[idbehold]

Why doesn't the EPA simply ban the sale of any car manufactured by VW until they start passing the new emissions tests? Even better, begin requiring previously purchased VW cars pass these emissions tests. If the cars don't pass the new emissions tests then VW is required to reimburse the blue book value of the car for false advertising, fraud, and acting in bad faith.

[mzs]

They have prevented the sale of all current model year diesel VWs and that is sensible.

[marincounty]

I want VW to be held accountable, but I don't want them to decimate the company.

While I want clean air, and believe in global warming; I'm afraid that the EPA will use VW as a reason to tighten emmission standards to to point where we will need to buy new vechicles in order to drive. I can't afford, nor really want a new vechicle.

I'm at the point now that I pray my vechicles passes smog checks. I'm not working as a mechanic now, but I have been to automotive school. I take those smog results, I get every two years, and tune my vechicles appropriately. My vechicles are tuned properly. I use a secondary 02 sensor attached to secondary bung holes before, and after the catalytic converter. All, so I can get the engines in perfect stoichiometric values. I clean out my erg valves. I change the oil. I double check some emmission sensors with a DVOM. I look for that lazy sensor and replace it if it's not in spec.

Even with all that, it seems like it's a crap shoot on wether my vechicles pass.

(I can't blame the EPA, or CARB totally. I have found gross errors in Motor Emission publications. Off subject, but smog stations are only required to have one emmission's reference on site. Most shops usually just have the current copy of Motor's Emmisson Manual. It's cheap, and that's what they show you if your vechicle fails the visual. The publication is filled with errors. If you failed the visual on your smog test, double check the information with Mitchell Manuals. I have never found an error in a Mitchell manual. Off subject--yes, but when your arguing with a smog tech. you might remember this post.)

[maxerickson]

There is little or no history of emissions standards forcing existing vehicles off the road.

There is some chance that better testing will result in lower emissions standards, if the better tests reveal the existing standards to be unrealistic.

[drglitch]

Blue book value that recently dropped because of the emissions scandal? ;)

Requiring VW reimburse purchase price would make more sense, but still would not account for time spent having to look for new car etc.

On the other hand, there are numerous reports of owners not wanting to return their cars for software updates out of fear that such fixes would change performance characteristics of their vehicle for the worse.

In terms of banning sales, that would be an effective strategy to 'press' VW into acting faster but is likely to severely impact the co financially - something Germany simply can't allow due to huge numbers of people employed/at stake.

[grandalf]

The harm is against society as a whole, not really against the owners.

[Alupis]

How do we go about measuring this "harm"?

[jonathankoren]

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/oct/29/vw-emissi...

[mrob]

"Premature deaths" is not a useful measurement because it does not take into account how premature the death was. You could say everybody who dies of a respiratory problem dies prematurely, because pollution made them die a few hours/minutes/seconds faster than they would have breathing perfectly clean air. The correct unit for measuring the harm caused is the disability-adjusted life year:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disability-adjusted_life_year

[grandalf]

I'm not sure. You could make several arguments. I think the idea that environmental regulations are reasonable presupposes that harm to society comes from environmental damage (negative externalities of other behaviors).

A few such arguments might be that there were harms to:

- peoples' lungs, wildlife, etc.

- profits lost by firms that played by the rules

- more cars sold than would have been (hence more environmental damage caused than with fewer overall cars on the road).

[Alupis]

Good points. I sort of touched on this in another comment, but perhaps the emission standard on these vehicles is what's unreasonable.

We have a more-or-less arbitrarily set maximum allowed tailpipe emissions for a given class of vehicles. Is it fair to apply this arbitrary standard uniformly across all vehicles in the same class?

If vehicle A and vehicle B both meet the same emissions standards, but vehicle B is capable of better fuel economy, isn't it reasonable to suspect vehicle B's net pollution is less over the vehicle's lifetime?

In that light, perhaps these standards are unfair to the companies who are trying to make this class of vehicle. In the case of VW, the vehicles will have to lose fuel economy in order to adhere to this standard, which means more fuel is being consumed over the vehicle's lifetime, which may very well equate to a net gain of pollution (not just for the vehicle's tailpipe, but also the entire system from the oil well through the pump).

None of this excuses blatant falsification of tests - however, perhaps it's time we took a better look at what exactly pollution is, and how tweaking our vehicles may impact the output.

[grandalf]

That is a good point. You may very well be correct.

I think that from an economic perspective, reduced fuel economy is also beneficial to the environment because the driver is less likely to spend money traveling (keeping the vehicle's engine running, producing pollution) when the cost is higher.

However if the vehicles in question were part of a fleet whose behavior would not change much based on fuel costs, there would seem to be nothing but downside to diminished fuel economy.

What's interesting to me about this is that it seems that a few other manufacturers were able to engineer diesel engines with power, fuel economy, and emissions characteristics that met the guidelines without cheating. It would seem that this is quite a feat, if VW had to resort to gaming the system.

On a tangential note, I also find it interesting that we accept certain tradeoffs about noise pollution vs air pollution, since if we simply removed mufflers from cars, fuel economy would increase.

[empath75]

Much as I'd like to see it happen, bankrupting a multi-billion dollar company isn't something that regulators do on a lark.

[jonknee]

A muli-year global emissions cheating campaign isn't a lark.

[Scoundreller]

If X person(s) modified their X car(s) in such a way, they'd be forced to take it/them off the road.

The value of X should not matter.

[empath75]

'Should' and 'does' aren't always the same thing in real life. You're talking about upending the lives of many thousands of people that depend on their cars to get to work, and lost of people who depend on VW for their pay checks. I'm sure this will all get worked out, but it would be insane to just pull the cars off the road.

[TeMPOraL]

> You're talking about upending the lives of many thousands of people that depend on their cars to get to work, and lost of people who depend on VW for their pay checks. I'm sure this will all get worked out, but it would be insane to just pull the cars off the road.

While pulling the existing cars off the road in an instant seems to be an expensive and bad idea, I don't like the idea of suddenly caring about the livelihoods of VW employees. We're talking about a Big Co here, the kind that axes thousands of people because sales said they can't meet their quarterly goals.

How am I, as a citizen, ever to trust the government can hold corporations in check, if not just them, but we ourselves hesitate to take action because of collateral damage. No surprise VW is pulling off the shit they are - they know perfectly well they'll get away with it even if it goes public.

[nostromo]

I think it does matter.

Think of every VW, Audi, and Porsche dealership and manufacturing plant in the US being mothballed overnight. Not even mentioning the secondary effects, that's a lot of unemployed Americans that are paying for mistakes made by people they've never met.

[TeMPOraL]

> that's a lot of unemployed Americans that are paying for mistakes made by people they've never met

And? So the company structures its mischief so that any correcting action will damage innocent bystanders, therefore holding everyone in check. What happened to "America doesn't negotiate with terrorists"?

[tajen]

On the other hand, VW has out aside $6.8bn for the scandal and has $3bn loss this trimester, after putting the cost of the scandal. Will the next trimester be positive? NB. $6.8bn is 3% of the revenue. Sometimes when there is too much corruption, those companies need to be dismantled and rebuilt from scratch. Enron.

[wnevets]

>Why doesn't the EPA simply ban the sale of any car manufactured by VW

do they have the legal authority to do so? If they did, I doubt the republican led congress would stand by idly.

[MBCook]

They do and have. They won't certify any 2016 VW Diesels. That's the whole reason this blew up now instead of last year when researchers first discovered it.