You donât even want to know how much it costs for a run flat replacementâŚ
My wifeâs car has them, but it kept her safe when she got a flat on her way to work one morning passing a construction area on the freeway. She was able to continue all the way to her office and have the car taken to the dealer. Cost a pretty penny, but her safety outweighs the costâŚ
Refurbished container ship in international waters? Mr. Universe of the high seas (someoneâs probably written the book already)
A multihomed hidden tor service may be cheaper and less susceptible to the whims of weather and corrosion. Keeping rust at bay with chloride ions all around is not fun.
See, youâre thinking practical engineering type thoughts (which I bow before as this is the real world) â I tend towards âthat would make a cool storyâ
OT --Iâll be brief:
I love the idea of coordinated civil disobedience. The âmarketâ --i.e. people --has a voice. Squelching it through short-sighted (at best) laws cannot be tolerated.
Seems pretty unlikely. I donât know how you evaluate the human health cost of this, but from a PR point of view, itâs pretty small potatoes compared to the immediate and more âdramaticâ deaths caused by the recent cases with GM and Toyota, especially since GMâs issue was caused by years upon years of just not giving enough of a shit to redesign one crummy little part. Sure, VW will get spanked harder than GM in the U.S. because itâs a foreign company, but given that (a) they make a decent number of cars in the U.S., (b) those cars of course mean American jobs, and (c) nobody in the U.S. government really gives two shits about the environment, this will be in no way close to a deal breaker as far as selling them in the U.S.
The two situations seem quite different: GM was neglect and incompetence. VW actively designed and installed a system to break the law and deceive consumers.
As far as human costs, it is pretty straightforward to estimate the number of vehicles, hours driven, and the extra emissions these cars are spewing. These can all be used to estimate the number of extra cancer cases, asthma attacks, cardiac events, influenza and other respiratory infections, etc. caused by VWâs willful actions. Attorneys will be putting generations of their descendants through college with the coming lawsuits. I seriously doubt that VW will stay together when this all said and done. Look for them to at least sell off Porsche/Bentley and other brands to pay for compensation.
And then there will likely be the investigations in the EU and elsewhereâŚ
Winterkornâs (VWâs CEO) statement is great: He is deeply sorry that VW broke the trust - so the cheating was not a huge problem? Corporate hubris for the win!
Youâre so cute!!!
So we have (a) a regulation which (b) is expensive to comply with and (c) produces no visible benefits of compliance at the individual level, and (d) this results in corruption.
Sweet slime-envelopâd Cthulhu, who would ever have believed it??
Because outside of being a physical irritant, black smoke (which is really just carbon) isnât that harmful to the environment.
Also, and this really applies to the US only, the proportion of passenger diesel vehicles to gasoline is fairly small. I suspect this is part of the reason why things like this are not regulated as much. And the fact a gasoline engine canât âroll coalâ, that is a diesel specific thing where you are dumping in more fuel that needed and the extra smoke/soot is the by product. Dump excess gasoline in an engine (especially one without a catalytic converter) and youâll just get that sweet overly rich unburnt gasoline smell.
I find it ironic everyone is blasting VW on this. I mean why didnât emissions testing pick up on this the first year after these cars where released? I mean, thatâs a thing we still do isnât it? Because we love the environment? Right?
No. No we donât. I pay a garage +$30 to hook my car up to a computer where it reads my ECU for ODBII codes and if there arenât any I get a pass. There is no emissions check anymore. Itâs all a crock of shit done for money. The EPA created the game and VW played it to the hilt, I say good for them. There is very little to stop me from removing or gutting my catalytic converter and modifying the sensors to fool the ECU and the EPA wouldnât be the wiserâŚ
And to who ever said isnât it wonderful we live in a time where the EPA has regulated us to have a 700+ HP Hellcat thatâs emissions compliant⌠Imagine the efficiency and power you could get out of modern designs if emissions werenât as strict. The EPA did not give us a 700+hp emissions compliant engine, Chrysler gave it to us in spite of them.
From the original article:
EPA opposed this, ironically, because the agency felt that allowing people to examine the software code in vehicles would potentially allow car owners to alter the software in ways that would produce more emissions in violation of the Clean Air Act.
I donât find the slightest thing âironicâ about this. If there is one thing the EPA has never been about, itâs individuals being able to do what they want with what they own. Their support of DRM is one hundred percent consistent.
People (kids) used to dump oil into the stacks of their gasoline-powered trucks⌠Would result in more of a bluish-white smoke like my toy train that heated up light machine oil.
This presentation suggests that OBD tests are more effective at reducing emissions than tailpipe tests. Remember, the goal is not to punish scofflaws. Itâs to reduce pollution overall, and if a inexpensive, but potentially exploitable test can be required more often than expensive, hardened tests, the pollution level is likely to improve.
They point out that Two Stage Idle Testing does not accurate measure NOx emissions-- only HC emissions. The alternative method-- loaded mode, does, but itâs pretty expensive. Given that the Volkswagen cars emit Nitrogen Oxides at an impermissible level, while hydrocarbons are not at issue, itâs not likely that these pollutants would be succesfully abated with tailpipe testing.
I can see how a load based test would be more accurate and not applicable to a consumer but why punish people for parts of the OBD system that donât involve emissions? Where I live any code will fail you or prevent you from testing, such as an A/C circuit issue. That just punishes people when in reality things like that should be filtered out and presented as an issue but a non-detrimental one.
I actually thought they were for driving through deep water, like snorkels for the air intake. But now I see their real purpose is just chrome and exhaust fueled jingoism and parochial bs.
Or doing thisâŚand yes I know people who do this - sometimes itâs better just to not ask questions.
Isnât that just chrome and exhaust fueled jingoism and parochial bs? I mean it looks like some kind of Confederate flag license plate jingoism, which is that really special kind. It all reminds me of this:
Thankfully this isnât a thing in the UK, and if anyone were stupid enough to try it the police would take their vehicle off the road faster than you can say âMOT failureâ.
But now Iâm wondering what size those exhaust pipes are? Could you fit a couple of apples down each of them to teach the arsehole a lesson?
What if this is the tip of the iceberg and theyâre all at it?
