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Comment by snemvalts | Hacker News Reader

Are you aware of the fact that most companies cheated with emissions? Volkswagen was just a scapegoat

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_emissions_scandal#/medi...

> I later learned that the more accurate story is that they bore the brunt of media attention for something that nearly every auto manufacturer was later found to be doing

Even worse is now that every diesel car and truck comes with extremely unreliable and expensive to keep operational DPFs in place of the defeat devices.

Now people who live in areas that do emissions testing are forced to use less efficient vehicles, and people who don't are just removing the DPFs (rather than paying thousands of dollars every few months in repairs) and putting out more emissions than defeat device era vehicles.

A lot of ignorance surrounds this subject, and blind environmentalism has directly lead to a worse outcome than the previous status quo.

> What they did was absolutely reprehensible, but I later learned that the more accurate story is that they bore the brunt of media attention for something that nearly every auto manufacturer was later found to be doing -

> That doesn't make it any less wrong, but it does put them back on par with just about every other auto manufacturer in my mind. And it does seem (as others have cited) like there was some genuine change that followed.

Thanks for bringing that to our attention, but I think there’s a slight chance they might be aware already.

They were the first discovered by ICCT, and the media latched onto that. They should've waited to release their findings because their subsequent test results went widely unnoticed.

Actively cheating on test environment vs not good at real usage is very different. In latter case, possibly test and regulation should be improved to fit real usage.

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