Cummins fined $1.675 Billion for gaming their diesel emissions.

[Hay Dude]

I am really surprised by many of the comments here. Cummins cheated. But folks here defend them when other manufacturers manage to follow the rules. Basically Cummins stole money from the other manufacturers who spent the funds to make systems that comply with the law. Cummins did not. So they cheated. They got caught and folks are defending them. What about the other folks who managed to follow the law? I don't get it.
Eric

Awwww isn’t that cute!
Like you don’t think its possible that the others didnt cheat, too?
Maybe haven’t been caught?
Maybe invented a stealthier system thats harder to detect?
Maybe donated more to certain political parties so they get less scrutiny?

Don’t be gettin too naive now!!!

Merry Christmas!

 

[rScotty]

I am really surprised by many of the comments here. Cummins cheated. But folks here defend them when other manufacturers manage to follow the rules. Basically Cummins stole money from the other manufacturers who spent the funds to make systems that comply with the law. Cummins did not. So they cheated. They got caught and folks are defending them. What about the other folks who managed to follow the law? I don't get it.
Eric

For awhile I didn't get it either. Mechanical things are innately logical, but not all the comments are.

After some thought, I think that the answer is that conspiracy theories have become popular on forums - even on TBN. Conspiracys are like mystery stories. They are easy & fun to make up, and don't have the burden of needing to be true. And if need be, they can always end up referring to some impossibly remote power - things like random chance, internet data, will of the gods, or government & politics.
All good clean fiction & speculation.

One conspiracy or two doesn't bother me.
It's when I find myself inventing another conspiracy as an explanation to the first that I begin to worry.

rScotty

 

[CliffordK]

But is it cheating when it was an arbitrary target to start with? Isn't the Government cheating when they move the yard stick past a reasonable point in order to remove a product from the market?

We need more information to delve into what was done and why.

Were the engines able to pass all the emission requirements while sitting on the test stand? A little less power?

And we still don't know if competing engines are able to meet all the current emission requirements.

 

[George2615]

A local truck dealer (about 20 miles from me) was just arrested for disabling emission control systems on 244 used diesel trucks he sold over a 4 year period. He faces 5 years in jail and a $250K fine if found guilty in court. The EPA is cracking down.

 

[5030]

I would, however, prefer not get dirty exhaust blown in my own face.

Hold your breath... Issue solved.

 

[Snobdds]

CMI was only down 3% today, despite this blow. Could be that Cummins has been accruing for the fine and their Wall Street market makers knew this.

That is not how markets work.

Buy the rumer and sell the news. Go look at a chart and pay attention to August 1st. That is when the stock took a hit. This came out in August.

Yes, this .gov is trying everything they can in 4 years to kill diesel. The problem is, they are trying to force a bad product, or at lease not one ready for scale. They are trying to overcome physics, and no body can overcome physics...not even .gov. It takes too much battery and too much charge time to even make sense.

I am think of upgrading my PS. But so far reports are showing heavy use of Def to get the Nox under limits. I have a deleted truck, but I don't think you will be able to delete these things anymore, even in emission free states. So what's the point. I do want the HO PS, it seems promising.

This is policy driven by ideology, not practicality. Who votes these fools in...

 

[Snobdds]

Given the size of the fine I expect it was a blatant cheat like VW did, at least for the larger set of 2013-2019 trucks. The smaller set had some sort of undeclared emissions device.

I agree that I'd like the details. Maybe it'll come out eventually. It did with VW. They detected when the engine was in the EPA's test rig and made it run clean then, but let it run dirtier the rest of the time. Some people at a university were doing a study on how on the road emissions compared to the EPA's test cycle, with cars they bought, and the VW diesels kept giving them screwy numbers.

Emissions law bodies generally do not care how the manufacturers meet the standards, only that they do. So it's pretty cut and dried: you meet the numbers for the life of the engine as specified in the standard, or you don't. Then there's no arguing about the technology.

For example take CARB's small engine emission requirements. For chainsaws the "life" as defined by CARB is something like 250 hours. The spec says what the emissions limits are but does not say how to meet them. Manufactures can get there with super lean tuning (the worst solution), catalytic converters, stratified charge port design, or computer controlled carbs or EFI. Or some combination of those. Same with CUTS- we have models with EFI and DOC+DPF, or EFI and DOC, or MFI and DOC+DPF.

The EPA is at the point where current technology has eliminated 95% of the pollutants. They are hell bent on getting that last 5%. Everyone knows the last 5% is the costliest and hardest to achieve.

That is a bunch of bureaucrats with too much time looking for a problem to solve.

 

[ultrarunner]

Political power is already hitting a brick wall in Europe. They subsidized solar panels and heat pumps. Works fine as long as the government forces the energy company to take back your excess solar for the same price as they sell a KwH when the sun dont shine. Because the fixed cost of a grid connection is soaring (electricity companies run a business, and have to make ends meet, you know) this rule is being phased out.

Result: Heat pumps no longer break even in Belgium because the breakeven time vs natural gas is 15 years. The Netherlands will follow with the phasing out of this rule in 2025, so our breakeven time will also drop from the current 5 years to 15 years.

Subsidy on electric cars in Germany abruptly stops on January 1st. German car dealerships are angry with the green government because orders are being cancelled and they are stuck with inventories of electric cars that there is no longer a market for. VW cancelled the electric ID4 production because market demand vanished into thin air after the subsidy was cut.

The only thing that makes sense is to convert excess solar into hydrogen through electrolysers and put it into our existing natural gas network.
Solar gets fed into low voltage network locally, though when we buy electricity from another European country, it gets transported through a 10 Kilovolt main network at far greater power density and efficiency than the fine local 230/400v grid.

Its already happening here. Folks that rammed their roofs full of solar hoping to get rich, will get 1/20 of the price for their excess electricity during peak hours, vs what they pay when they need it back. Its quite a turmoil slowly unfolding to the general public.

Thank You for explaining as it is sometimes not easy to know the why things happen behind the scenes.

My home in Austria is all electric with continuous flow 380v hot water heater and Kacheloffen wood heat for main heating.

Question… is the voltage 380 volt or is it properly called 400 volt?

Some of the neighboring farms have small scale digesters to produce gas to run the farms and solar and wind… even going back 20+ years… go back farther and seasonal solar roof top collectors for domestic or swimming pool hot water.

I remember when their was a big rush for natural gas installs because Russian gas was cheap… I guess that has changed too?

Mountainous countries often have the advantage of hydro where other flat countries have nuclear if memory serves.

 

[ultrarunner]

I’m glad I’m an old fart and probably won’t see the results of the current administrations war on diesel, well war on anything carbon!

I do feel sorry for my kids, and even more so my grandkids

The sad thing is I hear these same sentiments a lot from seasoned Americans…

 

[ultrarunner]

For awhile I didn't get it either. Mechanical things are innately logical, but not all the comments are.

After some thought, I think that the answer is that conspiracy theories have become popular on forums - even on TBN. Conspiracys are like mystery stories. They are easy & fun to make up, and don't have the burden of needing to be true. And if need be, they can always end up referring to some impossibly remote power - things like random chance, internet data, will of the gods, or government & politics.
All good clean fiction & speculation.

One conspiracy or two doesn't bother me.
It's when I find myself inventing another conspiracy as an explanation to the first that I begin to worry.

rScotty

Follow the money often explains a lot…