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EPA investigation: converted diesel pickups worse than manipulated VW diesel

2020-11-29T01:32:13.235Z


According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, illegally converted pickups are causing significant air pollution in the US and even exceeding the effects of the diesel scandal. The auto industry is not to blame.


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Black plumes of smoke like on this diesel pickup pollute the air quality in the USA

Photo: George Rose / Getty Images

More than half a million diesel pickups have been on US roads in the past decade with emissions control systems illegally disabled - producing as many emissions as nine million additional, proper cars would have emitted.

This is the result of an investigation by the US environmental agency EPA, which is available to the New York Times.

In contrast to the diesel scandal, however, it is not the manufacturers but the owners of the vehicles that are behind the manipulation.

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They build illegal defeat devices that are manufactured by comparatively small companies into their pickups.

Either, argues the authority, in order to be able to save the maintenance costs of exhaust gas aftertreatment, to increase the performance or also for individualization - for example to achieve that the own truck emits thick, black clouds of smoke.

570,000 tons of nitrogen oxides from manipulated trucks

These so-called coal rollers are a car subculture that has been observed in the USA for several years, with which primarily conservative pickup drivers smoke the air, but also cyclists or hybrid and electric cars, often as a protest against climate protection measures, ideally immortalized by Youtube video.

For this, more fuel than necessary is usually injected, which then does not burn completely and flows out of the exhaust as a cloud of soot.

If the exhaust gas aftertreatment is also out of operation, this cloud becomes even larger.

However, the EPA believes that the manipulation of emission control systems as well as the manufacture, sale and installation of such defeat devices violates US air pollution laws.

According to the investigation, such defeat devices also have serious consequences.

The EPA assumes that the emissions control systems have been tampered with in more than 550,000 pickups in the past ten years.

As a result, these vehicles emit more than 570,000 tons of noxious nitrogen oxides over their lifetime - more than ten times the nitrogen oxide emissions caused by manipulated VW diesels in the USA.

In addition, there are around 5,000 tons of additional fine dust emissions.

Smaller pickups or agricultural machines could also be manipulated

In fact, however, the environmental pollution from the defeat devices could be much higher.

The EPA investigators found at least 28 different companies that sold at least 45 of the products known as "diesel tuners".

In addition, the number of manipulated vehicles is likely to be much higher, because only trucks of classes 2b and 3 with a gross vehicle weight of between 3.9 and 6.4 tons were examined.

Around 15 percent of these heavy pickup trucks, including the Ford F-350 or the Ram 2500, have been manipulated.

However, the components could also be found in thousands of other diesel vehicles, in smaller pickups, cars, but also trucks or agricultural machinery.

"It's much more alarming and more widespread than the Volkswagen scandal," said Drew Kodjak of the International Council on Clean Transportation - the organization that helped uncover the diesel scandal - the New York Times.

Since these are pickups, so Kodjak, the air pollution is significantly higher.

At the same time, it is much more difficult to tackle the problem of the »diesel tuners« that are also offered on the Internet.

Many small companies are involved here, which makes it more difficult to enforce applicable rules than with a large, global car manufacturer, says Kodjak.

In addition, there is a lack of effective controls at the state and city level.

According to the New York Times, emissions tests in many places do not take any measurements on the tailpipe; instead, only the values ​​are read from the car's control units - which means that the manipulation is not exposed.

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Source: spiegel

All tech articles on 2020-11-29

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