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by jfmiller28 3876 days ago
Are we sure that this should not be Carbon Monoxide rather then Carbon Dioxide. CO2 is the ideal result of complete combustion of a hydrocarbon. The only way it can be too high is if the engine is burning more fuel then it should be. Are they cheating on their CAFE standards? Usually tail-pipe emissions are checked for unburnt hydrocarbons, oxides of nitrogen, and carbon monoxide.
2 comments
csours 3876 days ago
I agree, this article is disappointingly light on details. CO2 is specifically regulated in Europe, separately from fuel consumption, so this could pertain to that.

Fuel consumption would be a very accurate proxy for CO2 production, unlike NOx, which strongly affected by vehicle processing, so it is really unclear what the cheat could possibly be.

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vlehto 3875 days ago
>CO2 is specifically regulated in Europe, separately from fuel consumption

It's a joke. They should have increased fuel taxes. But that was too unpopular, so we have mess of regulations. As a result you either want to have new car with very small engine, or very old car with big engine. No matter how much emissions you actually make.

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yxhuvud 3875 days ago
Huh? We actually tend to have quite high fuel taxes here in Europe.

(or well, at least here in Sweden)

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vlehto 3875 days ago
Yes. That's the reason why it was unpopular to rise it further.

But it would still have been the only logical action. It would have fought congestion, as idle running would have been more expensive. It would have encouraged to buy less consuming car and drive less.

On the other hand taxing car ownership might make unemployment worse. If you have to sell your future means of commuting because of the taxes, you are in deeper shit.

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yuhong 3876 days ago
In this case, I think the numbers was simply wrong.
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tzs 3876 days ago
> Are we sure that this should not be Carbon Monoxide rather then Carbon Dioxide

Volkswagen says CO2 on their news site [1].

http://www.volkswagenag.com/content/vwcorp/info_center/en/ne...

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andor 3875 days ago
"Under the ongoing review of all processes and workflows in connection with diesel engines it was established that the CO2 levels and thus the fuel consumption figures for some models were set too low during the CO2 certification process. The majority of the vehicles concerned have diesel engines."

So the official fuel consumption numbers were reported too low, possibly as a result of the dyno cheating mode.

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