TAILPIPE TESTING
Fallout of VW scandal
Much has been written about what Volkswagen’s emissions scandal will mean to the automaker and the owners of its cars. It will cause the company no end of economic grief, while owners will suffer precipitous drops in the resale values of their cars and governments around the world will serve recall notices on the Jettas, Golfs, Beetles, Passats and Audi A3s affected.
Below are the top five long-term consequences of the heightened awareness of tailpipe emissions brought on by this crisis.
Self-certification of emissions testing by automakers or their subcontractors will end
One of the revelations of the VW emissions scandal is how few cars are tested by government agencies. Instead, most is performed by automakers or their agencies, which then certify that the vehicles meet appropriate standards.
The study Don’t Breathe Here: Tackling Air Pollution from Vehicles recommends that Europe end testing by the automakers “replace it with a truly independent European-type approval authority,” noting that such an overhaul could be funded by the manufacturers.
With manufacturers so obviously gaming both the EU and the U.S. self-certification process, it’s impossible to comprehend how the current system can survive.
Diesels could get shorter maintenance intervals
Another of dieselgate’s revela- tions is that even some of the latest, high-tech diesel-powered cars with AdBlue “selective catalytic reduction” systems — which inject a urea-based solution to quell nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions — fail on-road emissions tests. It turns out some automakers have been “under-dosing” with urea so they can boast consumer-friendly, extended one-year refill periods. The result is diesel engines meet emissions standards under lowload laboratory testing but exceed NOx limits under the heavier demands of real-world driving.
Many experts contend that at least two litres of urea must be injected every 1,000 kilometres of real-world driving to keep NOx emissions within required limits under all driving conditions. Expect shorter maintenance intervals or larger urea containers.
Diesels may not be the only engines to face future scrutiny
So far, the Volkswagen scandal has focused solely on diesel engines, but some modern gasoline-fuelled engines may be caught in the crossfire as well. Direct injection — the process of pumping fuel directly into the engine rather than the intake manifold — has been widely adopted by most manufacturers as a high-tech method to increase fuel economy and reduce production of carbon dioxide (CO2). It accomplishes both, but it also increases the production of ultrafine particulates to diesel-like levels. Analysts are already calling for DI engines to be equipped with diesel-like particulate filters.
Drive Clean could come back with a vengeance
Environmentalists, vindicated in their contention that automakers have long been gaming the system, may be emboldened to push for more in-use testing. Although Periodic Technical Inspections (PTI) of in-use emissions testing here in Canada have largely been defanged (Ontario’s Drive Clean program) or eliminated totally (B.C.’s bia’s AirCare system), there may well be calls for increased policing as a result of original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) not adhering to the spirit of national emissions standards. That means standards will vary: OEM compliance may be a federal issue, but in-use testing is a provincial mandate. And, in a worst-case scenario, the push by environmentalists to make licensing of older vehicles more difficult may gather steam.
Although Don’t Breathe Here is a European study, its recommendation that “PTIs be strengthened by setting an expiration date to the type of approval certificate” may well gather steam everywhere. Likewise, classic cars without any emissions-reduction systems at all might find their use curtailed.
The fight against automobile pollution has just found a new target
For the past decade or so, the focus of automotive emissions reduction has been the so-called greenhouse gases resulting from the combustion of petroleumbased products. Hydrocarbon emissions have largely been curtailed, just as nitrogen oxides had been, or so it was believed. In recent years, however, there has been an ever-increasing outcry against automotive NOx and particulate production.
For instance, almost half of the nitrogen oxides in the Greater London, England, area are attributable to tailpipe emissions and, late last year, the mayor of Paris called for a (then controversial) ban on pre-2011 diesel-powered cars in the city’s core by 2020. Researchers from King’s College London, meanwhile, contend that nitrogen dioxide contributed to as many as 5,879 premature deaths in 2010 (another 3,537 were said to be caused by another diesel emission, ultrafine PM2.5 particulates).
According to Dr. Penny Woods, chief executive of the British Lung Foundation, “exposure to air pollution increases the risk of lung cancer, impairs child lung development and increases the risk of hospitalization among people with a pre-existing lung condition.” In the future, look for NOx reduction to become as important as our quest to reduce CO2 tailpipe emissions.