Where did I say that? I said manufacturers should have requested a higher low-emissions limit if technological limitations prevented them from reaching the governments desired targets.
And Volkswagen amongst others could easily have requested a higher emissions limit that was reachable, but still much much lower than diesels were before.
Again, that means that your more "moral" alternative to meeting emissions targets set for the purposes of public health is
corporate lobbying to lift them.
At no point did I say they should have been allowed to continue producing high-emission diesel engines as they were before. You arrived at that conclusion yourself.
Yes I did, and you seemed to have missed why. I said that any lobbying Volkswagen would have done would have been to get the engines to the same level they are now; because it stands to reason (albeit maybe not true) that what they are now
is the best they can do and the subterfuge was simply to hide that. Do you think Volkswagen would lobby the US government to have emissions targets that are not as strict as are in place, but still more strict than VW can meet?
Honestly? I give a damn about it, and I can't be the only one. You seem to think emissions aren't a big deal but it's common knowledge they contribute to global warming.
No I don't. In fact, what I specifically said was that the higher than stated emissions were the important part of what "Volkswagen" did:
The issue is that they've been selling cars with drastically higher emissions levels than they were legally allowed to
Not that "oh no the company lied how can I trust them" moral quandary you've found yourself in.
And so we arrive back at my original point. There are people (and you are clearly one of them)
I'm only "one of them" because you keep referring to "VW" as a single entity, and are responding to people who are saying that it isn't by strawmanning them. No one here is "ignoring corporate indiscretions." They are telling you that "corporate indiscretions" aren't necessarily the result of a top-down corporate-wide edict to commit some sort of fraud; and that your alternative that they could have pursued instead of lying isn't any more moral or a show of personal accountability than what they
did do (intentionally or not). This whole thing could come down to one engineer under pressure from above to get the engines up to snuff who was programming the ECU, so who are you before any investigation has actually occurred to present it as VW intentionally committing some sort of institutionalized fraud?
who are only too happy to ignore a corporations indiscretions, because they have to make money.
You mean like the corporate lobbying you keep saying VW should have pursued instead of lying (OHNOES) about meeting the stricter targets?
You can't just throw down the gauntlet then walk away. If you're going to accuse someone of not knowing what they're talking about, at least add some substance.
Okay:
In the end Volkswagen (and other companies) could have ceased mass-production of diesels,
So they'll just shut down the production lines, then. "Sorry everyone. Our engineers can't figure this stuff out, so everyone who built diesels has to be let go because we give up. Mercedes has got it down, so maybe they can hire you instead."
and it wouldn't have cost them much money to do so.
Volkswagen has for
years (going on a decade and a half) now sold cars in North America to people who
specifically wanted diesel passenger cars. They own that market segment, and have had it essentially to themselves since the late 1990s up until just recently.
They are the reason that diesel engines have regained their reputation. They've invested undoubtedly hundreds of millions of dollars to keep that niche mostly to themselves now that other German companies want to play. They have compact cars with strong retail prices and high resale values in a market that usually requires compact cars to be loaded with incentives and treats them as disposable.
"it wouldn't have cost them much money", as if there is nothing more to it than that, is frankly just a dumb statement.
At the end of the day an engine is an engine, be it diesel or petrol;
No it's not, or they wouldn't have technology that was specific to each one. And, you know, completely different designs and all that.
so all the equipment used to produce the diesels could simply have been used to up the production of petrol engines instead.
No they can't, or they wouldn't have to be specifically designed to meet different emissions targets including specific and expensive parts; and you're already assuming that the excess former diesel capacity would automatically be filled by petrol engines.
