EuroWire September 2016

Transatlantic cable

“It’s just a question of who’s cheating legally and who’s cheating illegally,” Ferdinand Dudenhö er, a professor at the University of Duisburg-Essen who follows the auto industry, told the Times . “They’re all bad.” If the time of reckoning is indeed here, the consequences could be especially severe in Germany, the world’s largest market for diesel cars. There already were tentative signs that some Europeans are turning against diesel, and according to gures compiled by Mr Dudenhö er the share of diesel-powered cars sold in Germany by BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen (including its Porsche and Audi units) fell three per cent in the rst four months of 2016 compared with the same period of 2015. † In an attempt at damage control, in early June the German government submitted a proposal to European Union transport ministers that would partially contract the loophole that allows deactivation of emissions equipment to protect the engine. Carmakers would be allowed to take advantage of the exception only if they had already deployed the best emissions control technology available. † Diesel vehicles produce far more nitrogen oxides than gasoline cars and require more emissions treatment equipment. Tighter limits on tailpipe emissions and more rigorous testing – either on the books or being debated in Brussels – will raise the cost of cars with diesel motors. Price-conscious buyers of small cars, in particular, may decide it is no longer worth paying the premium for diesel. If they do, companies like Fiat Chrysler, Renault and Volkswagen would su er most. As Mr Ewing observed, “Pro ts on small cars already are slim.” Putting its rst hydrogen fuel cell car to the test, a “green”Welsh carmaker pushes for more hydrogen refuelling stations One of the reasons advanced for the slow adoption of hydrogen-powered cars is the scarcity of refuelling stations. In partnership with Monmouthshire County Council in southeast Wales, the Welsh carmaker Riversimple has set itself to remedy that. An upcoming trial of its hydrogen-powered Rasa city car, previewed at the London Motor Show in May, will have a second aim: to promote the development of hydrogen infrastructure across the UK. The 12-month trial, to commence early in 2017, will deploy brand-new autos driven by 60 to 80 Monmouthshire residents under three- or six-month contracts. The carmaker chose Monmouthshire for the short distances between its towns, favourable for testing a car designed for local non-motorway use and restricted to 300 miles per three-minute refuelling. As reported in Gizmag by the Liverpool-based tech writer Stu Robarts, a self-service mobile refuelling point is planned by Riversimple for either Abergavenny or Monmouth. The rm, which says it will cover the running costs of the test cars during the trial, will also erect a temporary ‘experience centre’ – presumably to receive and record the responses of happy participants. The idea is that the Rasa trial will help raise public awareness of hydrogen-powered autos and set o a groundswell of demand for refuelling stations. (“Hydrogen Cars Set to Take to the Streets in Wales,” 16 th June) Mr Robarts said on gizmag.com that Riversimple’s marketing methods are no less innovative than the Rasa.

Review , Mr Anderson shared that Tesla tries out new software by testing it covertly, so that it can tell what the software would have done if it had been turned on. “We will often install an ‘inert’ feature on all our vehicles worldwide,” he said. “That allows us to watch over tens of millions of miles how a feature performs.” Days earlier, writing from San Francisco in the MIT Technology Review , Tom Simonite reported that Tesla began bundling a suite of new sensors into its vehicles in 2014, saying it was for a new emergency braking feature. But the 12 ultrasonic sensors positioned around the car sense nearby objects, and the forward-facing cameras and radar units “were intended for bigger things.” Tesla engineers began using data streaming from cars with those sensors to start testing autonomous driving features. (“Tesla Tests Self-Driving Functions with Secret Updates to Its Customers’ Cars.” 24 th May) Mr Ross of IEEE noted Tesla’s claim of having logged some 780 million miles of data, 100 million miles with Autopilot in at least partial control. The company’s crowdsourcing of its 70,000-odd customers thus has allowed it to amass far more passenger-miles than Google’s small eet of professionally driven cars. † Tesla logs about a million miles a day. Google has logged some 1.4 million miles since it started testing autonomous cars in 2009. But Mr Ross observed that Tesla’s voluminous data not quite comparable to Google’s. Autopilot takes charge on highways. Google’s cars mainly drive around in cities, making for shorter and much more challenging trips. Further, Mr Ross wrote: “Google’s true master trove of data comes from the ne-grained maps it lays down in every city it tackles. That, and massive simulation tests the company does in silico [ie by means of computer modelling or computer simulation] may well put Google in the driver’s seat.” “One diesel car tested by the German government emitted more than 12 times as much poisonous nitrogen oxide as allowed. Another was ve times over the limit, and yet another six times over.” Writing from Berlin, Jack Ewing of the New York Times noted that these cars were not produced by Volkswagen, the German company found to have illegally manipulated emissions test results. The results cited were from a Jeep, a General Motors sedan, and a Mercedes-Benz. (“Volkswagen Not Alone in Flouting Pollution Limits,” 9 th June) Other recent government and private studies con rm that Volkswagen is hardly the only company to out emissions limits. According to Mr Ewing, makers of polluting vehicles are taking advantage of a loophole that allows them to throttle down emissions controls whenever there is risk of engine damage; which in some cases, he said, “is nearly all the time.” The Times article is more than an exercise in comparative culpability. It pointed out that the emerging information has awakened Europeans to the real environmental cost of diesel, with far-reaching reputational and nancial consequences for the auto industry. Carmakers are now on the defensive in their core diesel market. Under attack in Europe, diesel suddenly is a worry for carmakers in the world’s biggest diesel market – Germany

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September 2016