
Europe's love affair with diesel cars has been a disaster - jseliger
http://www.vox.com/2015/10/15/9541789/volkswagen-europe-diesel-pollution
======
SwellJoe
I bought a diesel pickup a few years ago, specifically because I wanted
something that was less harmful to the environment (and needed a large truck
for an audiovisual company I'd founded, and now need it to haul my house
around as I've moved into a travel trailer and will be traveling full-time
again). I suppose I, too, was duped by the propaganda of the diesel industry.

I haven't been able to figure out how wildly mistaken I was in making the
decision to buy diesel over gasoline for environmental reasons. Most newer
trucks have the urea-based system to reduce emissions, but mine is old enough
to pre-date that addition.

Even with the regulations being stricter in the US for some time, am I driving
a climate nightmare despite trying to choose the more efficient option? (It
does get somewhat better mileage than the gasoline version of the same truck.
So, at the very least, I'm burning less fuel. That counts for something,
right?)

~~~
nitrogen
If your truck gets better fuel economy than an equivalent unleaded engine, you
are producing less CO2. The "40x" pollution number for the VW engines refers
to nitrogen oxides only, which are bad for people but not the climate problem
that CO2 is. Throwing that 40x number around while ignoring the CO2 and fuel
economy seems very misleading.

Unless you've set up your truck to belch pillars of soot and smoke, I wouldn't
worry about your purchase decision vs. gasoline.

~~~
tzs
According to the EPA [1] CO2 accounts for 82% of all US greenhouse gases from
human activity, and 31% of that CO2 comes from transportation.

The EPA says [2] that N20 account for 5% of all US greenhouse cases from human
activity, and 5% of that N2O comes from transportation. N2O is a more
effective greenhouse gas, with a Global Warming Potential 298 times that of
CO2.

31% of 81% is about 100 times as much as 5% of 5%, but when you then include
the GWP of 298 for the N2O, doesn't that mean that the N2O emissions from
transportation are actually about 3 times as damaging as the CO2 emissions?

That also implies that any reduced CO2 in the VW cars is not going to be
anywhere near enough to even make a dent in compensating for the extra damage
from a 40x increase in N2O.

[1]
[http://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases/co2.htm...](http://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases/co2.html)

[2]
[http://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases/n2o.htm...](http://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases/n2o.html)

~~~
nitrogen
I think the VW problem was with NO and NO2, rather than N2O. I don't know if
they are greenhouse gases, but they do cause smog and/or other human problems.

------
Isn0gud
My conception is that in the US big cars like SUVs are much more common than
in Europe and these cars have a much higher consumption of gas. That's kind of
Europes point of view. Is that correct?

~~~
pwthornton
The US is also much more concerned with air pollution that affects human
health. The EU has been much more concerned with gas mileage

Diesel is great for gas mileage, but much, much worse for human health because
of particulate pollution. It causes heart attacks, strokes and cancer.

The US is in the right here. Diesel should be phased out, and I look forward
to a day when diesel is no longer used.

~~~
jacquesm
> The US is also much more concerned with air pollution that affects human
> health.

What makes you say that? The EU has made plenty of decisions that are aimed at
improving air quality which has a direct impact on health, I don't see the US
taking the lead here, in fact there are quite a few cases where the EU has
lead and the US has definitely not followed.

There is a strong push from US automotive companies against diesel simply
because they don't really have the engines, the ones they do sell are quite
often sourced from other companies (such as Cummins, which is definitely a
fine engine). In the US diesel is for trucks and tractors and gas for light
vehicles with only some pick-ups and large SUVs available with both fuel
options from domestic manufacturers.

The VW scandal is definitely very bad for the diesel engine but it's not the
engines per se that are the problem here, diesel _can_ run clean, it's just
that VW decided to cut corners and then cheat on the tests when they found
that their corner cutting made it impossible to comply (what amazes me about
the whole thing is that it took this long to find out they cheated so
massively).

~~~
kosmic_k
Diesel can run clean, it's just they'll be far more expensive and produce far
less power than their gasoline alternatives. The entire european diesel wonder
was that engines of similar power were able to offer better milage than those
of gasoline. However this has been all due to substantially worse emissions.
For VW to bring emissions down to regulation the engines will produce
significantly less power and customers will no longer want to use them.

Simply put, this is the death of diesel for automobiles. It's just a dead end
technology that has thrived by cheating. Europe was dead wrong in their
automotive efficiency priorities and public health has suffered as a result.

~~~
jacquesm
VW is not the only supplier of diesel engines and the other manufacturers to
date have not been proven to cheat (though it may very well be that Mercedes,
BMW or some other company will end up in the same docket besides VW when all
is said and done as far as I know there is no proof of this at the present).

So this not 'the death of diesel for automobiles', though it may definitely be
the death of diesel sales for VW in the United States.

As for public health suffering: the best way to improve public health is to
promote cycling, reducing the total mileage a person spends driving during
their life is the biggest public health benefit you could score and from that
perspective whether you focus on diesel or petrol or CO2 emissions versus NOx
as the most important is time, effort and resources wasted.

I'm trying to imagine everybody that I see cycling here driving a vehicle and
the resulting pollution would be astounding, especially for short trips (when
the catalytic convertor has not yet warmed up).

~~~
kosmic_k
The performance of diesel car's in recent years has been quite literally
miraculous. If you knew a little bit about engines you would know that
something was a off for there to have been such a dramatic improvement in
power, efficiency, and emissions at no apparent cost. Diesel has traditionally
not been the most powerful choice so for the power to be comparable was very
fishy. Now just about every single diesel manufacture is being investigate
from Europe to Japan for cheating. Initial reports are already showing that
Mercedes, Toyota, and plenty of other players all have significantly worse
emissions and efficiency.

Europe is cracking down on diesel, and they're going to remove tax breaks that
cheating manufactures enjoyed. Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, is talking
about ban these vehicles from the city by 2020. This is the end of european
diesel cars.

------
grecy
For years I've wondered why North America doesn't have more diesels like the
majority of the rest of the world.

Then articles like this come along, and it's hard for me not to think there is
a coordinated smear campaign against diesel.

I have to imagine big money is involved, though I don't know. Does anyone else
feel the same way or have any input?

~~~
kosmic_k
No. The air quality of paris for example is notoriously terrible, with many
instances of worse air quality than Beijing. For a environmentally conscious
and highly regulated nation that is an absolute disaster.

Diesel has been linked to producing more byproducts that are responsible for
smog than gasoline. If anything this has all been a long well funded war by
european car manufactures to push locally produced diesel vehicles which
appear to have better efficiency than gasoline. France was swept by the trend
and now is regretting the fact that >60% of their cars are diesel powered.

Simply put this was all a tragedy of choosing wrong metrics. Europe chose CO2
levels as the important metric to try to reduce. By optimizing for CO2 they
allowed vehicles that produced 4 times more NO2 and up to 22 times more other
fine particulates which are significantly worse for human health. Gasoline or
Diesel, we still are damaging our environment. It's just with Diesel we see
more of that damage done on ourselves.

Edit:

And just as a final point, the US alone has spent $51 million for "green
diesel" VW cars. Now we know.

~~~
hokkos
Your comment about Paris / Beijing air quality is misleading, here is an
article and graphs about that :
[http://www.francetvinfo.fr/monde/asie/pollution-en-
chine/pol...](http://www.francetvinfo.fr/monde/asie/pollution-en-
chine/pollution-jeudi-l-air-de-paris-etait-plus-pollue-que-celui-de-
pekin_552085.html)

It is a one time event where the worst air quality passed over Beijing's when
it was at its best.

------
chrismealy
Every time I'm in Europe I'm amazed at how bad the air quality is. Do
Europeans just not know that it doesn't have to be that way?

With compact cities and an acceptance of small cars, going electric seems
natural for Europe.

~~~
simonswords82
Interesting, Europe's a big old place. Where have you been specifically that
the air quality has seemed poor to you and what part of the US have you
compared that against?

~~~
pwthornton
I live in Washington, DC and I'm from Cleveland (a place once so polluted that
a river caught on fire). I was taken a back by the pollution in Europe on a
vacation a few years ago. I had daily coughing fits in Paris. I walk around an
American city every day. There is a lot that European cities do better than
American ones, but air quality is not one. You can really notice the
difference.

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jhayward
This article is as much a polemic as an analysis. As a simple example of its
flaws, it suggests that gas engines should have gone the route of direct
injection to meet diesel efficiency. Guess what the effect of GDI is - much
higher NOx emissions.

It also pays short shrift to SCR, which when implemented properly can
virtually eliminate oxides of nitrogen in emissions.

Lots of mention of soot and particulates, no mention of the standard
particulate filters required on all vehicles now.

I think the commenters who are proclaiming the death of diesel are at risk of
simply confirming their own pre-existing preferences for another technology,
not so much doing objective analysis of the landscape.

Having said the above, I would agree that the regulatory environment in Europe
has failed to ensure that "clean diesel" is not an oxymoron.

