Re: VW caught cheating emissions tests
apias:RC:Good question. The EU has already acted (actually before the scandal): From 2016 on, some real world driving tests are required. This may actually put a lot of turbo charged and Diesel operated engines under a lot of pressure, some may even disappear. ...
This is actually a very interesting point. One could almost consider a turbocharger, particularly when applied to a small, low-power engine (not so much in the case of, say, a 911 Turbo) a "defeat device". The whole point of manufacturers going to TC engines is that it allows them to meet emissions and mileage standards, which have not, to date, been tested in real world conditions. Driven in real world conditions, most of these TC cars are not going to deliver anywhere near the mileage set in sedate test conditions, nor are emissions likely to be as tested. So, if the testing changes, what is this going to do to the strategies that nearly every automaker have adopted for meeting fuel economy standards?
Is Hybrid technology going to, overnight, become more or less mandatory in order to meet fuel economy and emissions standards? (Although, plug-in hybrids and all-electric cars are, in a way, "defeat devices" themselves, since they avoid the emissions issue altogether by pushing it off on someone else, the electric utility companies.)
Industry standards, including emissions tests or crash tests, have up until been based on the "science of the possible".
By that I mean, the standards have been set so that it is feasible to achieve them with existing science, though it might well involve using special measures which cost more, like catalytic converters or strategically strengthened passenger cells and deformable crush zones. As know-how improves, test standards can be made progressively tighter within the limitations of the achievable.
A car which does not sell because it cannot be built to a marketable price, or cannot even be technically built at all to meet ultra-high standards, does not save any lives.
Arbitrarily setting high standards and then installing "real world" test conditions which all state-of-the-art vehicles would be doomed to fail would also not help anyone.
As already seen in the case of EV vehicles, where emissions are currently only geographically relocated rather than genuinely eliminated, there is no viable short-term alternative to internal combustion engines.
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fritz