Mitsubishi: We've Been Cheating On Fuel Tests For 25 years (cnn.com) 195
An anonymous reader cites an article on CNN:The situation at Mitsubishi Motors just went from bad to much, much worse. The Japanese automaker admitted Tuesday that it had falsified fuel efficiency tests for the past quarter century (warning: annoying autoplay videos, alternate source), the latest revelation in a scandal that has rocked the company. The automaker said last week that it had used improper fuel economy tests on hundreds of thousands of vehicles, including some sold to Nissan. Cars with inflated fuel efficiency ratings were sold only in Japan. Mitsubishi said it would ask lawyers from outside the company to investigate the tests.
Somebody... (Score:5, Funny)
...will be committing sudoku over this.
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. . .only if someone is sufficiently cross. . .
Re:Somebody... (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, it's pretty sad. Everything has aligned, and the numbers add up. They're boxed in.
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I suppose their only option is to falsify the numbers again.
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RE: your sig.
Now that the Ghostbusters remake is out, i keep on thinking "it's whom you gonna call"
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DOH! out of mod points.
Post is way more insightful, than funny.
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FWIW, I think you've been (successfully) trolled.
Not for lack of trying (Score:5, Funny)
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Except for Chrysler for a bit....
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Chrysler eventually did not choose to buy Mitsubishi, and at some later date Mitsubishi bought-out Chrysler's stake in DSM.
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True, but they sent at least two good ones over here, the first generation (1990-94) Eclipse GSX, all-wheel drive turbo, and the Lancer Evolution also an all-wheel drive turbo tuner edition. The boy racer in me would love to have either. The Eclipse GSX was also imported by Chrysler and rebadged as the Eagle Talon TSI, one of the baddest-ass car names ever, and the car could back it up.
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The Plymouth Laser was the 3rd model in the original Diamond Star Motor (DSM) lineup. None of the Eclipses, Talons, or Lasers were imported. They were all assembled in Normal, IL at what was originally a 50-50 joint venture between Mitsubishi and Chrysler. Mitsubishi later bought out Chrysler's share but still continued to manufacture vehicles at the plant under a contractual basis for Chrysler.
The DSM's bigger brother, the Mi
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Thanks for the interesting correction on the assembly location. I knew that the Laser was the less popular third sibling in the Eclipse/Talon/Laser trio, but I've never seen one of the high performance Lasers on the street, or at least didn't know it when I did.
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Lasers didn't come with the AWD package until 1992 while the other models had it a year before. Production was also discontinued in 1994 while the other two models continued on with the 2nd gen models.
The difference between the models aside from if they were turbo charged and/or AWD were mainly cosmetic in nature. Elcipses and Talons had a rear spoiler and Lasers did not with it's "Aero" styling, so it always looked like the Lasers were missing something on the rear end in my opinion. Perhaps that's why th
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I was told by a colleague who owned an Eclipse that he regretted buying the car. He said that although it had a powerful engine, the body/frame was too heavy and negated the power making it slow off the line.
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What year was it? The first Eclipse was a great car. The second generation was pretty good too. After that, not so much.
Thank You For Alternate Links (Non-Paywalled) (Score:2)
Mitsubishi to Volkswagon (Score:1)
Cheating was so two decades ago
Re: Mitsubishi to Volkswagon (Score:2)
All car manufacturers cheat and stretch the rules to the limit.
Why admit? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why admit? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Until someone is going to jail.
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They're not even allowed to: the KBA will not approve any updates that has downsides for the owner. This is why the recall takes so long: VW have to prove for each and every model that there is no overall reduction in fuel efficiency or power under normal driving conditions.
So what you're saying is that this problem is never actually going to get fixed? I'm reasonably certain that if they had the ability to deliver a solution that could have provided the same power, and fuel efficiency, while lowering emissions to the point that the vehicle would pass the test honestly, they would have in the first place, so demanding a solution that achieves just that seems like little more than regulatory masturbation.
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Agreed. However, I have a feeling we are going to eventually find out that MPG exaggeration is germane to all automakers.
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There was a report in german newspapers a few weeks ago.
I thought I also saw it mentioned on some american sites, but not sure.
Thanks, Dicks (Score:5, Funny)
Dear assholes,
thanks a lot for waiting until we had to pay a crap ton of money to confess that everyone has been doing the same type of things more or less forever.
yours truly,
Volkswagen.
Re:Thanks, Dicks (Score:4, Insightful)
No different than claims of mileage, battery duration, acceleration abilities at start vs. 5 years out, or any of a host of other claims made by the electric industry... All figures may vary depending on where you live, how you drive, how you maintain, blah, blah, blah. Don't trust any of them. About the best you can do is compare values put out by the same manufacturer (and even there they may be fudging a particular model's info to try to get its sales up a bit).
Re:Thanks, Dicks (Score:4, Funny)
Dear Irrational Greenist,
Shut up. Seriously. Please stop whining about companies doing things you simply don't have the knowledge or experience to comment on. The science of the topic of electric cars is quite well understood, and while electric cars have a place in the future, they are:
* a net ecological loss over conventional ICE vehicles
* severely niche in terms of distance capability, payload, and overall utility.
* too technologically immature for mass production by any objective criteria
* likely impossible to replace all ICE vehicles due to available battery technology, and/or the availability of lithium
* a foolish long term move unless you like the idea of disposable vehicles
* through regulation, further increasing in (all) vehicle costs well over inflationary rates as a direct result of additional regulation
* completely dependent upon more destructive fossil fuels than cars (namely, coal - unless you're willing to cede the use of nuclear, first).
-Some guy who probably doesn't give a fuck, right?
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As lithium is nearly 50% more common in the earth's crust than lead, I don't think it's availability is really a limiting factor.
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Interesting enough, you'd have to strip mine the entire earth to get at all of that lithium, which is not (as much) of the case with lead: unlike lead, lithium is not terribly concentrated, so you end up with huge pit mines where it's available in any significant concentrations.
ou have no idea what you are talking about (Score:2)
Dude, if you feel so passionate about it, why do you post AC? Are you not willing to stand behind what you say?
BTW, Hydroelectric power, ecologically speaking is a nightmare.
Also, you have no fucking idea what you are talking about... at all.
From the EIA site.
In 2015, the United States generated about 4 trillion kilowatthours of electricity.1 About 67% of the electricity generated was from fossil fuels (coal, natural gas, and petroleum).
Major energy sources and percent share of total U.S. electrici
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Also, you have no fucking idea what you are talking about... at all.
And then you post numbers which prove his point to be correct. Hint: 33% + 6% + 4.7% + 0.6% + 20% is most certainly the majority, and is most certainly > 33%.
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Isn't google great? It allows so many things, like expanding ones understanding of the existence we live in! (For your future reference, this took like, 5 minutes to google - more time to type than actually look up.)
I can hardly fault you for not thinking about the big picture of what you propose, because that's really the issue most people face in life. They don't brush their teeth. They sleep with ugly or unintelligent women. All of these things have significant negative costs, though the initial appeal i
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Strictly speaking, If you are so concerned about the environment you would not buy a fancy new electric car, but rather buy and older used car.
Even better, drive your current car until it has reached its end of life.
The amount of carbon used to make a new car far exceeds that of what you would use to drive your already produced car. Not to mention that lithium mining is messy business.
Plus the battery pack is only good for 10 years, after which you need to replace the car or buy a new battery pack. There is
Just a wild guess... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just a wild guess... (Score:4, Interesting)
Unfortunately there's no, "Wow!" factor with fuel economy testing, compared to fairly spectacular results from IIHS's efforts.
That's not economically efficient (Score:3)
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May be, they did. In the case of VW, my understanding is that they didn't cheat on the measurement itself. They cheated by making modified cars specifically for the test. And of course, none of those modified cars were the same as the ones meant for production. Also, I think this kind of cheating is indeed quite widespread in other industries.
If you buy an energy-rated television, the television has the energy star setting turned off when it is being displayed on the sales floor, and it's definitely brighte
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Fundamentally, the world works because most people are mostly honest, most of the time. Shocking! but true.
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I can't drive 55.
As opposed to... (Score:2)
...the cheap crap engines they make for everybody else? Had an '89 Plymouth Grand Voyager, that we got in '93, that ran really, really well for years. In '03, I traded it in for a '97 Plymouth? Chrysler? Grand Voyage, and I have *never* spent so much money on engine repairs. An engineer I knew told me they'd gone from their own engines to Mitsubishi engines, and *then* he started ranting about the crap they were.
Based on my personal experience, with head gaskets (never needed one before), oil pan, which be
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The '97 would have had either a Powertech (2.4) or a a 3.3 or 3.8 V6.
the 2.4 had a real problem with head gaskets, the bean-counters wouldn't allow them to use the multi-layer steel gasket, and the cheaper gaskets failed, many were replaced under-recall. Unfortunately if the shop did a crap-job under recall (like in my Stratus) then the cooling system could act as a vent for exhaust gases under pressure.
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Sounds like the kind of problems the Chevy Grand Caravan for their early/mid-2000 model years. My parents bought one, the dealer tried 3 engine swaps and still couldn't get an engine that worked right. They finally wrote it off as a lemon and bought a Kia instead that has been running flawlessly.
It's those rogue engineers again! (Score:5, Insightful)
Makes sense for Domestic Japanese Production... (Score:2)
just like test scores (Score:2)
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And another press release from Mitsubishi (Score:2)
"We are terribly sorry about this systemic abuse regarding our fuel efficiency numbers. Now, in entirely unrelated news, check out our new line of all-electric vehicles!"
25 years... hmmm... (Score:2)
Ah! (Score:2)
My experienc with Suzuki (Score:2)
I have a 2001 Suzuki Vitara (2L/4cyl. Auto.) It is rated for 20/23 (city/highway) and I routinely get 22/25. I really wish they wouldn't have left the US market.
Punishment ceiling known. No one behind bars... (Score:4, Interesting)
Are all car companies trying to look worst than their competitors? "Oh, you think they're bad? Check out what we did!"
I'm just waiting for a car company to come up with a ~$10K electric car now.
Good question, and I think this is because VW management has essentially escaped without criminal charges, now it's a manner of the the CxOs in the car companies getting approval from the board to take the financial hit and put this behind them.
I asked at this earlier, but I think (ie, agree with other /.ers who replied to me) - it's a case where pretty much everyone is complicit - now is a showcase of how and when all the car manufacturers come forward.
Just wish governments would simply mandate remediation as the sale of more electrics or other zero-emissions vehicles (as Elon Musk requested).
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Dealerships had their place when the world was a much larger place and we couldn't converse with the other side of the world in secon
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Fuel economy in the past was never a big seller (Especially in the US) . Sure we may have talked about it. But if gave an option more Pep vs. Better fuel economy. Pep normally won. So there wasn't that much interest in really checking the claims of companies on their cleanness and fuel economy, as it wasn't the reason why we chose that car. However with $4.00 a gallon gas common only a few years ago. Increased media attention on Carbon pollution, and the success of newer energy efficient cars, Hybrid and
Re:What's happening? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:What's happening? (Score:5, Insightful)
What's happening is that you are getting an object lesson in the failure of government regulations. And the causes are not hard to understand: regulations and procedures are written based on lobbying by the corporations being regulated, and the people who implement the regulations have no economic interest in doing a good job and are easily corruptible. And there is no solution to this; what it means is that regulations will always be an inefficient and wasteful approach to solving problems. Sometimes they are necessary, often not.
For automobiles, limits on NOx have been useful in improving air quality and are probably worth it; limits on CO2 emissions from personal automobiles are not worth the trouble because they have a negligible impact on overall US greenhouse gas emissions. For CO2 emissions, a substantial tax increase would be a better mechanism if we wanted to reduce CO2 emissions from driving, but politicians know full well that they couldn't pass that. So, instead, they use CAFE, which amounts to the same thing, but whose economic effects are so obscure that people don't notice.
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Are you kidding? Federal government spending is 25% of GDP, total government spending is nearly 40% of GDP; these numbers have been going up for many decades. At what point do you consider government spending to be "enough"?
To be fair, current federal spending [usdebtclock.org] is:
* 68% mailing checks to the old and the poor
* 15% military
* 6% interest
* 11% everything else
We can reduce spending greatly while doubling spending on infrastructure, education, NASA, even enforcing regulations. We'd just have to be willing to mail less money to people. Sadly, those people are now a majority of voters, so it won't happen. (State and local spending is even more dominated by pension plans and related check-mailing.)
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* 68% mailing checks to the old and the poor
Not sure if intellectually dishonest, or you just don't know...
Expenditures from FICA-filled trusts aren't really fair to include in the list with the others. Even if we didn't send those checks, the government would not have more general money to spend on anything not funded by FICA taxes.
Unless you're proposing spending FICA withheld taxes on infrastructure?
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The FICA trusts were all emptied by Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush. They no longer contain marketable securities, and instead contain IOUs with no economic value. Much as if you loaned yourself all the money in your 401k - the 401k still has an asset, worth the same as before, but it's useless to your retirement plans.
All spending by Social Security must come from taxation. Pre-Reagan, the SSA could actually sell the securities it held on the market, as they were normal federal bonds. That's no longer
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The FICA trusts were all emptied by Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush. They no longer contain marketable securities, and instead contain IOUs with no economic value. Much as if you loaned yourself all the money in your 401k - the 401k still has an asset, worth the same as before, but it's useless to your retirement plans.
I've heard this claim pulled around quite a bit... It's patently false, though. They don't contain marketable securities, in the fact that they're special treasury bills- but they are valuable securities, regardless. As long as we continue to grow and pay taxes, those securities are as valuable as any other treasury security.
All spending by Social Security must come from taxation. Pre-Reagan, the SSA could actually sell the securities it held on the market, as they were normal federal bonds. That's no longer the case. The sad thing is, almost no one noticed. There was some complaining when the looting started, but we moved on the the next political scandal and ignored it for 20 years.
All spending by Social Security must come from taxation. I don't think we agree. FICA taxation.
Sure, the interest on the FICA trusts come from general taxation, but they're not the any
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They don't contain marketable securities, in the fact that they're special treasury bills- but they are valuable securities, regardless.
My point was just that SS claims can now only be paid from new taxation, whereas they used to be able to be paid by the fund selling securities. The government funded other operations by selling off those securities, just because they could get away with it.
All spending by Social Security must come from taxation. I don't think we agree. FICA taxation.
I'm not distinguishing by the label on the tax. Just the all outflows now require new inflows. If you check the usdebtclock.org page, you can see the totals, and the division between income tax, payroll tax, and corporate tax, but ultimately, congress
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That is very disingenuous, when you consider That of that 68%, more than half is money that people either earned by way of a pension, or already paid in in the form of social security. You have no right to "stop the handouts" when those moneys are in fact owed every bit as much as (if not more) than our vast public debt.
What can't be paid won't be paid. The public debt must be paid unless we amend or ignore the constitution, those "promises", not so much (per the SCOTUS). Local governments are already dealing with this, here and there, pre-saging the larger issue. They declare bankruptcy, and the smaller pension payouts come out of the settlement. We can't do that at the federal level - we'll either change the programs once there's a crisis (goodness knows we lack the courage to enable a soft landing by acting before a
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We can. But we don't. That's because every additional dollar we send to government is primarily used by politicians to buy votes.
In particular, the statement that People who like to claim that the government is incompetent are also the ones that cause it to be that way by not giving agencies enough resources to do their jobs. is wrong. In fact, the people who are shifting tax dollars away fro
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The problem is that the spending is on pork projects rather than proper government functions. Starving regulatory agencies and safety net programs to death has been a stated goal of the GOP for a good while. They've been quite open about it from time to time.
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Yes, that is always the problem. And the only way to reduce pork spending substantially is to reduce spending.
Good!
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Yes, that is always the problem. And the only way to reduce pork spending substantially is to reduce spending.
Or the legislators could actually demonstrate some of that fiscal responsibility they keep blathering about.
Good!
Truth comes out, you WANT them to be dysfunctional even if they have to be monkeywrencged to do it, so there's an excuse to get rid of them.
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Or the legislators could actually demonstrate some of that fiscal responsibility they keep blathering about.
They can't. Seriously, it doesn't matter whether you're left or right, a crook or a saint, use private or public campaign funds, most of the money a legislator is going to spend is going to go to pork and most of the regulations he is going to pass is in the interest of crony capitalism. Trying to wish that away is like trying to wish gravity away when you're falling off a cliff.
Truth comes out, you WANT them to be dysfunctional even if they have to be monkeywrencged to do it, so there's an excuse to get rid of them.
You're confusing cause and effect. Regulatory agencies are by necessity going to be dysfunctional, and they are far too intrusive
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I'll grant that the FDA needs a cold reboot. The FTC needs a swift kick to get it moving. The FCC is a mixed bag, but it's recently been doing a bit better. The SEC needs actual funding and to actually do something to show they have teeth.
Of course, the FBI, CIA, and NSA also need a cold reboot. The DEA just needs the boot.
We do not need to remove regulation unless we want to go back to medicines with deadly poisons in them and our cities to go back to choking smog like Beijing and Shenzhen have.
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Something like the FDA might have made sense a century ago, when information was hard to get and insurance was largely unknown. These days, FDA functions are far better taken care of by private and voluntary mechanisms; the FDA has become a vehicle for massive crony capitalism and both holds back advances in medicine and contributes to out of control medical costs.
As for air pollution, if you have public cities, you end up having to have public regulation of air quality. But that's not the only mechanism ei
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As for air pollution, if you have public cities, you end up having to have public regulation of air quality. But that's not the only mechanism either, and it's not a very good one. It would be far better if people actually got compensated for damage caused by air pollution and the polluters were made to pay.
Yes, if the truth and justice fairy would wave her wand and cause the fair compensation to happen, that would be grand. But apparently corporate interests had her whacked over a century ago, so we need to do it ourselves. Given what court and lawyers cost these days and that the worst of the pollution tends to fall on the poorest citizens, that leaves a regulatory agency as the lest bad way to accomplish it.
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Yes, which is why they created the EPA and similar regulatory agencies, which basically give them a license to pollute.
Many of these lawsuits would be class action lawsuits, so what "courts and lawyers cost" matters less and less. In fact, the US has b
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So if I get lung cancer I'll get a coupon for $0.50 off of a box of cough drops?
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Right now, you get nothing if the EPA days the pollution was OK. Zip. Nada.
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But that OK level is well below what we see in countries without environmental regulations. People in China also get Zip, Nada.
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They get zip, nada, because their government says they should get zip, nada [wikipedia.org]:
Environmental policy in China is set by the National People's Congress and managed by the Ministry of Environmental Protection. The Center for American Progress has described China's environmental policy as similar to that of the United States before 1970. That is, the central government issues fairly strict
Taxing CO2 (Score:3)
For automobiles, limits on NOx have been useful in improving air quality and are probably worth it; limits on CO2 emissions from personal automobiles are not worth the trouble because they have a negligible impact on overall US greenhouse gas emissions.
Citation please... There may be greater sources of CO2 than personal automobiles but I very much doubt that their contribution is negligible.
For CO2 emissions, a substantial tax increase would be a better mechanism if we wanted to reduce CO2 emissions from driving, but politicians know full well that they couldn't pass that.
Agreed. Probably the best thing we could do with economic policy to help the environment would be to tax fossil fuels at a higher rate. It would drive economic behavior in reasonable time frames to more sensible alternatives for transportation and industrial fuel use. Sadly you are correct that it wouldn't have a prayer of passing the current Congress in the US.
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I didn't say that the contributions of personal automobiles were negligible (they are about 15%), I said that CAFE limits have a negligible impact on overall CO2 emissions; that is, you are not going to affect climate change in any meaningful way through CAFE standards. On the other hand, CAFE standards make driving a lot more expensive and probably cause significant l
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I didn't say that the contributions of personal automobiles were negligible (they are about 15%), I said that CAFE limits have a negligible impact on overall CO2 emissions
That might be what you meant but it isn't what you said. You said "limits on CO2 emissions from personal automobiles are not worth the trouble because they have a negligible impact on overall US greenhouse gas emissions" which is very hard to interpret into your clarification. But fair enough, I understand your intent now.
that is, you are not going to affect climate change in any meaningful way through CAFE standards.
Again, citation please. I very much doubt that CAFE standards will have no meaningful effect. I would agree that it's certainly no cure all or even necessarily the optimal approach but
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"Limits are not worth the trouble because the limits have a negligible impact on ..."
In order t
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So, obviously, the solution is Do Nothing. Except that's not a solution. When climate change deniers finally give up on denying, they go to phase 2: "Well, yes, it's a problem, but China's worse than we are, and besides it'd cost more to fix than to build enormous dykes around cities, etc".
And there may be some truth to some of that - but where's the logic behind doing absolutely nothing at all? Nobody needs a huge SUV to take the kids to school and pick up groceries. And yet there are a ton of them on
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They are already doing nothing and instead creating a job program for politicians, lawyers, and their lackeys.
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Doing nothing is a perfectly good solution: solar cells and other alternative energies have been coming down in price for decades, on a predictable curve. Ditto for increases in energy efficiency. That's going to continue, no matter what government does.
Lots of people are doing plenty about reducing carbon emissions, for the simple
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Admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery.
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At [~$10k] the battery would be an option, not standard equipment.
More likely, a lease.
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No. I'll just start a rickshaw company that will use as labour all the people in these car firms who are found to have colluded with the false results. Choice: 10 years in prison or 2 years rickshaw duty.
Your ideas are intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
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Aww.. it's so cute that you actually think that any of these people will serve time. The end result of all this will almost certainly be a fine which is far, far less than the profits that the corporations made.
Re: What's happening? (Score:2)
With no stars in crash testing.
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Zero emissions horse shit! If in North America, you're powering that electric car with coal.
Wrong. 12 US states produce electricity with hydroelectric, solar, and wind.
Just Seattle alone has 100 percent green electricity.
Wake up and smell the 2016 calendar, grandpa, it's not 1976 anymore.
Re:Only electric cars can't cheat on emissions (Score:4, Informative)
Ontario has also gone completely coal free. They still have a few gas plants, but we're on the path to getting rid of those as well.
The breakdown [cns-snc.ca] is as follows
57.4% Nuclear
27.4% Hydro Electric
8.1% Gas
5.1% Wind
1.3% Biofuel
0.7% Solar
Values on that page are apparently updated in real time based on current load on the system.
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Applying the same "logical" thought process, we could do more good by keeping all of our biological waste inside the house instead of dumping it into the sewers...