effects the actual global fuel price. Some regions, like Brazil, were pushing their own local production and keeping their pump prices artificially low for years.

When I refer to "the price of the fuel" I refer to the price at the pump. Simple.

Compare the price at the pump of regular unleaded gasoline in Western Europe, Japan, China, South Korea, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and Canada vs the price at the pump of regular unleaded gasoline in the US and my bet would be that the US price is one of the lowest if not the lowest (per liter or gallon, does not matter of course as long as we are talking same units of volume).

 

[oilhammer]

While I live in the country, I do drive into the STL area every day, and the mass transit here is awful too. And unsafe. VERY unsafe. Even if it did run in a way that I could use it, I don't feel like risking a bullet wound every day, no thanks. I'll drive myself.

Fortunately none of us will live long enough to see any major sweeping changes in anything, and the population growth in our country has stagnated so perhaps some of the urban sprawl will subside. This varies in different areas of course. Some places (like St. Charles county near me) have had exponential growth, subdivision after subdivision, full of heavily financed houses that all look exactly alike, and traffic jams on surface streets every hour... and other places that people have left from and look like ghost towns (parts of Michigan are like that). And California that is on fire seemingly in perpetuity... maybe some people leaving there and going to Texas (seems to be a trend).

 

[tikal]

I agree with you. I’m just saying ICE engines are now the old solution to transportation needs. There are still horse drawn buggies today, and ICE engines won’t disappear over night either, but the EV’s are coming, and WILL replace them.

Indeed EVs are coming. What some (or many) of us are saying is that the rate of growth of EVs in North America is going to be relatively slow and nowhere to be compared to something like the smartphone revolution that started around 2007. Given everything as today in terms of cost of fuels in the US, EVs might go from like a 2.5% market share (latest data I have) to no more than 10% by 2030 in the US. Am I wrong in this prediction?

Another way to look at it. You own a Toyota Corolla, Honda Civic or similar, you commute daily around 50 to 75 miles average and you are looking to buy a similar daily driver vehicle for work. What would be your incentive to buy a similar sized EV that cost let's say around $35,000 (average) vs a similar ICE vehicle costing around $20,000? In this case we are talking about a 75% premium upgrade to pay for an EV (on the average).

Right now, in my view, neither the environmental thinking or the economical factor is there for the average American buyer to switch to EVs at a rapid pace.

 

[kjclow]

Let me add a little family perspective: My grandfather and grandmother were both born in 1898 and married in 1918. For a wedding gift, they got a team of draft horses for farming. They bought their first motorized tractor in the mid 40s when the boys did not come back to the farm. My grandparents went from horse and buggy to getting on a jet plane to see their daughter in Florida. Grandma always said that we (her grandchildren) would never see the level of changes in our lives that they did.

 

[flee]

Let me add a little family perspective: My grandfather and grandmother were both born in 1898 and married in 1918. For a wedding gift, they got a team of draft horses for farming. They bought their first motorized tractor in the mid 40s when the boys did not come back to the farm. My grandparents went from horse and buggy to getting on a jet plane to see their daughter in Florida. Grandma always said that we (her grandchildren) would never see the level of changes in our lives that they did.

Of course while it may have seemed that way to grandma, change has actually
accelerated during our generation's time. This will likely continue, barring a global
catastrophe.

 

[oilhammer]

Of course while it may have seemed that way to grandma, change has actually
accelerated during our generation's time. This will likely continue, barring a global
catastrophe.

I disagree. I think the changes from before electricity to after will be looked upon from a historical perspective as a much greater time of change. It is starting to level out now, because most all the "new" tech is not new, it is just improved and/or shrunken and/or cheapened and/or made available to far more people.

I think the changes that happened from 1850 to 2000 are pretty drastic.

 

[turbobrick240]

I'd say it's been a fairly linear (and radical)progression since the industrial revolution. The mapping of the human genome is a huge leap forward. The advances in computing power and the internet are also huge. It's crazy to think how much information we have right at our fingertips today.

 

[flee]

I disagree. I think the changes from before electricity to after will be looked upon from a historical perspective as a much greater time of change. It is starting to level out now, because most all the "new" tech is not new, it is just improved and/or shrunken and/or cheapened and/or made available to far more people.
I think the changes that happened from 1850 to 2000 are pretty drastic.

Well, grandma hails from 1898 not 1850.
By that year, automobiles were being sold, cities were being electrified and heavier-
than-air flight was already happening although powered flight wouldn't for 5 years.
Nothing in history suggests that the pace of change 'levels out'. If anything,
history demonstrates the opposite. Maybe our perception is what levels out.
Nothing in history compares to the change produced by the information revolution.

 

[oilhammer]

You must not have learned about what is now known as the Dark Ages in history class. While I certainly wasn't there, I did learn about it, and I would think most experts on the time period would agree that human advancement most certainly went BACKWARDS during that time period. Not much science was happening when you are just trying to stay alive.

 

[turbobrick240]

You probably won't find the term "dark ages" in many textbooks today . I think that brief period of stagnation/regression was mostly just a Western European phenomenon following the disintegration of the Roman empire. I think that time period may have been an intellectual golden era in other areas like the mid-east.

 

[oilhammer]

Except the xenophobic Chinese rulers for a a time stopped all exploration. Which seems to have a lot of mounting evidence to have gone on for longer and more extensively than previously thought.

 

[jmodge]

My dad was born on a farm in 1909, #5 out of 17. I would agree about the changes in living that generation experienced. The rate technology advanced in our lifetimes is phenomenal, but I don’t think it compares to waking up in the winter and going outside to crap with no such thing as a flashlight, going 10 miles into town on a horse drawn carriage with straw and a blanket for a heater. Then not even making it back the same day (that might have something to do with Grandpa’s bootlegging. Compared to electricity, forced air heat, and automobiles with clean diesels for travel. We live easy with countless options.

 

[jmodge]

Not to be critical of someone’s opinion, it’s just that I think that people of that time were more grateful and astounded to be supplied with things like indoor plumbing, electricity, natural gas, automobiles, airplanes, and shopping centers.

 

[Lightflyer1]

Wow from modern clean diesels to the dark ages! Talk about thread drift. Interesting things though.

 

[oilhammer]

I do not think if anyone today was magically transported 50 years into the future that they would be shocked or amazed by anything really. We often *think* things will be a certain way, but we've proven that it doesn't generally meet our expectations.

The telephone, for instance. A good example most can relate to. Sure, the phones we can buy today are far more sophisticated than they were a while back, but we still can use them, because they've been around a LONG TIME now. There is no shock value anymore. The first people who actually talked on a phone probably thought that was pretty amazing. Today, nobody does. And nobody thought it was amazing 25 years ago, nor will they 25 years from now. In fact, I would say a lot of people will start to push back to the pocket computer and just say "enough" and move back to basics.

Someone mentioned the human genome earlier. Mapped it, yes, but we KNEW about it, knew about genetics, we knew about DNA, and we had some understanding that these protein sequences existed a while ago. It isn't like anything was just discovered. There really have not been many major discoveries as of late, just advancements in what we already have.

Space travel has stagnated, too, largely because we can use computer controlled devices to do it faster, cheaper, and safer. But still, we HAD computers in the 1960s... we just couldn't easily fit one that could do everything a ~200 pound human could do into a package that could be launched into space.

Electric motors, the internal combustion engine in all its forms (which could be argued is an extension of the steam engine), is all pretty old.

 

[jmodge]

I pretty much agree, except the Michigan ghost town thing, maybe a southeastern deal? I guess Calumet kinda fits that, but that’s old. Just drifting away on a cold Michigan day, chilly hunting this morning

 

[atc98002]

It's crazy to think how much information we have right at our fingertips today.

And sometimes a little scary. Part of the issue is how much misinformation is available on the Internet.

 

[flee]

You must not have learned about what is now known as the Dark Ages in history class. While I certainly wasn't there, I did learn about it, and I would think most experts on the time period would agree that human advancement most certainly went BACKWARDS during that time period. Not much science was happening when you are just trying to stay alive.

Tribes that were once disorganized and lacked technology started to push back against Roman rule.
Christians that were once disorganized and lacked the means started to push against and stifle scientific thought.
And of course the Irish built their high-tech round towers that they now claim 'saved civilization'.
None of this occurred in the Byzantine world and their technology advanced along as before.
What you were taught the 'Dark Ages' were are now referred to as the 'Early Middle Ages'.

 

[bizzle]

My great-grandmother passed, peacefully in her sleep, at 101. A year and one month earlier, at her 100th birthday and family reunion, I sat down with her and asked her to explain to me, my wife, and her two great, great grandchildren what she'd seen in the past 100 years of her life.

From her perspective, things changed and had always changed and that story of change was, in and of itself, not particularly interesting. She had some cool stories about winding up the car and my grandfather playing in a field on his way to school in what is now Orange County, CA but the gist of the conversation was that change had pretty much always been constant without being revolutionary in her life. She had more to say about how to live rather than what happened when she lived, including explaining to my wife the virtues of having married for money over "love" and how that had served her well having outlived more than one husband.

In any case, I do have these kinds of conversations with my students when I hold my iPhone up and explain that the information age is a real thing and that they, and everyone after them, won't experience a world without the internet. A world without the internet was a substantive difference in terms of social relationships and global trade, in my opinion. I wouldn't compare a current model mobile phone to any phone that ever existed. That might seem intuitive to someone whose life spanned rotary phones to mobile phones but it breaks down when we all likely know examples of elderly who can't operate a mobile phone and children who don't know what they're looking at when they are shown a rotary phone. It seems about as strange to me as comparing a computer to a calculator or a scientific calculator to an abacus and conclude they're all basically the same because they can perform mathematical functions.

 

[oilhammer]

I agree the internet has changed things... but going forward (since it is already there, and pretty much a known quantity by now), there is not likely to be any breakthroughs with it. Just an enhancement and an evolving use of it. Again, like the telephone.

Our cars still are cars, travelling on roads, our buildings are still pretty much the same, there have been no major sweeping changes to any of the day to day things in my lifetime really. Which is why I think the internal combustion engine is largely at its capacity. There simply isn't anything else worth mentioning. Just some enhancements to a ~130 year old idea. If Dr. Ferdinand Porsche were alive today, he'd be able to take apart a brand spanking new engine of any kind, and be able to figure out and identify most every single part in it. He may not be able to point out the processor side of the electronic controls, but I bet he could understand pulse width modulated actuators, hall generators, potentiometers, variable resistors, etc. enough to get the gist of the rest of it. He could probably understand a Tesla, too (he did after all help invent some early EVs and hybrids). A carpenter or plumber from 100 years ago would have no problem understanding the stuff we have today.

But go back ANOTHER 100 years, and most every human there would be dumbfounded and lost with what we have today, especially anything having to do with electronics.

Bottom line is, some stuff just works, and there is no need to reinvent the wheel. Which isn't a bad thing really. But it does mean some complacency which is not always a good thing either. Like plastic. Plastic is great for a lot of things, but it is awful for a lot of others, and we need to be trying to curb how we use it and it seems to be falling on deaf ears. (just an example).

 

[turbobrick240]

Try going cold turkey on internet usage for a few days. I've done it on camping trips and it's a good reminder of what life was like just 25-30 years ago. It's kinda funny watching your friends walking around with their phones held high up trying to get cell service that isn't there.

 

[oilhammer]

I do not have internet at home, nor do I have a land line. I generally only use my phone for the rare phone call and maybe some text messaging and the occasional facepage thing. But when I am out at the "country" place (as if my house isn't country enough, LOL...), I do not even have my phone with me. It stays in the vehicle I drove down, turned off.

 

[turbobrick240]

I generally keep my phone in the house or car too. I also have no landline or home internet other than my smartphone. I think we are somewhat unusual that way. The next breakthrough in the internet will come from satellite constellations that will provide high speed internet connectivity to virtually every person/location on the planet. I'm not sure I'll like how that impacts my getaway camping trips, but it should be positive for most people in third world countries and remote areas.

 

[atc98002]

I have to carry my work phone 24/7. But I can't imagine living without a cell phone now. When I went out of state back in 1985 for my initial ATC training, the only contact I had with my wife for 3 months were letters and an occasional phone call from the training academy. I wouldn't want to go though that again. I may be 65 now, but definitely not a techno-phobe.

 

[powerfool]

@oilhammer: I am from the future... it is great.

Seriously, the stuff that was speculated about is coming. We have voice assistants, electric cars... they even have holographic mirrors that you can buy now. I have a solar roof reserved. I think in 50 years that we will see tunnels as a more common things for transport which may actually impact air travel (not ending the market, but I could see it take a hit, but the market will keep growing as the entire thing expands).

I just pulled my Model 3 into the garage for the first time about an hour ago.

 

[bizzle]

The point I was trying to convey is being demonstrated by the responses from people who share a point in history that was pre-internet. The fact that people exist on the planet who will never have that comparison, what life was like 30 years for example--that life was substantively different 30 years ago, was the example of what life was like before the car was invented or the phone was invented.

I might have misunderstood the premise, but it seemed like Oilhammer was pointing out that nothing revolutionary had happened in our lifetimes as compared to those other technological innovations and there wasn't likely to be another shift like them. The internet has fundamentally altered human relationships and regardless of some people deciding to unplug from it (or even in the most remote spaces where people don't have access to it) that doesn't change the reality of how the globe interacts now differently from how it used to. Our children and their children live in a world where the internet always existed and that has implications for how they see and understand their reality in a way that is radically different from those of us who can remember what our childhood was like and even many of our adult years.

Computing is another fundamental change that happened in our lifetimes along with the innovations it's ushered in: chief among them being medicine and AI. The people in this thread lived through at least two epidemics that are now curable: 8 people have been cured of HIV and we now have a 94% treatment rate for ebola. When you consider the span of time between those two, however, the pace at progress was staggering. It took us nearly 30 years for HIV but only 5 for ebola. Comparing mapping the human genome and CRISPR to discovering DNA's double-helix structure in the 50s is like comparing staring at the moon for millennia to walking on it in the 60s. Successfully mapping the human genome ironically kicked off an entire new branch of scientific inquiry called epigenetics (ironic in that understanding the assembly of our DNA led to discovery that it has less impact on our phenotypic expressions than we had known). Now doctors need to ask about the specifics of our gestational period along with whether our parents and grandparents expressed something like diabetes or cancer. Next stop is AI and quantum computing.

My point was to say that while it seems intuitive to retrospectively reinterpret the past and conclude that when revolutionary technology emerged everyone around it oohed and aahed (like the first telephone) but in reality it was probably looked at as odd and unnecessary. The sweeping changes it ushered in didn't develop for some time and against much resistance...just like modern technological innovations. There was a time when the internet, in the form of dial-up BBS boards, was seen as odd, not particularly impactful, and destined to wither away. Very few people envisioned what it would become and, like us sitting here thinking there isn't much space to innovate in certain tech, things aren't obvious until we're looking at them in the rear-view mirror--or we wouldn't have innovation since it would just be apparent.

That said, it's also true that specialized knowledge is arguably a different beast than it has ever been. There are a handful of people in history argued to have been able to learn everything there was to know at their time, but it's a literal impossibility to do so now. While we may have all the information at our fingertips, we don't have enough time to consume it all at this point.