A week ago the automotive world was put into turmoil over news that Volkswagen had, allegedly, committed widespread fraud with their emissions test results. Specific Volkswagen and Audi vehicles were emitting lots more pollution than allowed, while their EPA emissions ratings garnered praise and government subsidies by supposedly being the cleanest Diesel vehicles…
With 11 million VW 2 liter TDI Diesel cars emitting 10-40x the NOx pollution they’re allowed, what’s the effect on the environment? According to reporters at The Guardian, it adds up to 1 million tonnes extra NOx in the atmosphere. Those 11 million cars were bought under a promise of being ultra…
According to a study published last week by Transport & Environment, the scandal over Volkswagen’s cheating on emissions testing is a tiny part in a huge problem. T&E is a Europe-focused research group working on environmental issues related to transportation. Their study, Don’t Breathe Here, performed independent testing of a…
Today, Volkswagen announced the “Dieselgate” scandal – VW’s cheating on emissions ratings – affects at least 11 million Volkswagen cars sold world-wide, and that the company is setting aside 6.5 billion euros, or about $7.3 billion — to cover the cost of fixing the cars to comply with pollution standards and…
VW’s inaccurate emissions tests for 2009-15 TDI Diesel passenger cars was not an “accident”, according to the EPA. It’s not like VW’s engineers misconfigured some testing equipment and accidentally came up with bogus numbers. You might do that one year, like Hyundai/Kia did, but a company like Volkswagen would not…
It’s been a tumultuous weekend for the Volkswagen Group. Last weeks announcement that the EPA and CARB are investigating the company over allegations that VW had fabricated TDI Diesel car emissions results has thrown a monkey wrench into the credibility of not only the VW Group but the whole system of validating emissions…
Back in 2009-10 the VW Group released a series of TDI Diesel vehicles with excellent emissions results. Those emissions were so good that at that time I wrote a piece saying VW’s TDI vehicles are not your grandfathers dirty diesel, and even raised the question whether VW would need hybrid vehicles…
Tonight was the second of the 2016 Republican Presidential Candidates debate. While I didn’t watch it in person, it appears the R’s were just as insane as one would expect. Bernie Sanders, a candidate on the Democrat side, live-tweeted the debate using the #DebateWithBernie hashtag. It was great – and…
Syria’s fossil fuel resources are dwindling fast, making that country an unattractive place to fight a war over crude oil supplies. Yet, a war is being fought over the future of Syria, and a side effect of that war is the huge refugee crisis in Europe. Earlier I’ve made the case…
At a tactical level the high drama of the Refugee crisis in Europe is caused by many in Europe refusing to take in the refugees. It might simply be the cost of supporting refugees once they’ve arrived, or it might be racism. As I’ve written over the last couple days,…
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg spoke in Prague (a very beautiful city) today saying “What NATO as an organization is doing is to address the root causes of the migrant crisis.” That sounds cool, but reading on in the radio.cz report it’s clear that Stoltenberg’s idea of addressing root causes will…
Refugees from wars in Syria, Yemen, North Africa and elsewhere are suffering unimaginably. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled their homes, some making it as far as Europe, some drowning at sea, others stuck in war-torn areas for one reason or another, all of them bereft of home and livelihood. In…
Governments around the world are supporting research into transportation systems. Because in large part governments build the road that are the transportation systems, they need to know what roads to build and where. Governments set the standards for the kind of vehicles that operate on roads. Governments maintain law and…
The US and Russia have restarted the Cold War – probably to the delight of the Military-Industrial complex, because the Cold War means increased military spending which is good for business when your business makes guns or bullets or bombs. That leaves the rest of us to groan about the…
Let’s face it, the $7,500 federal tax credit for the Tesla Model S is hard to defend. Only the wealthy can afford a $100,000 car, and the wealthy hardly need the tax credit. This factoid opens the door to criticism against the whole project of electric vehicle adoption. I…
