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Comment by yc1010 | Hacker News Reader

"On average, two-thirds of the claimed gains in CO2 emissions and fuel consumption since 2008 have been delivered through manipulating tests"

How deep does this rabbit hole go :( Here in Ireland the motortax for cars newer than 2008 is based on CO2 emissions, if motorists find their tax rising due to cheating by car manufacturers thats an unexpected and direct cost to their wallets.

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None of this is really new, the mostly German car lobby has resisted European emissions testing on testing strict real-world usage, as opposed to testing on a roller.

Anyone who spent 10 minutes looking into this in the past years could've told you that, and it wasn't some big secret. A lot of it was stuff everyone was doing, like fitting certain tires and inflating them such that the rolling resistance is reduced. At the end of the day, there are limits to those gains and everyone does it, so in can't set you apart from the competition and once the basic manipulations are exhausted and the emissions goalposts are moved you can't make gains anymore without actually improving the car. Further most of these are for CO2 emissions / fuel efficiency, which is different from the VW fraud which was about NOx emissions.

The difference with the VW case is that VW essentially defrauded the test by building a device that measured various factors to establish whether it was being driven normally or whether it was being tested. In the former case it'd shut down (allowing 35x the legal limit of NOx emissions into the air while driving), while in the latter case it'd dampen the emissions (at the cost of engine performance, which is why they shut it off during regular driving). That's a different level of fraud, one that has very few bounds and can change results by much more than an order of magnitude, and is hugely controversial because it makes every test meaningless in the short, medium and long term and isn't practiced by everyone, and so different from manipulating tests by e.g. inflating tires which can still produce meaningful test, benchmarks and comparisons, when you start building 'defeat devices' all of that goes out the window completely.

Not a device though, just software to vary the engine regulation when the test is detected.

(Or more likely a mode that kicks in when non test driving is detected)

"if motorists find their tax rising due to cheating by car manufacturers"

This doesn't require new enforcement or new taxes - a large part of the purchase price of petrol is tax.

In the UK we pay an annual tax [0] based on the engine size or CO2 emissions of the vehicle, in addition to tax on fuel. I doubt the government will move affected cars up the price bands post-purchase as it would be politically unpopular.

[0] https://www.gov.uk/calculate-vehicle-tax-rates

Not their wallets. why should they pay for the fraud of corporates? Let the corporates replace cars .

Perhaps this is a kind of occasion where people know that things are too good to be true but want them believe them to be...

edit: typo

One way or another, regular folks will pay for it. If it's directly by paying this tax, that's straight forward. Otherwise, the company will take the hit, and the cost will flow towards stock-holders, which in general tend to be unions, 401k plans and such. How much of your 401k are you willing to lose due to that cost? How much of your parents' 401k/union pensions is OK to forfeit?

That sounds like an argument for never punishing corporations for anything, which is clearly unworkable.

Pension and 401k plans are typically diversified across a broad range of stocks, so they won't be heavily impacted by a single company's stock price dropping. On the other hand, executives and board members, who are actually responsible for the company's actions, will typically have a large amount of that company's stock so they will be much more heavily impacted by the stock price dropping.

That's not how I meant it, but I can see how that's a fair reading of what I said. I don't like that people jump onto ideas very quickly without thinking through the ramifications. I don't think a lot of people realize how wide-reaching effects from quick knee-jerk reactions can be, and how much they can actually have effects beyond the first-order ones.

Europe was really led astray when they were told that diesels were better for the environment, hybrids would have been the way to go.

Europe has 'bet on diesel' for many years while hybrids have only recently become available.

All European manufacturers except Renault and BMW are hellbent on not offering attractive E mobility solutions, despite really expensive and extensive internal research programs. We in Germany have a large numbers of Smart cars in car sharing companies that are sponsored by Daimler, but it's not yet economically viable to actually buy an E-Smart (if you've driven one, it's not bad at all).

It's strange. Europe should be a better market for electric and hybrid cars, given the higher petrol costs, but I guess the high purchase costs are putting people off.

I'd buy one if I did enough miles. It's not worth it for a few thousand a year. Even having a petrol car sitting on my drive is an expense of marginal justifiability.

The other issue is that in europe the group of people who are most likely to buy an electric car usually just bike or use public transit instead.

Hybrid cars have been available in Europe for 15 years. So not that recent.

> Europe was really led astray when they were told that diesels were better for the environment

Were we led astray? Or are we discussing the last few percentages beyond an actual advantage over gasoline engines?

The reason air pollution is so much worse in European cities than American ones is largely due to diesel passenger vehicles.

That both suprises me, do you have any sources? Honest question, both seem counterintuitive. Maybe I am actually fed enough "feelgood" information in the past.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/05/industry-...

That is an article from greenpeace about poor EU environmental standards in power stations. Sure it is bad but, it does not compare air pollution in EU vs US cities or attribute anything to cars.

See for example Paris's recent (yesterday?) "no car day" in the center. The city's usual blanket of smog is gone. France of course having the highest %age of diesel cars in its passenger fleet of any country.

Paris is one of the densest cities in the world[1], placed 6th if you disregard cities with a population of less than a million. It's the most dense large city among G8 countries. The only vaguely comparable European cities are Athens and Barcelona, both smaller and less dense. London has about a quarter of the density of Paris. The most dense large German cities, Munich and Berlin, less than a quarter. The city I live in -- part of one of the world's largest conurbations --, less than a tenth.

Statistics like these should be taken with a grain of salt (for one thing, city delimitations are fairly arbitrary), but the details are not worth haggling about: the point is that Paris is not at all representative of large European cities.

[1] if Wikipedia can be trusted on this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_population_d...

Some air pollution data here:

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/health-sapping.htm...

That goes against my subjective experience. The contribution of buses and trucks in US cities is also significant, and my sense is that EU regs on those vehicles are more stringent than US. I particularly tend to notice how much -noisier- large US vehicles are than European equivalents in a city traffic environment, which tends to correlate with lower efficiency.

Europe generally has more stringent regulation and worse pollution than the US. It's many more people in a smaller space.

Noise isn't a good predictor though, a muffler is a drain on efficiency.

Actually the VWs that were emitting 40x pollution in the US were only 10x of the Euro regs.

Eu has stricter PM limits, the US has stricter NOx limits.

http://www.hybridcars.com/will-america-avoid-europes-clean-d...

Also because US cities are much more sprawled, and are often organized in neat, efficient grids instead of having formed organically over the course of ~2300 years. Compare maps of Paris with any US city.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/sep/24/uk-france...

Yes. Optimising for c02 reductions over Nox and particulates is a monumentally stupid policy.

Co2 may have a deleterious effect in 100 years time, but is not an issue for air quality today. In any case, passenger vehicle c02 emssions are a rounding error in the scheme of things.

Meanwhile, particulate pollution and Nox are very real issues affecting millions of people today. It's stupid to push diesel over gasoline for c02 reasons.

Part of the reason VW cheated was because the USA didn't fall into this trap and allow more lax emissions standards for Diesels - all fuels are held to the same standard. So they took the Euro engines and added the defeat code.

The USA is correct on this one.

The focus on passenger vehicles is idiotic though - the amount of Nox and particulates pumped out by a single container ship is immense compared to a fleet of passenger vehicles. Then add trucking, rail, stationery equipment etc...

Cities should be optimising for electric propulsion and punishing diesels. That makes sense for air quality right now, and if co2 proves to be an issue, it is easily fixed by switching the generation source to Nuclear or Hydro.

Or maybe we abolish nonsensical, contrary requirements?

Whoever actaully believed the fuel consumption figures is a fool. You cant have a 1,5t of a car and expect it to use only 5l/100km. That's a good rate for a goddamn motorbike (450ccm,one piston, dont exceed 90 km/h and you might reach 4,5l/100km) Its one fifth of the mass...

I actually drove my Golf TDI at around the level of 5l/100km in Berlin for many years. Carefully. My girlfriend's Polo is significantly below that. Of course, these cars aren't ton and a half, but more around a ton.

Yup. Diesel cars can pull of 5l/100km quite easily (even VW Passat from 1998 can do that). My diesel Skoda Fabia consumes 4.6l/100km at 90kmh in highway. If conditions are not terrible, I hover around 5l/100km on average in mixed conditions (city and highway). Though few major traffic jams can ruin statistics pretty badly. Also in winter average is about 5.6l/100km.

Maybe /user/emp_zealoth had petrol cars in mind? I've not personally seen a petrol (non hybrid) car consuming less than 7l/100km and when I had one it was 10l/100km (8 if I was lucky) and it was small Peugeot 306.

To rant even more.. IMHO, those fuel consumption tests are a total fraud. Look at new diesel sedans, local dealer declares that huge VW Passat TDI uses 4l/100km, or Skoda Octavia TDI (GreenLine or something) uses 3.1l/100km. Maybe it's true when you're driving at 90km/h with wind blowing in your tail and slight downhill.

You forgot the bicycle tires. :-)

Yes, i was talking about gasoline ones, diesels can and do get lower fuel consumption

It's achievable with a diesel and not too-heavy foot easily (possibly with some extra NOx ;-)

My Chevrolet Sonic (with a 1.4L turbocharged gasoline engine and a curb weight of around 1.4 US tons or 1.5 metric tons) gets 42-ish MPG (5.6 L/100 km) during the summer and my driving conditions aren't even ideal (half my commute is highway speeds with stoplights). A Toyota Prius (Auris) could probably get more than 50 MPG (less than 4.7 L/100 km) on the same route.

A larger part of fuel consumption is driving behavior. My Ford Fusion (non-hybrid) only gets about 15 mpg in city/rush-hour driving because I drive very aggressively...but nearly 40 mpg on the freeway using cruise control (set to 75-80mph).

The requirement was to incentivise more efficient cars. Manufacturers just decided to ignore the requirement and lie about it instead. Customers decided to believe them.

Cars keep getting bigger and heavier. The current Golf -- nominally a compact car -- is half a meter longer (at least 4.25m) than the first one and half a ton heavier (at least 1.2t).

Well sorry for being a fool then. It's impossible to investigate everything about every part of our lives, and personally I feel a bit cheated by these revelations.

I think most people are aware there could be cheating, but not on the scale being claimed. I don't think it's unreasonable to have placed a bit of trust in the number.

that's no excuse, its basically ignorance. not personal critique, but still lots of people follow blindly things they don't understand.

Of course they do. People have limited time and energy and can't possibly be expected to have a good enough understanding of everything they touch in their daily lives to be able to "understand" them well enough to have sufficiently calibrated bullshit detectors for them all.

Maybe you're an expert in ICEs and this was obvious to you. Would you notice if your cell phone charger was actually pulling 10 amps out of the wall instead of the 1 it was rated for? What about if your non-GMO strawberries were actually created in a lab? Your organic beef injected with hormones?

The whole point of having these standards is so that consumers can rely on them and don't have to independently analyze everything they buy themselves.

They didn't call those bands "rage against the machine" and "public enemy" for nuthin now did they? I mean, in all seriousness, why be so serious? Simple points need to be understood, not simply dismissed out of hand. In theory everything the government or your employer tells you is true. In reality, they have alot to gain from asymetric information distribution, both in terms of negotiating financial outcomes but also in terms of maintaining their political power base.

Have you checked your keyboard's electrical path for surveillance equipment this morning?

Did you test your water for drugs this morning?

Did you check them yesterday?

We all live at certain layers of abstraction.

Have you ever measured a 2x4?

probably not

All you have to do is look at how much gas you put in the damn thing and divide by how much youve driven since you last topped up. Not a deep investigative effort

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That's like saying someone threw a rock at you and because you didn't look around before it hit you, its your fault. The cheating is the problem, not the fact that people are ignorant about it.

no, its like saying "caveat emptor"

http://rockyroadblog.com/caveat-emptor-vetting-mpg-claims-30...

Sorry, that BS. Nobody wants to conduct a research experiment every-time they purchase splenda to see if it might give them cancer in 10 years. It is impossible to live life that way. Social guarantees that your water supply does not contain poison, and that the car you purchase doesn't not fall apart and kill you at 45 mph when it worked fine at 20mph when you did the test drive, are and should be expected. Just because cheating is widespread does not make it your fault for not knowing it.

nobody wants to read website TOS either, but that's not how the world or the law work. there is a line between 'street smarts' and blind faith in people you don't know telling you stuff. 2x4's are not 2x4...that's something everyone probably should know...similarly, EPA fuel mileage is not accurate...and never has been...its not anyone's fault that everything in the world is not "literally" true

The same transaction costs argument for regulatory disclosure apply to the quality of such disclosure as well. Ever try reading nutritional labels? It goes on and on...has very little to do with one particular instance.

That being said, a auto is a capital good and a substantial purchase and investing some time to understand the buying process is both economic and sensible. so in this case the faux shock/outrage seems particularly misplaced...as the arguments for ignorance are weak indeed.

Comparing to known fuel effiencies of existing vehicles competely misses the point, which is to stimulate new technology development. For example, aluminum and plastic car body pieces, which reduce weight.

If you want to talk about "believable," start from basic physics and calculate the best possible fuel efficiency that a car could be expected to deliver. Even taking into account available materials, fuels, and engines, the answer is way better than what regulations currently require.

A lot of the expected gains will come from taking known "custom" solutions and scaling them up to mass market--like greater use of aluminum, and ultimately, composites.

I've got an 2016 Audi A4.

Audi claims 22mpg city, 32mpg highway and 26mpg combined.

What I see is 24mpg city, 31mpg highway and 26mpg combined; I don't drive especially slow either. FWIW, I factory ordered a manual transmission so that may make a difference.

I'm skeptical of cars that claim crazy high MPG ratings and performance cars claiming good MPG numbers, but for a standard car I do expect the numbers to be achievable. I've gone through a lot of cars over the years and I've gotten very close to the published numbers on all but one (Cadillac CTS).

Those numbers (37.2 miles per imperial gallon) are in the 3.0 TDI territory for Audi in the British(/EU?) market. Many would be disappointed with 37.2 highway for any 2.0 diesel engine: look at the 'Real MPG Avg' column at http://www.honestjohn.co.uk/realmpg/audi/a4-b8-2008

I don't think they're especially good or bad, my point was just that they are almost exactly what Audi claimed.

After the VW news I'm rather happy I went with petrol. Actually I never gave diesel a thought because Audi doesn't sell A3 or A4 diesels in the US (at least dealers don't have them and the website doesn't show them).

(You need to specify whether you're US or UK. Different gallon sizes! It makes US MPG ratings seem significantly worse than UK ones.)

And those darn Europeans measure it in liters-per-100-kilometer, just to make it worse!

Yeah, I always forget about that. I'm in the US so I'm allowed to forget about the rest of the world, right?

My 2013 Qashqai 1.6dCi 4x4 weighs exactly 1630kg and uses between 5-6 litres of diesel for every 100km traveled, depending how aggressively I drive it. And no, that's not the value from the car's computer, that's an actual usage.

Just one bit of evidence to the contrary. I have filled the 70 litre tank in a 1.6tdi VW Passat and driven 1400 km with 5 occupants and luggage. This was mainly European motorway driving.

> You cant have a 1,5t of a car and expect it to use only 5l/100km

So you are telling me that my actual, measured fuel consumption numbers of 4.25l/100km on flat highways in the US South are impossible? I have a diesel Passat (yes, one of the NOx Boxes :P) and can get from Dallas, TX to Pensacola, FL (650 mi) without refueling and with a decent reserve (~2 gallons) still in the tank.

The thing is that this report does actually not provide any data about fuel consumption - only about CO2 emissions.

What they do is wild speculation and possibly a smear campaign because people care more about the fuel economy (their own money) than CO2 emissions.

It is interesting that this (some) data is provided but how it is presented does not make it look very credible.

What are you on about? For any given type of fuel, fuel consumption is related exactly 1:1 proportionately to CO2 emission (as carbon particulate and CO emissions are microscopically small these days). That is basic chemistry - where else would the fuel go?

Therefore any claim about CO2 emissions equates to a claim about fuel consumption.

Yes, it should be.

The problem is that these findings do not reflect my anecdotal experience.

I have two recent measurements. About 500 km round trip and small trips inside the city.

This is accordingly about 17% and 21% increase (and it was in the same region for the older model of the same car).

Sorry, I did not include the make and model of the car because I do not want to leak too much personal information but it is nowhere close to the claimed difference.

Even more the round trip was mostly on the highway and included small city part (let say about 20 km). This differs from the official test cycle.

Also the city traffic includes high elevation differences and very bad slow traffic with constant stopping.

Also the car was more occupied in both cases (official tests consider about 70 kg driver and 7 kg luggage).

This means that in more fair test the results should be even more close to the official numbers.

So what could explain this?

I do not know as we do not see the fuel economy numbers.

Perhaps during the official tests the car is actually stationary and can not take enough air and the burning is not that efficient but a good exhaust filter hides this problem?

What is also strange is the difference between BMW 3rd series and 5th series because both use the same engines (and also some Renault models do use BMW engines but it do not know about Megane).

I calculated the fuel consumption and CO2 ratio for several models and it is about the same (as expected).

I also calculated weight to CO2 ratio for similar engines over few series and this gave also very similar results. As the different series look quite similar these days then I would assume that they also have quite similar aerodynamics.

After carefully reading again what they stating stating, it appears that even when they talk about CO2 emissions, they actually base their claims on self reported fuel consumption data from http://www.spritmonitor.de

It looks to me that the following is entered (I have not used the app) by the users.

Objective data:

  Date of fuelling,
  Current odometer value,
  Amount and price of fuel.
  Type of tires (summer/winter) [should be mostly objective]

Subjective data:

  Driving style used (Moderate, Normal, Fast),
  Roads driven (Motor-way, City, Country roads)

For roads driven all the options could be selected and are then doubly reported in the detailed statistics.

This means that there is no objective acceleration and speed profile and also elevation difference data is missing (is not collected).

To illustrate this I will compare two different entries for BMW 3er 320d touring efficient dynamic

1) http://www.spritmonitor.de/en/detail/595885.html?cdetail=1 (2012, 120 kW, 4,14 l/100km) 2) http://www.spritmonitor.de/en/detail/672858.html?cdetail=1 (2011, 120 kW, 5,54 l/100km)

As both cars have the same power, I assume that they are the same model.

The consumption difference is 33%!

Driver one believes that driving style has been mostly moderate and driver two believes that driving style has mostly been normal.

Edit: I think that it illustrates that it is possible to drive this car close to its spec but it also easy to have more courageous driving style.

In addition to what MagnumOpus said, CO2 emissions are irrelevant. I was calling them on a particular statement they made that I found to be ridiculous.

Your comparison with motorcycles is a bit flawed. Weight is the wrong thing to look at; at highway speeds drag is a major factor and motorcycles actually have higher drag coefficients than cars. You're also understating motorcycle fuel economy: I can easily get 4.5L/100km on my 600cc I4 doing 100km/h (although I more typically drive 130km/h and get 5L/100). I have friends who regularly do < 4L/100km in practice (on a 250, though).

Your numbers are also false for motorcycles (which all run on gas and not diesel which is the subject of the conversation here). My BMW's 800cc rotax paralell twin does exactly that (4.5L cruising on the highway). Even the 1200cc boxer does that AFAIK.

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