Thursday, 24 September 2015

Electric Transport versus the Fossil Fuel deceivers

It is advantageous for a car manufacturer to be able to claim that their vehicle emissions are low. If auto makers can claim that their products are less polluting than the competition, they can sell more units and thus make more profit.
Actually, it is impossible to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions of a diesel or a petrol engine. Internal combustion engines burn fuel and burned fuel results in carbon dioxide. It is however possible to reduce the amount of other of toxic by-products of the combustion process. Doing so, is not straightforward. Designing and making a vehicle that produces less nitrogen oxides than an unmodified vehicle, is expensive.
However, Volkswagen have admitted to reducing the apparent emissions of some of their vehicles without actually changing the engine or the exhaust system. They have cheated. They have deceived the public in order to make more profits.
All internal combustion engine manufacturers have a competitor technology which beats them hands down on the emissions front. This technology beats both petrol and diesel on clean air. This technology is electric power. Electric vehicles not only beat both diesel and petrol on climate damaging CO2 emissions, they also produce none of the other pollutants like carbon monoxide, nitrous oxides and hydrocarbon particulates etc produced by diesel engines which are so highly damaging to human health. 
30,000 deaths in the UK each year are thought to be caused by air pollution. 9,500 premature deaths in London alone each year have been linked to the NOx fumes produced by diesel engines.
Electric vehicles have zero in use emissions. On a level playing field, electric vehicles will be taken up more frequently than diesel by the public if diesel technology is seen to pollute the environment, damage health and add to the problem of climate change.
There have been suggestions in the media that other manufacturers, not just VW, may have been installing software in their diesel vehicles which misleads the public and regulators about the levels of pollutants produced by their engines. 
Why would they do it?
If all diesel engine manufacturers have been using a so called defeat device, they will not gain any advantage (or any increased profits) over their direct diesel competitors because they will all be showing the same reduced levels of toxic fumes and therefore there will be no significant difference in their published emissions data and no advantage over the competition.
So, If it is shown that other or all diesel vehicle manufacturers have been deceiving regulators by systematically installing software which masks the actual levels of toxic pollutants produced by their engines, the conclusion must be that they have not been doing it in order simply to achieve competitive advantage over other diesel engine manufacturers, but to diminish the advantage and prevent the uptake of a viable completely different, competing clean technology - electric cars, vans, buses and lorries.
The auto industry and its mutually dependent partner in crime the fossil fuel industry will do anything to keep their dirty show on the road and keep out upstart competitors like electric vehicles and wind power*. And they have been doing it with total disregard to the effect it has on our health and the damage it does to the planet.

* Wind power - because we need to decarbonise electricity to maximise the advantage of electric transport. Wind power (specifically offshore wind power) must replace coal oil, gas and nuclear derived electricity.

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