As a German who never owned a car (have driver license 30+ years) and never will, hurray!<p>Next: Petrol cars please.<p>Costs for cities would decrease a lot [1], room for bicycles would increase, noise would drop to a level which can't believed, ambulances would be adjusted to walking persons instead of loud cars with their stereos on and air would be wonderful.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.amazon.de/High-Cost-Free-Parking/dp/193236496X" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.de/High-Cost-Free-Parking/dp/193236496X</a>
It's important to note that popularity of diesel is the doing of the German government. The fuel is subsidized for the sake of the environment because it's more efficient. <a href="https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/eb8be120-de5f-11e7-a8a4-0a1e63a52f9c" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/eb8be120-de5...</a><p>The situation is similar to Germany's work on its electric power sources. Nuclear was turned off because it's dangerous. Now Germany spews out about same carbon as before giant investments in solar, electricity is four times the price as in US, plus they now have to buy from France cause they don't produce enough.<p><a href="https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2017/10/10/why-arent-renewables-decreasing-germanys-carbon-emissions/amp/" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca...</a>
European law has been very tilted towards
Diesel engines for a long time. As the recent VW debacle proved - oversight was quite lax compared to the US diesel regs. This laxness was the result of the influence of BMW, Mercedes and VW and the outcome of years of corporate lobbying. It’s a good first step, but they have further to go.<p>Despite the rhetoric, Germany has also been very restrictive with Tesla, viewing it as a challenge to its crown jewel automotive companies (no credits, no additional supercharger stations, much harsher reading of laws to protect their own industries).<p>You know that Germany will be serious when that changes.... (or the German car companies will have finally caught up to Tesla’s battery power and power train)...
Partially related: "Fiat Chrysler is reportedly ditching diesel cars by 2022" (<a href="https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/26/17053362/fiat-chrysler-diesel-car-end-production-2022" rel="nofollow">https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/26/17053362/fiat-chrysler-di...</a>). Diesel sales are collapsing all over Europe, I think one of the latest reports puts the number of new Diesel cars sold in France at just under 50%, while they used to be at 75% four or five years ago. The writing is on the wall.
I am so confused by government policy here in the UK. Right now I'm looking at a 5 year old used Diesel car with £0 road tax and 70+ MPG for about 10k GBP.<p>My current Petrol engine costs £130/annum road tax, and only gets 30-40 MPG, I can also buy petrol cars with road tax of £240-500/annum (based on emissions)<p>But if I buy the Diesel, it could be banned or worthless in a few years, because of these types of policies. So what is the government telling me to purchase?<p>I can't buy an electric car because I only have on street parking so there's nowhere to charge it, and decent electric cars aren't really available at the 10k mark yet.
Eastern Europe will be flooded with those cars now. <a href="http://www.dw.com/en/germanys-dirty-diesel-cars-en-route-for-eastern-europe/a-40224565" rel="nofollow">http://www.dw.com/en/germanys-dirty-diesel-cars-en-route-for...</a>
Note that this ruling is only to clarify that cities are allowed to implement car bans on their own without a federal directive in place.<p>Now we will have to wait and see if the cities will actually be sued into having to implement such bans.
The backstory here: EU law mandates doing something to reduce pollution if it's too high. German law prohibits various kinds of discrimination. For example, a simple ban on half the cars on Monday and the other on Tuesday would bother large plumber companies much less than independent plumbers who need a carful of tools and have only one car. What actions are the cities permitted to take, and/or required.
Is this backed by real science? I was under the impression that modern diesels were highly efficient and quite within the acceptable emission standards.
A correction to the headline; its only older diesels, not all diesels.<p>From way down the article:<p>> Cars that meet Euro-4 emissions standards could be banned from Stuttgart from next January, while Euro-5 vehicles should not be banned until Sept. 1, 2019, four years after the introduction of the latest Euro-6 standard.<p>If you have a diesel with Ad Blu designed to catalytically remove NOx, you should be OK for now.
Can anyone more familiar with this case comment on what exactly happened here?<p>It sounds like two private organizations, DUH (Deutsche Umwelthilfe) and ClientEarth, sued a couple of cities (Munich, Stuttgart, and Dusseldorf, possibly among others), saying they had to improve air quality. This was, apparently, on the basis that the cities had illegally high levels of NOx -- I'm not certain on what basis this was illegal, whether German or EU regulations.<p>Munich offered a ban, which everyone was happy with. Stuttgart and Dusseldorf attempted to offer a mitigation strategy, and DUH and ClientEarth sued again saying that the mitigation was insufficient, and the judge ruled that they only a ban would suffice.<p>The cities appealed, apparently on the basis that they were not legally allowed to impose such a ban(?) and now, a higher court has ruled that they are legally allowed to impose such a ban.
awesome news - first of all public transportation in any town with more than a hundred thousand inhabitants is good enough that nobody needs to use a car except for very specific cases. of course if everybody would switch to ÖPNV then the capacity would be maxed out - so the conclusion is increasing availability of public transportation.<p>also the way parts of government (mostly those rooted in Bavaria) attempted together with VW, Audio etc. to weasel their way out of taking responsibility. the testing applied was stupid and lacking realism - but nonetheless they programmed software that detects a test and adjusts the motor's inner workings. that's beyond benefiting of stupidity - that is criminal.<p>It feels great, great, great - I hope this will strengthen research and development for and of electric vehicles.
Wouldn't it be great if Tesla kicks these cheaters in the bin and wins the car race (like the iPhone did vs. the other phones)? Pity producing cars isn't as fast as manufacturing an iPhone. Germany's industry is in real trouble, looks like they were cheating.
I assume they are removing cars and buses making use of this tech first as they are far more likely to be dirty that cars. Even the cheating VW cars were still magnitudes cleaner than the immediate previous generation.<p>I think they are going to find their pollution problem is nearly as bad and will need to make more difficult choices rather than relying on fear of a partial truth. It isn't just diesel cars making their cities dirty. As stated, the change made to even the cheating cars would have demonstrated such if it were just cars