Let's Wave Goodbye To The Light-Duty Diesel Truck

The particles are one-fifth the diameter of a human hair. They lodge deep in the lungs and never come back out. Children and the elderly are particularly affected. They cause lung cancer, lower resistance to disease, and make it difficult to breathe. It’s impossible to accurately estimate the deaths that occur as a result of exposure, but the EPA has suggested that it could be between 500 and 8,000 per million people.

Toxic exhaust from diesel engines, in both the form of gases and particulate matter, is a major contributor to health problems. It is also a leading cause of smog, which has led Paris to ban diesel cars on alternate days during high-smog periods and to plan for a comprehensive ban on diesel passenger vehicles in the city by 2020.

For Europe, this is a case of chickens coming home to roost.

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TUV Nord Testing Firm: Direct Injected Gasoline Engines Emit More Particulates Than Diesels

TUV Nord, a safety testing and certification agency, has issued a report commissioned by an environmental group that says that modern engines that use gasoline direct injection (GDI) of fuel emit more small particles in their exhausts than modern diesel engines. Particulates raise concerns over possibly causing cancer. GDI has proliferated as a means of increasing power, improving fuel efficiency and lowering CO2 emmissions but TUV Nord says that GDI engines put out 1,000 times more harmful particles than traditional gasoline engines and 10 times more than the latest diesels. The study is based on a sample size of three cars, a Ford Focus with a 1 liter EcoBoost engine, a Renault Megane with a 1.2 liter Energy TCe, and a Hyundai i40 with a 1.6 liter GDI engine.

“The cost of a filter to eliminate particle emissions from GDI cars is low (around EUR50 [~$68 US]), with no loss in fuel efficiency and a big societal benefit. Despite this, carmakers are delaying fitting filters on GDI cars,” the Transport & Environment advocacy group based in Brussels said in a summary of the report.

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  • 3SpeedAutomatic R&T could have killed the story before it was released.Now, by pulling it after the fact, they look like idiots!! What's new??
  • Master Baiter "That said, the Inflation Reduction Act apparently does run afoul of WTO rules..."Pfft. The Biden administration doesn't care about rules. The Supreme Court said they couldn't forgive student load debt; they did it anyway. Decorum and tradition says you don't prosecute former presidents; they are doing it anyway. They made the CDC suspend evictions though they had no constitutional authority to do so.
  • 1995 SC Good. To misquote Sheryl Crow "If it makes them unhappy, it can't be that bad"
  • 1995 SC The letters on the hatch aren't big enough. hard pass
  • Ajla Those letters look like they are from AutoZone.