"London smog: 'We spend billions per year on tests in a lab. Useless … We want to clean up the environment, not the labs' (Photo: stu mayhem)" - euobserver.
No surprises, here for me unfortunately. Peter Teffer reports straight from the heart of "EU Capital" in Brussels:
"Volkswagen is not the only car company that used illegal devices to cheat emissions tests, said Axel Friedrich, a German emissions testing expert who is a co-founder of the NGO that notified US authorities something was wrong with VW's test results."You will see tomorrow night on German television the next case", Friedrich said on Wednesday (21 October) in the European Parliament."It's not only diesel, it's also gasoline. The whole system is corrupt", he added."
WHO: DieselGate Is A Cancer Problem - Auto Industry Calls "Not To Jeopardise Diesel As One Of Its Key Pillars."
"Exhaust from diesel engines contributes to air pollution and is a cancer hazard to humans," said Dr. Kurt Straif. Forbes.
Dear Mr Erik Jonnaert, Secretary General of UN, sorry … of ACEA (European Automobile Manufacturers' Association), please be careful, couple of NRs like this one and those "pillars" can hit you on the head very hard! "Clean Diesel" Dream is dead, unfortunately with thousands of people killed by it. It is time to move on, not just to pretend that autos are changing, but embrace that change for real. I love all those articles now how Volkswagen moves so fast into electric cars space. I would like to believe it, but why are they signing this NR asking for delay in emissions standards implementation and lobbying in EU for The Toxic Emissions Limits to be INCREASED? On behalf of all what is left of the brain-healthy population, I tell you that we will not buy all that killing us last century oil thirsty rubbish any more. My dear girls and boys, please, do not let me down here and stay for a bit to find out why I am breaking into this smoking party here.
I can understand Auto-makers very well: they have invested Billions in the "Clean Diesel" scam and related technology. Can you imaging for them to admit now that all those plants, equipment, all that already produced cancer hazard spitting rubbish is a total waste? They do not care about you or your kids for real: just read the News Release from ACEA below. But shareholders are the different story: they will tear them apart. This is where the real worry comes and this is where is your power. All that rubbish has to be sold to somebody. I do hope that not to you any more. Just do this one thing: do not buy it - the rest we will do for you and your kids, there is the solution.
Mass media is very slow to react to this scandal, but how could they? Auto sector must be one of the largest advertisers for the mass media. There are reports that the first thing Volkswagen did was, no not EV announcements there ones came later, but their Ad Agency has threatened to pull out all advertisement from the papers reporting on Volkswagen scandal. Advertisement is going on-line now where "They" are censoring you once you start talking about the real things. By the way, I cannot really read that article on the link above on Forbes, I found it in another place and the WHO report is below for your kind attention.
So girls and boys it is all up to us. Will you allow "Them" just to take over your iPhoneor Twitter account or can they mess up with all your life? That report from WHO "Diesel Engine Exhaust Carcinogenic" is … from 2012! All we have to do now is just not to allow this BS happen around us any more, technology is here to help us. Educate yourself and help to educate others. Donate your RT, do not suffer in silence. Everybody who is still talking about more pollution coming from Electric Cars, please, do not bother - enjoy the fumes, apparently brain damage from the air pollution is the very serious issue as well now. Read more."
International Agency for Research on Cancer
World Health Organisation.
DieselGate: Auto Industry Calls For More Time To Properly Poison Our Kids With Increased Deadly Emissions.
Erik Jonnaert, ACEA Secretary General
euobserver:
Car emissions testing: 'whole system is corrupt'
Volkswagen is not the only car company that used illegal devices to cheat emissions tests, said Axel Friedrich, a German emissions testing expert who is a co-founder of the NGO that notified US authorities something was wrong with VW's test results.
"You will see tomorrow night on German television the next case", Friedrich said on Wednesday (21 October) in the European Parliament.
"It's not only diesel, it's also gasoline. The whole system is corrupt", he added.
Although he refused to single out companies, he noted that he "heard a number of statements [from other car companies] which I know are lies. We'll realise this in the next couple of weeks."
According to Friedrich, it was already well-known to those involved that car companies must have been cheating during the laboratory tests.
But Volkswagen "tried to keep it secret. This is when journalists get more interested. If it's open, nobody cares. If it's secret, you jump on it", he told a group of around twenty journalists during a round-table discussion organised by the parliament's left-wing Green group.
But the signs were there. While the cars did well on the laboratory tests, air quality in Europe's cities did not improve in tandem.
More than half of the EU's member states are currently facing infringement procedures from the European Commission for failing to comply with EU targets on air quality.
"If the car [industry] would not [have been] cheating, we would have met all these goals of the air quality directive", said Friedrich.
The German retiree is former director of the Environment, Transport and Noise Division of the German federal environmental agency, but recently became a regular voice in German media after the Volkswagen scandal involving illegal software which allowed VW’s cars to appear much cleaner than they actually were.
The scandal was exposed after US authorities investigated claims from the International Council on Clean Transportation, an NGO of which Friedrich was one of the founders.
Friedrich praised the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) which carries out random checks even after cars are certified.
Industry lobby
"We have 28 European agencies for certification. They compete. We have more than 50 certification test labs. They compete. And nobody controls them. … We make laws, but no enforcement. We have big industries which lobby heavily to avoid these controls."
Under EU rules that came into force in 2007, member states should have had by 2009 "effective, proportionate and dissuasive" penalties in place for the use of defeat devices.
"It's 2015, can somebody name me one member state that has done this? I don't know one”, said Friedrich.
A Commission spokesperson told this website that all 28 EU countries have told the Commission that they transposed the relevant directive.
"This information suggests that they have implemented a system of penalties, although many Member States have not communicated their national rules to the Commission separately", the spokesperson said.
She did not want to comment on whether the Commission has started infringement procedures against those countries, but did stress the Commission is "following national authorities' policing and enforcement of EU rules in the automobile sector very closely".
Real driving
Friedrich proposes scrapping laboratory tests altogether, and only having random surprise checks under real driving conditions.
"We spend billions per year on tests in a lab. Useless. … We want to clean up the environment, not the labs", he noted.
The Commission has introduced a new test called the Real Driving Emission (RDE) test, the final elements of which are currently being negotiated.
In a written response to questions from MEPs during a heated plenary debate earlier in October, industry commissioner Elzbieta Bienkowska wrote that the RDE test procedures "will be an appropriate answer to the shortcomings of laboratory testing and will considerably reduce the risk of defeat devices being used".
However, Friedrich does not share this assessment, saying that industry is doing its utmost to ensure that this 'real drive' test does not replicate real driving conditions.
He noted that the conditions during which RDE tests will be taken, are not average driving conditions and exclude, for example, a car motor standing idle for a while (as would be the case in a traffic jam).
Coming up in plenary
The European Parliament, meanwhile, is working on a text to adopt next week during its plenary session in Strasbourg. The MEPs will vote to decide whether they want the Commission to launch an investigation, or failing that, a parliamentary investigation. A call for an independent EU agency that oversees emissions compliance is also proposed.
The Commission has repeatedly stated that it does not have the power to investigate the scandal.
Dutch Green MEP Bas Eickhout says that while strictly legally speaking that may be true, there are "plenty angles" which the Commission could use, such as a state aid probe.
"The EU also does not have power over taxation, yet it still investigated tax rulings via a state aid case."
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