The Diesel Story - How the EU Pretended to Fight Climate Change While Poisoning its Citizens

Sources:

Have you ever wondered why diesel car sales experienced a boom in Europe but nowhere else in the world?

To answer this we must begin way back in 1973, with the first oil crisis which occurred the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries or OPEC initiated a total oil embargo. The result was a shock and dramatic shortage of crude oil that caused the price of a barrel of oil and derived products to increase by 300% shortly after the embargo was put into place.

The problem with the European oil processing industry in the years after the 1973 oil crisis was that they no longer had buyers for their heavy distillates because the energy generation and heating systems of Europe had transitioned to other sources.

But oil refineries weren’t the only ones impacted by the oil crisis. Vehicle manufacturers also suffered because the dramatic increase in fuel prices lead to a dramatic decrease in car sales.

So manufacturers sought to offer buyers more fuel efficient alternatives in the form of vehicles with diesel engines which are naturally more fuel efficient than their gasoline counterparts. The main reasons behind this being that diesel engines naturally operate at noticeably higher compression ratios, they don’t need a homogenous air fuel mixture and don’t require a throttle body to function which means that they can run at very lean air fuel ratios and don’t suffer from pumping losses.

Faced with reduced taxation, improved fuel economy and better performance and driveability in the real world many buyers started started switching to diesel engined cars. If we look at the data it becomes obvious how dieselisation was never a matter of user preference or different tastes in Europe and the US or other countries. If we compare Japan and Europe we can observe very similar low rates of diesel share in the market. The markets only start diverging when European legislation started strongly favoring diesels and creating incentives for buyers. If we observe Europe on a country by country basis we can see that diesel adoption is highest in countries like France for example where legislation and taxation was very favourabnle for diesels.

But initially it appeared thst the mass dieselisation of the vehicle market was a win for everyone in Europe. Oil refineries got a market for their products. Consumers got better cars. Car makers got profits. C02 emissions got reduced. Almost sounds too good to be true. .Well pretty soon it became clear that it indeed all was too good to be true because as time moved on and emissions standards became more stringent it became evident that getting diesel engines to meet new emissions standards was far harder than it was originally envisaged by the Auto Oil 1 and 2 programmes.

And so Manufacturers started reducing the compression ratio of diesel engines to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions. Which sort of defeats the purpose of a diesel engine because reducing the compression ratio also reduced efficiency and power output. To restore power manufacturers increased the boost pressure from the turbocharger which lead to increased C02 emissions which ultimately resulted in equivalent diesel and petrol engines having pretty much the same power output and the same C02 emissions.

But in 2015 it became evident just how far manufacturers were stretching the truth when it was discovered that VW had to cheat to meet US emissions tests. They reprogrammed their diesel vehicles to be able to detect when they are undergoing emissions testing and then run the engine in a reduced performance mode in order to generate reduced emissions and pass the test. When not being tested and driven in normal conditions the vehicles were actually emitting 14 times more nitrogen oxides then the allowable US limit and 3 times more than the Euro 5 emissions standard.

A special thank you to my patrons:
Daniel
Pepe
Brian Alvarez
Peter Della Flora
Dave Westwood
Joe C
Zwoa Meda Beda
Toma Marini
Cole Philips

#d4a #diesel

00:00 Why so many Diesel cars in Europe?
01:02 Oil Crisis
03:38 Refineries have a problem
05:36 Oil prices go UP, Car sales go DOWN
08:51 Creating the Justification
11:30 Changing the Legislation
16:53 The Scandal
20:55 The Aftermath
24:23 Have We Learned Our Lesson?

[mattmattmatt]

"I'm old enough to remember when paper bags were being blamed for the destruction of trees, and plastic bags were the solution." comes to mind.

[StabilisingGlobalTemperature]

I had a Peugeot 306 petrol 1.6 which had extraordinarily low emissions. At every MOT test it had 0.00% hydrocarbons and 0.00% carbon monoxide. I asked the MOT tester if they were using a faulty test machine, but he assured me it was fully calibrated. And the same at another garage too.
But I occasionally drove into London. Because the car was too old, I would have to pay the clean air penalty. I contacted TFL and sent them a scan of the MOT test results. But they were completely unhelpful and illogical.
So I bought a newer car that was permitted into the clean air zone.
The irony is that the newer car does have higher emissions. Still quite low, but not zero.
But because it was in a higher emissions category (simply because it was built at a later date) it is allowed into the zone.
Madness really.

[sicka]

EU blaming the Diesel engine for CO2 emissions, while their politicians fly from Bruxelles to Strasbourg three times a week with a jet.

[xyouthe]

so basically the reason why diesel engines are so big in europe is much similar to the reason why trucks and SUVs are so big in the US: industries wanting to push it.

[therealfakecaptain]

French Government 25 years ago : just buy a diesel bro, it's the real shit bro, it's super clean bro.
French Government now : wow you're buying a diesel ? Are you trying to kill the planet or something ? Here, pay those extra fees you monster.

[WeisswindDragon]

"I hope that this time around the governments are motivated by the interest of their citizens and environment" That's a good one 😂

[lk-music]

I have two cars. One diesel 1.5dci, one petrol 0.9tce, both have 50 litre fuel tanks (they're the same manufacturer & model, just different engines). When I fill the petrol, the range says ~400 miles, when I fill the diesel, the range says ~800 miles. Isn't it obvious why people would choose diesel?

[s_kid.]

in Europe, petrol is way more expensive due to high tax charges, so people started to buy diesel cars, but about 20 years ago, the governments noticed then put the diesel prices up, people started mixing diesel with cooking oil, because cooking oil was cheap, then (as you can guess) the governments figured out what was going on, so they put the prices of cooking oil up.

[mystery_pond]

I find it a shame that consumers who purchased diesel cars in the last 20 years are now punished by governments with extra charges for low-emission zones due to the governments' own failure to ensure that suitable regulations were in place for these vehicles. This has especially disrupted the second-hand market here in the UK; 5-20 year old diesels are cheap and can be found a dime a dozen, while a huge number of petrol cars from the same period have doubled, tripled or more in price as the supply slowly dwindles away as they all move to London, its surrounding areas, and other cities beginning to implement LEZs.

(Edited to add)
As people seem to have resorted to attacking me with insults in the replies, I would like to mention:
First, I have always driven petrol and have no desire past or future to drive a diesel.
Second, even if that weren't the case, throwing around insults provides zero value to the discussion, so before writing one I suggest that you instead spend your time reflecting on the reality in which we all live. Should mistakes be treated with empathy and openly discussed with the aim of learning and improvement, or should they be ridiculed, publicly decrying those who made them, for nothing but a good ego-stroking?

[Stef.Cata]

Germany has really weird policies when it comes to diesels, I own a small transport company(I'm not from Germany but we pass trough it almost daily)and we own euro 6 trucks (more specifically MAN TGX with the d26 engine) from 2015-2017, this year Germany introduced legislation which saw the increase in taxation for all trucks but most importantly they increased taxation for trucks older than 5 years. I wouldn't mind it but the new trucks are still euro 6 and not different from my own euro 6 trucks, even the parts are fully interchangeable and according to the CoC (certificate of conformity) there is no difference in emissions between old and new trucks. What is the difference in taxation? A 2017 euro 6 truck pays 0.33-0.36€/km while a 2020 euro 6 truck pays 0.28 €/km. This caused massive logistics company to replace their fleet of euro 6 trucks with brand new euro 6 trucks resulting in a insignificant difference in pollution from traffic and an increased pollution from manufacturing.
More over, euro 7 emissions standards have been postponed in favor of electric trucks. Which are more expensive, can't do what my old diesels can( Here I mean range, a standard tgx in my fleet has a range of around 3000km meanwhile the electric ones 300-500km) and there is no infrastructure at all for these units.
I'm not even sure if we will have euro 7 trucks considering that all manufacturers constantly advertise and talk about curent and future electric vehicles and nothing is mentioned about euro 7. Also LNG trucks started to show up, suffering mostly from the lack of infrastructure.

I tried biodiesel for a while in order to reduce my fleets carbon footprint but biodiesel ruins filters and injectors like there is no tomorrow, the funny bit is that my grandparents have an old tractor U650 that can happily run on cooking oil making it quite eco friendly while newer diesel vehicles struggle to do so

[arturbieniek]

No, the EU hasn't learnt any lesson.
They are forcing EVs the exact same way.
Most of the electric cars produced 15 years ago are unable to drive and probably already on the scrapyard.
25+ year old Diesel and petrol Golfs and BMWs still drive without problems. (I for myself own a 27yo petrol Tico and the engine works like it's brand new)
Also, the EURO norms and clean air zones are absurd - my 27yo Tico has like Euro2 or something, but if you look at the emissions data on paper, it could possibly have EURO6 without a problem, just because the engine is so small and burns small amounts of fuel, that emissions are very low. But as it doesn't, I will not be allowed into the "clean air" zone. On the other hand, a freaking 3.5 ton SUV/pickup burning 20-30L/km of Diesel is OK just because it has EURO6 and will be allowed into the zone.

[jacobkilstrom]

Related to the end, please make a video about 1) how suv's became mainstream because of a forced demand to avoid emission and safety regulations and 2) hijacked the electrification!

[Zippsterman]

Those nuclear power protests in Germany are such a weird thing to think about now that nuclear has proven itself to be hugely safer and more environmentally friendly than any fossil fuel

[patdurt]

In some countries. Mine included, the government incentivised scrappage schemes, offering people €2000-3000 to scrap their petrol cars to buy diesels. A lot of good cars got scrapped for nothing.

[whismerhillgaming]

my dad actually chose diesel for the longer range, during vacations we would travel a lot, and the longer range allowed to NOT take fuel on highways which is notoriously more expensive

[mebeasensei]

I argued this for years but people were deaf. Once sold they were invested and never wanted to hear another word. Rational discussion was impossible

[Eebens]

older diesel cars (before dpf, adblue etc.) were perhaps the greatest thing the car and oil lobbyists achieved in terms of customer satisfaction. Back in the day the existence of cheap and reliable diesel cars literally helped people avoid poverty.

[pest]

The amount of times "focusing on environment" has been just a marketing gimmick that backfires massively is insane

[Elcicikos]

My 20-year-old diesel is still running and doing great, 1100 km on one tank of fuel.

[zkljaja]

Yeah, 50% less fuel consumption and 10% cheaper fuel really poisoned me while driving my TDI
People would still buy them like mad if governments didn't threaten to tax them at any point