VW Faces $17B Fine for Emissions Scam

Had VW not brought their cheat diesels to the USA, it is likely they would not have been 'caught' in Europe. Even after being found-out, VW and the other diesel manufacturers 'moved the goal posts' back to Euro 5 (or worse.)

Bob Wilson

 

Saluting Jeff N for creating an environmental thread now gone to 66 pages. I never done that! It's got good bones - cheating and money. In environmental terms though, maybe not so much.

Cheat diesels overproduce NOx. In some urban zones, could be a major factor in smog -> respiratory health effects -> money we've agree not to count ;(

If this is the worst local source you face, congratulations, you live in a clean place. In transport category, large trucks (with lax or absent emission regulations) are elephants in the room. Stationary sources are elephants just outside the room. It is not clear to me that narrow focus on diesel-car cheating/catching/punishing is appropriate.

Is there any chance this is 'hey look a squirrel?'. Yet again?

 

The thread had been in the "Diesel" forum but may have started in News and was in the "Diesel" subform. Our friendly moderators moved it here about month ago. Hopefully it doesn't get drumpfed dumped into Fred's House of Politics.

As for the NOx effects, I would be perfectly happy if all cheat-diesels West of the Rockies moved to the Eastern side. California has exceptional air quality issues (Denver too.) So I'm OK with there being regional bans on the cheat diesels even if it means more cheat diesels rolling around Huntsville where I breath. But this is a punk squirrel:

• deliberate - this was not an accident but by policy and design
  
• unfair to competition - VW avoided the cost and performance losses of a clean diesel to market a cheap, cheater
• snark payback - six years of "Meet the Volkswagens" and "Portland-to-Portland" (the Marines say, "Don't get mad, get even.")

This fraud is not going away and having the Federal Trade Commission step in a week ago, the fun never stops. Then Wednesday, one dealership is reported to be suing VW: VW Sued by U.S. Franchise Dealers for Diesel-Scandal Losses - Bloomberg

Three family-owned Volkswagen franchise dealers accused the carmaker of fraud for installing pollution-control cheating devices in diesel vehicles and sticking them with continuing losses by failing to fix the problem.

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday by three dealerships in Florida and Illinois owned by the family of Ed Napleton, seeks to represent all Volkswagen franchise dealers in the U.S. in a class action. The suit in Chicago federal court is the first by a franchise dealer over the diesel-cheating scandal, according to Napleton’s lawyers.

Volkswagen’s “monumental fraud” is “one of the most significant environmental crimes in history,” the dealers said in their complaint. The scandal has “caused great harm to franchise dealers like plaintiffs whose profits have been erased and whose dealerships have plummeted in value due to the inability to sell tens of thousands of affected vehicles.”​

Dealers are in a razor thin market and having now six months of 'parked inventory' and being publicly embarrassed for something they didn't do. They have families to feed and employees to let go. There are fixed overhead costs and not a d*mn thing they can do about the mess VW put them in.

Bob Wilson

 

By no means do I suggest that VW should avoid punishment. The invisible hand of capitalism failed here. Always fails when there is deception, and then the visible hand of government regulation needs to show a finger or two. If this means that an entire corporation is snuffed, well that's what two fingers sometimes must do. VW factories and equipment and trained employees will be bought up by some other corporation. Global personal transportation seems to remain a strong market.

In those ways, corporations are not people. When they die, their value can be transferred. They are more like zombies but in a good way.

My only reason for infringing on this thread is to assert that urban air pollution is important and there are many issues needing to be seriously examined. On that list I believe that NOx from 'modern' 4-wheel diesels does not rank very high. If this one thing causes others higher to fade from view, then we have a squirrel.

Put your money where your lungs are. Mouth is just a talk hole.

 

Your thoughts are not alone about the magnitude of the problem. In one respect, Musk's letter two months ago was saying something similar, 'Leave the cheat diesels and have VW build out more EV infrastructure.' Too bad Musk makes cars that use an EV infrastructure. <grins>

If someone asks for a $1, I usually open my wallet and give them $2. But steal a $1 and we're going to have a tussle. The theft, the cheat, means the crook doesn't respect me and that attitude is what came out of VW in their advertising.

Like the Makado, the challenge is making the punishment fit the crime. But there is no way to fix the NOx-trap diesels without both a performance and fuel efficiency impact. That punishes the existing owners for what VW did. This is why a "new car for old" swap is the fair approach. In effect, giving the cheat-diesel owners years of 'free car' and having VW take back the dead Albatross.

Bob Wilson

 

Bob, it actually appears that areas west of the Rockies are less damaged by NOx emissions that just to the east, based on a well-respected damage assessment model ("APEEP")...




Source: Nick Muller's Homepage (right graphic)


In fact, in two heavily-populated counties (apparently Orange County, CA, and Cook County (Chicago), IL), NOx emissions are actually beneficial!

 

Thanks,

I was expecting to see the SO{x} distribution:

Per source: ". . . emissions for each of the four data years (1999, 2002, 2005, and 2008) . . ."

The other chart shows the NO{x} but I'm trying to get more technical details from his web site such as time periods and analysis. Initial reading suggests this may not span the VW cheat-diesel period.

BTW, I filled out his form and have access to the datasets. I noticed all of them date from September 2013, about 3-4 years after the start of the VW emissions issue. I'll probably take a little longer to see if we can find more current NO{x} data as I understand there are more current sources on the web.

Bob Wilson

 

Bob,

If you click on the "AP2 Data Request Form" link, you can get access to several files (after free registration), including damage maps of not only SOx and NOx, but VOC, PM10, PM2.5 and NH3.

 

I did and found this in the Sept 2013 "READ_ME.pdf"

This file contains instructions for replication of the basic aspects of the analysis in:
“Using Index Numbers for Deflation in Environmental Accounting.”
Environmental and Development Economics.
Nicholas Z. Muller 2013

Notes.
1) The two data files “...\PPI_Prices...” and “...\PPI_Quantities...” contain marginal damages and
emissions for each of the four data years (1999, 2002, 2005, and 2008) and each of the five pollutants
covered in the paper.

2) The county location identifier for each of the 9,983 sources in the model are provided in the
“...\APEEP_Fips_List...” file.

3) The marginal damages are expressed in $2000/short ton. Emissions are expressed in short tons.

4) The four scripts demonstrate how Paasche and Laspeyres Indices are computed in both fixed-base
and chain type forms. These forms are then used in the Fisher Index.

This might not be the most current data since the VW cheat diesels didn't show up until 2009.

Bob Wilson

 

I downloaded several of the ".do" and ".dat" files, but that model requires a program called "STATA" which has a nearly $1,000 per year subscription fee. So I've never been able to actually run the AP2 (APEEP) model.

 

FYI, I found: Nitrogen Dioxide | AirTrends | Air &amp; Radiation | EPA

I'm still looking for the datasets. However, some spot checks around San Francisco and Los Angeles suggests leveling and slight increases in 2009-current. But areas along the coast between the two suggests a steady decrease. Understand this is just 'click' analysis and we won't really know until the datasets are found.

FYI, I found the NASA NEO site includes satellite information spanning the 2008-current time. Still working to understand the formats for downloading and analysis.

Bob Wilson

 

Have you see this graphic from EPA?




Nitrogen Dioxide Concentrations, Trends, Air Quality Analysis | Pacific Southwest | US EPA

Looks like NO2 levels nation-wide have decrease by about 15.7% between 2008 and 2014.

Nitrogen Dioxide | AirTrends | Air &amp; Radiation | EPA

Regarding the APEEP model, my initial intentions were to use it to "duplicate/update" a 2009 report by the National Academy of Sciences, which used a previous version of APEEP and was baselined in 2005. This report included emissions from all phases of the full life-cycle. Graphic from that report...




Source: National Academy of Sciences, "Hidden Cost of Energy: Unpriced Consequences of Energy Production and Use." Figure 3-7, Page 212 (of 506)


Since the APEEP model requires an expensive investment, I settled for using EPA's published "damage costs" of regulated pollutants that it uses to estimate societal cost benefits to reductions in criteria pollutants expected from specific regulations. This is a graphical representation of what I get for the "cheating" TDI Golf vs other versions of that vehicle..





A more full explanation of the methodology is available from a post on CleanMPG I made earlier - 482,000 VW TDIs Produce 5 to 35Xs the NOx Beyond Federal Emissions Requirements | Page 26 | CleanMPG

The GREET model is available at Argonne GREET Model and is Excel based.

I welcome other attempts at this analysis to verify my results, if anyone is interested.

 

That gets me laughing. Think about all the corporate denial of being aware of anything wrong. Then think of all the approval stages needed to sign off on making changes to production vehicles on the road. (Boss - We have a problem, we are not dumping enough garbage into people's lungs. Boss - This is serious!)

I would point out cancer is an insignificant disease until it is not. The issue is not NOx levels, it is about corporate gain directly from dumping pollution. NOx just happens to be the pollution with the highest VW ROI (Return On Investment). Every other pollutant coming from every vehicle has an ROI for the corporation making the vehicle. Stopping NOx abuse is a critical step for stopping everything else being dumped into our lungs.

 

Let me give an example of the type of NO{x} data in the San Francisco area:
Nitrogen Dioxide | AirTrends | Air &amp; Radiation | EPA



This is what one data point looks like:


I collected all of 'full' data sets to generate this plot:

• City (longitude)
• What happened in San Francisco that had the NO{x} spike (next to VW dealer? next to truck park?)
• Notice the slope of every City changed from decreasing to increasing

This is the data that I initially saw. But sad to say, it takes a lot of clicks to assemble the data. Fixed the spreadsheet.

FYI, I think I found the observation station with the NO{x} spike:



Bob Wilson

 

Thanks for putting that together.

Could the high anomalies for San Francisco be the result of close wild fires? Not sure if the data are adjusted for those events.

 

I would expect that more in the LA area but I'm open minded. I did fill out their survey and cited my post to explain the problems.

Bob Wilson

 

Very impressive discussion of air pollution issues above, gents.

On the VW front, one might imagine that top dogs might feel something that might approach contrition. Here ya go:

VW managers &#x27;refuse to forego bonuses&#x27;

Maybe next time eh?

 

Volkswagen emissions scandal: No diesel compensation for Australian customers

VW is basically giving the middle finger to all owners outside the US.

SM-G900I ?

 

i'll give them credit, it looks like they took their cue from u.s. corporations.

 

I contacted the developer of the APEEP model (Muller) by email in January for further clarification of the NOx marginal damage map, specifically the counties in which marginal NOx emissions are shown to be beneficial. The response I got was that "NOx titration reduces ozone". Thus it appears that the ozone-destruction properties of NOx are the chief reason why NOx emissions are beneficial in those locations.

After additional digging, it appears that the Southern California Air Basin is still highly VOC-limited with respect to ozone formation, which means that NOx emission reductions do little good in reducing ambient ozone concentrations.


Fujita et al., “Past and future ozone trends in California's South Coast Air Basin: reconciliation of ambient measurements with past and projected emission inventories.” J Air Waste Manag Assoc. 2013 Jan;63(1):54-69, Past and future ozone trends in California's South Coast Air Basin: reconciliation of ambient measurements with past and projected emission invento... - PubMed - NCBI (2013)

Hidy & Blanchard, “Precursor reductions and ground-level ozone in the Continental United States.” J Air Waste Manag Assoc. 2015 Oct;65(10):1261-82. doi: 10.1080/10962247.2015.1079564, Precursor reductions and ground-level ozone in the Continental United States. - PubMed - NCBI

Fujita et al., "Projected ozone trends and changes in the ozone-precursor relationship in the South Coast Air Basin in response to varying reductions of precursor emissions." J Air Waste Manag Assoc. 2016 Feb;66(2):201-14. doi: 10.1080/10962247.2015.1106991, Projected ozone trends and changes in the ozone-precursor relationship in the South Coast Air Basin in response to varying reductions of precursor ... - PubMed - NCBI (2016)


It also appears that gasoline exhaust is still the primary source of ambient VOCs, which are more important ozone precursors in VOC-limited regimes.

Pang et al., “Trends in selected ambient volatile organic compound (VOC) concentrations and a comparison to mobile source emission trends in California's South Coast Air Basin.” Atmospheric Environment, Volume 122, December 2015, Pages 686–695, Trends in selected ambient volatile organic compound (VOC) concentrations and a comparison to mobile source emission trends in California's South Coast Air Basin


This source suggests that the Chicago area also is still VOC-limited.