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| Small markets can expect more electric trucks, like this electric Mercedes-Benz, as diesel gets banned. |
THE end of diesel is nigh — although this end
will take a bit longer to come to pass in SA.
With several cities around the world already
phasing in a total ban on diesel vehicles and Wheels last week reporting that diesel engines are up to 50%
dirtier in the real world than even the most cynical laboratory tester
predicted, more evidence is coming in of diesel cheats.
This after the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency last week announced they have uncovered at least eight secret features in
the computers of Fiat-Chrysler vehicles that basically turn off the cars’
emission-control systems after they pass government tests. Nearly 104 000 diesel
cars — all Ram 1500s and Jeep Grand Cherokees from model years 2014, 2015, and
2016 — were sold with “defeat-device” software in the U.S. Volkswagen, by
comparison, sold 482 000 cars equipped with emissions-cheating defeat devices in
the U.S. The U.S. Department of Justice is consequently suing the Fiat Chrysler
company for violating the Clean Air Act.
The software in the Fiat-Chrysler vehicles allow
the cars to “meet emission standards in the lab and during standard EPA
testing,” but then proceed to emit levels of noxious nitrogen oxide pollution
“much higher than the EPA-compliant level” once on the road, the EPA said in a
press release.
In Germany, Fiat-Chrysler has already been
accused of timing cars to emit test-passing levels of emissions for exactly 22
minutes — just two minutes longer than the German certification test lasts —
before shutting off emissions controls and reverting to illegal emissions.
The tide against toxin-spewing diesel engines will
also impact in SA, where our total vehicle sales last year reached 0,68% of
global sales. Initially, a ban on diesel vehicles in other places will see a lof of older diesel models dumped in Africa.
But as the
world rapidly moves on to full electrics, the smaller markets will be dragged along, to the benefit of all our lungs, and especially the brains of pupils transported in toxic diesel buses.
