http://www.nationalpost.com/death+diesel+looms+horizon+dirty+accusations+mount/13398827/story.html
[Implications for remote electricity generation? Or the ubiquitous
overdone pickup trucks with their vanity diesel engines? If you want
towing power, you want electric - as in the giant earth mover
diesel-electric hybrid trucks used in open pit mines or rail
locomotives. If automakers are not building diesels, what's the future
for biodiesel fuel or WVO systems?]
The death of diesel could be closer than you think as dirty accusations
mount
David Welch, Bloomberg News, Financial Post · May 26, 2017 | Last
Updated: May 26, 2017 10:54 AM ET
It’s easy to imagine diesel will die in America.
The troubles that started almost two years ago with the emissions
scandal at Volkswagen AG just keep rolling on and on.
With General Motors Co. now confronting a class-action lawsuit over
700,000 diesel trucks, there’s growing sense across the auto industry
that the days of diesel cars are numbered, at least in the U.S.
GM calls the allegations of emission-test cheating baseless, and the
lawsuit stops short of claiming a breach of clean-air regulations. But
increasingly, analysts are wondering who will be willing to buy diesel
cars and trucks given that many in the industry have been accused of
fudging pollution standards. More to the point, how many carmakers will
be willing to keep making them?
“This is accelerating the demise,” said Kevin Tynan, an analyst with
Bloomberg Intelligence. “We were never into them anyway, and with
alternatives like hybrids and electric vehicles, there just isn’t much
of a reason to sell them.”
GM is just the latest automaker to face a civil lawsuit claiming that
its diesel engines use software to meet clean-air rules while the
engines pollute at higher levels. The law firm suing GM, Hagens Berman,
has also sued Daimler AG, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV and Volkswagen,
which must pay $24.5 billion in government penalties and consumer
givebacks for cheating on diesel emissions.
Phasing Out
Even if the other lawsuits come to naught, tougher regulations and
growing litigation make selling the cars onerous. Automakers have mostly
been phasing diesel engines out of all but their brawniest pickups,
which need the added power for towing and hauling.
This year there are only 10 diesel models for sale in the U.S., half
what was offered in 2016. Sales fell to 86,000 last year from 143,000 in
2015, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
And it’s not just Volkswagen pulling them off the market. Daimler’s
Mercedes-Benz isn’t selling four models that were on dealer lots in
2016, and BMW AG has dropped its offering to two from four, selling only
its 328 sedan and X5 sport utility vehicle.
GM offers three, not counting the large pickup trucks that are targeted
in the latest lawsuit. The Detroit automaker offers diesel engines in
its Chevrolet Cruze compact and Chevy Colorado and GMC Canyon midsize
pickup trucks.
Hagens Berman also targeted GM last year in a suit over diesel emissions
from the Cruze. The judge threw out some of the allegations but said the
plaintiffs could continue to sue over whether GM’s cars used a cheat
device to meet regulations. GM was able to certify the 2017 model of the
Cruze with the Environmental Protection Agency even after the suit was
filed.
As for the latest suit, GM denies that the 705,000 diesel pickup trucks
in question have any kind of cheat device and maintains that they meet
U.S. and California emissions rules. Daimler was sued more than a year
ago, and the Justice Department launched an investigation, but no
charges have come from it, company spokesman Han Tjan said in a phone
interview.
Pricier Technology
Regardless of the outcome of lawsuits, some diesel cars and SUVs are
going away because future clean air rules will make them more expensive
to sell, said John German, senior fellow at the International Council on
Clean Transportation, which helped discover Volkswagen’s cheat device.
The technology required to clean soot and smog-causing oxides of
nitrogen will get more expensive as rules get tougher.
That means diesel will probably be relegated only to a hard-working
class of vehicles. While hybrid electric cars can save fuel as
effectively as a diesel sedan, and Tesla’s electric cars can offer
plenty of zip for motoring enthusiasts, no technology gives the towing
power needed for big work trucks like diesel.
Sales numbers for diesel trucks aren’t big, but they bring in thousands
of dollars in profits. Trucks like the Chevy Silverado 2500 with a
diesel start at more than $33,000 and can easily surpass US$40,000 in
price. It’s easier for carmakers to pass on added costs for cleaner
diesel to those buyers, many of whom are commercial customers, German said.
“Diesel will continue to dominate in heavy trucks,” he said. “If
customers have to pay more for them, they will.”
========================================================================
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/apr/13/death-of-diesel-wonder-fuel-new-asbestos
["This is probably how the death of diesel will come about – not through
regulation, but through consumer disgust. Many auto experts expect the
global sales dip that followed Dieselgate to continue, as consumers turn
up their nose and manufacturers correspondingly invest less in new models."]
The death of diesel: has the one-time wonder fuel become the new asbestos?
Diesel was the dream fuel, promoted by governments and the car industry
as a cheaper way to save the planet. Then the cracks started to appear
A shopper at a supermarket asks for a plastic bag, only to have his head
slammed into the checkout counter by the “green police” (“You picked the
wrong day to mess with the ecosystem, plastic boy”). Another man
attracts a spotlight from a green police helicopter for a “compost
infraction” as he’s about to bin an orange rind. The green police bust
down doors after finding batteries in the trash. They haul people from
their homes for installing incandescent lightbulbs.
But to the driver who approaches a road checkpoint in his Audi, the
green police react very differently. “Clean diesel? You’re good to go,
sir.” And they wave him through.
It’s hard to believe, as diesel vehicles find themselves thrust into the
spotlight of a global urban environment crisis, that Audi’s Superbowl
advert was made just seven years ago. Air pollution now kills 3.3
million people prematurely every year – more than HIV, malaria and
influenza combined – with emissions from diesel engines among the worst
culprits; a joint investigation by the Guardian and Greenpeace showed
hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren across England and Wales are
being exposed to illegal air toxicity levels from diesel vehicles. And
yet such was the more or less widely accepted thinking as recently as
Superbowl XLIV in 2010 – namely, that cars running on diesel fuel could
be driven with a pure, unclouded conscience.
Diesel was touted at inception as a wonder fuel. It was a way of driving
cost-efficiently while doing your bit to save the planet. Government,
industry and science united to sell us the dream: cars running on diesel
would help us cut our CO2 emissions as we eased smoothly into a new
eco-friendly age.
It was particularly owing to advances in engine technology that the
diesel passenger car market was able to blossom in the 1990s,
particularly in Europe. Drivers liked the fuel efficiency of diesel
engines, which made running costs cheaper than petrol over the long
term. Governments, meanwhile, alarmed by rising carbon emissions, began
advising citizens to switch to diesels, which were thought to emit less
CO2 than their petrol counterparts. Diesel’s biggest moment in the UK
was probably in 2001, when Gordon Brown, then chancellor of the Labour
government, cut fuel duty on diesel vehicles as a deliberate effort to
encourage people to switch.
The cracks took a long time to appear, but when they did they splintered
rapidly. In 2012 came the first major evidence of some truly dreadful
health impacts. Nitrogen oxides and dioxides (NOx) and particulate
matter (PM) pumped out by diesel exhausts were fingered as silent
killers. The studies multiplied. The European Environment Agency found
that nitrogen dioxide (NO2) from diesel fumes had caused around 71,000
premature deaths across the continent in a single year. It said the UK
experienced 11,940 annual premature deaths from NO2, the second highest
in Europe behind Italy. The World Health Organisation declared diesel
exhaust a carcinogenic, a cause of lung cancer in the same category as
asbestos and mustard gas.
Then in 2015 came Dieselgate. In September of that year, Volkswagen,
which vies with Toyota for top spot in the list of world’s biggest car
companies and a firm that had for years been running its own marketing
campaign in favour of “clean diesel”, rocked the industry by admitting
that it had cheated on its emission tests. As recently as last week,
David King, the UK government’s former chief scientific adviser on
climate change, admitted ministers had made a huge mistake by promoting
diesel. They had trusted the car industry when it said the fuel was
clean. “It turns out we were wrong,” he said.
Cities worldwide have scrambled. The mayors of Paris, Madrid, Athens and
Mexico City have agreed to completely outlaw diesel vehicles from the
centre of their cities by 2025. The political leaders that make up the
C40 group of global megacities are all taking steps to crack down on
diesel vehicles and reduce smog. But other cities, including British
ones, are tinkering around the edges; London is proposing low-emission
zones and toll charges, but has stopped short of a ban.
So is this simply a period of bad PR, or has the backlash against diesel
reached a tipping point? Has the one-time wonder fuel become the new
asbestos – not to say mustard gas? And if this is really the beginning
of the end for diesel, how much longer before the pariah is banished
from the city for good?
Banning diesel is trickier than it seems. The scale of the problem
remains enormous. Diesel never made huge inroads into the US, where
gasoline remained cheap, and where American automakers focused their
innovation efforts on hybrid and electric vehicles. But in Europe,
diesel passenger cars remain a major part of the auto industry:
astonishingly, they still account for nearly 50% of all new cars sold
across the continent.
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Meanwhile, a study of the latest diesel cars by the International
Council for Clean Transportation (ICCT) says real-world emissions of
nitrogen oxides (NOx) are, on average, seven times higher than safety
limits allow. A separate ICCT study showed that latest diesel cars
produce 10 times the NOx of heavy trucks or buses, which are more
strictly regulated than cars.
The car manufacturers, too, have a hugely powerful lobby still at their
disposal. According to Greg Archer, who once managed the UK government’s
air pollution research, automakers used their influence to ensure a
“regulatory holiday” after the financial crash. They claimed that the
Euro 5 and Euro 6 emissions standards, aimed at limiting pollutants from
exhausts, led to significant reduction in pollutants. But a recent study
of real-world performance shows those claims were bogus: Emissions
Analytics found that 97% of the diesel cars made since 2011 exceed NOx
safety limits.
Governments were complicit, too. In one particularly egregious case,
Germany agreed in 2013 to halt a proposed EU cap on bankers’ bonuses –
dreaded by the City of London – in return for British support to protect
the German car industry and thwart a stricter emissions regime.
Nor is it easy to persuade drivers to switch. Many motorists are
understandably angry that they were encouraged to invest in diesel
engines but are now expected to face clean air zones, pollution charges
and other restrictions. Many feel that they are, in effect, being
punished for what they were told was the smart, responsible choice.
Mazyar Keshvari, an MP from Norway’s right-wing Progress Party, calls
Europe’s anti-diesel pivot “the biggest swindle”, since many drivers
there were teased into buying diesels with tax incentives.
The UK government is keenly aware of the hypocrisy. The government must
publish updated clean air plans by 24 April, but the prime minister,
Theresa May, has indicated she does not want to punish existing diesel
drivers. She says she is “very conscious of the fact that past
governments have encouraged people to buy diesel cars, and we need to
take that into account”.
While national governments wring their hands, it is cities that are
taking the lead. In Germany, Berlin has already banned the oldest,
highest-polluting diesel cars from its centre, while Munich is
developing a clean air ban that will bring in some form of diesel ban in
2018. The Spanish capital, Madrid, has now introduced a system to halve
the number of cars on the roads during smog outbreaks, based on odd or
even number plates on alternate days; various other cities have
experimented with similar trials.
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In January, Oslo city council introduced a ban on diesel cars for the
first time, halting their use completely for one day (during a high
pollution alert). The city also plans to raise the road toll for diesel
cars entering the city centre from 33 Krone (£3) to 58 Krone (£5.50) in
rush hour.
The cities that have moved boldest have been the ones least likely to
get too concerned about the fact that motorists, having been told one
thing, are now being told another. Some have worried this could lead to
a damaging kind of cynicism – a more skeptical attitude toward the
latest environmental research. But councillor Lan Marie Nguyen Berg of
Oslo’s Green party doesn’t think that will happen.
“It’s a long time ago now,” she says of the old pro-diesel incentives.
“Since 2012 we’ve been talking about how bad (diesel) is for people’s
health, and people are adjusting to the science. In the past year we’ve
seen quite a big change in attitudes. People are well aware of the
health implications now. They don’t think children and elderly people
should have to stay in their homes to avoid pollution.”
Paris has been typically one of the more aggressive cities. Under mayor
Anne Hidalgo, it introduced a system of coloured stickers to classify
cars types and emission levels. Any diesel-run car made before 2000 will
not be allowed on the roads inside the French capital. Diesel cars built
between 2000 and 2010 could soon be subject to tighter restrictions, as
the mayor tries to phase out diesel entirely by 2025.
Some French drivers are unhappy. A national campaign group, 40 Million
Motorists, says the new system is unfair to poorer diesel drivers who
cannot afford to buy a new cleaner car.
Romain Lacombe, founder of Plume Labs, a Paris-based organisation that
monitors air quality around the world, is not persuaded by their
argument. He backs the new system because “it means the oldest cars will
be the first off the road, which makes a lot of sense”.
“The stock of [diesel] vehicles will take time to be phased out, but I
only see momentum building to move away from diesel,” says Lacombe.
“There is a rising understanding of how damaging to health diesel
emissions are. People are beginning to realise they are the first victim
of their own vehicle. It’s a personal health issue, a life or death issue.”
Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, has stopped short of an outright ban on
diesel, but he has ordered the replacement of the capital’s current
diesel bus fleet with clean alternatives. The mayor’s office will also
enforce a £10 toxicity charge, or T-charge, on the highest-polluting
cars entering the city centre as of October. The measures are part of a
wider plan to create an ultra-low-emission zone (ULEZ) in central London
from April 2019.
Khan has expressly urged drivers to “ditch dirty diesel”, and has backed
it up by urging the UK government to come up with a “national diesel
scrappage fund” to fairly compensate diesel drivers, suggesting a sum of
up to £3,500 offered for each car or van taken off the road.
The black cabs are, in some ways, a litmus test of whether diesel is on
its way out. Many of the cabs use diesel, and drivers had initially
complained about clean-air restrictions. But the Licensed Taxi Drivers’
Association (LTDA) now backs Khan’s idea of a scrappage fund. And last
month the government and City Hall both announced a plug-in taxi grant
scheme giving cabbies £7,500 to buy new electric models built in
Coventry. Steve McNamara, general secretary of the LTDA, predicts diesel
cabs will be “a thing of the past” within six years.
‘The most unpopular measure’
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Although nearly three-quarters of all the world’s diesel cars are driven
on European roads, bold moves are being made elsewhere, too. Hong Kong
has introduced subsidies to help phase out older diesel vehicles. Later
this year Seoul will ban all diesels made before 2006 from a city-centre
low emission zone.
But it is in Mexico City, where mountains surrounding the metropolis
help trap a semi-permanent blanket of smog over the city, that mayor
Miguel Ángel Mancera has decided to ban diesel completely by 2025.
“I know it is a good thing for the city,” Mancera said on a recent visit
to London to meet Khan’s team. “It’s something that is absolutely
essential to protect the environment. We’re changing: our taxis have to
be electric or hybrid, and our buses are being changed from diesel to
new technologies.”
The mayor has also pledged to invest more in the public transport system
and cycling lanes, and persuaded delivery companies to use their diesel
trucks at night to reduce daytime emissions.
Will this work in a city where drivers are famously unruly? Mancera
points to the 1992 scheme called Hoy No Circula (No Driving Today),
which forbade the worst-polluting vehicles from being on the roads one
day a week; the rules have since been tightened to include a Saturday
daytime ban for the worst polluters. “It’s totally unpopular,” Mancera
says. “It’s the most unpopular measure you can make – to stop people
moving. Some people support it, but another part of the population get
really irritated by it.”
But nevertheless, he says drivers will get used to the diesel ban the
way they did to Hoy No Circula. “When it is essential, you just have to
do it.”
Worldwide, polls suggest citizens of some big cities are beginning to
put clean air before convenience. A YouGov poll last year showed 52% of
Londoners would support a ban on diesel cars in London’s city centre; a
similar poll in France on a ban on diesel in the centre by 2020 was
backed by 54% of Parisians.
This is probably how the death of diesel will come about – not through
regulation, but through consumer disgust. Many auto experts expect the
global sales dip that followed Dieselgate to continue, as consumers turn
up their nose and manufacturers correspondingly invest less in new
models. “The regulations will deter people, at least people in big
cities, from buying diesel cars at their next purchase if they think
they are going to be restricted,” says professor David Bailey of Aston
University.
Are car buyers entitled to have any confidence at all in buying diesel,
or do we need to get rid of it altogether? Unfortunately it is difficult
to determine precisely how the latest breed of diesel cars compare with
petrol ones, pollution-wise. Since the Volkswagen scandal, no one has a
great deal of faith in emission testing done in the laboratory.
A tougher on-the-road testing regime, the “real driving emissions” (RDE)
tests, is set to begin across the EU in September. “There is a going to
be a tightening up on testing and it will make diesels cars more
expensive to make,” says Bailey. “It will mean a lot of diesels cars
disappearing, because it won’t be worth it for the manufacturers.
“I think a substantial reorientation will take place away from diesel,
part of a larger shift away from the combustion engine toward electric
cars in the 2020s.”
According to Steve Gooding, director of the RAC Foundation, a UK
motoring research group, “the mere talk of action might already be
altering buying behaviour”. He points to a recent dip in diesel car
sales in the UK. But Gooding also argues that schemes to remove the
highest-polluting diesel cars from the roads are impractical, mainly
because working out exactly how “dirty” a car is remains difficult. “The
issue is not just the age of a car, but where it’s driven, how far it’s
driven and under what conditions,” he says. “Unfortunately, the data
needed to target the most polluting vehicles accurately is not easily
available.”
If smog-choked cities want the shift away from diesels to happen as
quickly as possible, they will need the help of regulators – and also
overcome the indifference of national governments. Oslo still has to
convince the Norwegian transport ministry to approve its road toll
hikes. Mancera will have to persuade the national government to replace
the fleet of federally controlled diesel buses that chunter into Mexico
City each day.
Yet the prize for hastening the decline of diesel could be huge – not
least because, with so many big climate battles ahead of us, it would
demonstrate that we and our political leaders can fix crises when
science identifies them.
“I’m optimistic we can see the end of diesel vehicles,” says Berg. “The
end of diesel would be a pretty big change in a relatively short period
of time.”
