Investigators probing U.S. models of Mercedes-Benz sold with diesel engines have found software, possibly illegal under EPA rules, that helped them pass emission tests. Such software may be similar to that notoriously used in 580,000 vehicles sold by VW, Audi, and Porsche from 2009 through 2015 in what became the Volkswagen diesel emission... Mercedes-Benz gets its own diesel emission cheating questions now
Investigators probing U.S. models of Mercedes-Benz sold with diesel engines have found software, possibly illegal under EPA rules, that helped them pass emission tests. Such software may be similar to that notoriously used in 580,000 vehicles sold by VW, Audi, and Porsche from 2009 through 2015 in what became the Volkswagen diesel emission...
With the release of proposed new and lower fuel-economy rules expected from the NHTSA by March 30, many eyes have turned to the powerful California Air Resources Board. The state's pioneering role in reducing emissions and cutting air pollution predates even the existence of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. That agency, now run by Scott...
It's been clear that under the Trump administration, the NHTSA and EPA plan to roll back linked fuel-economy rules and emission limits on new vehicles. Now a possible justification that will be used has emerged—and it's not the one many advocates had expected. According to a Bloomberg report on Monday, the fuel-economy proposal due March 30...
While VW is moving toward the end of buybacks, payments, and fines for eight years of cheating on diesel emission standards, Fiat Chrysler is still in the thick of its own diesel mess involving Jeep SUVs and Ram trucks. On February 2, the U.S. Justice Department offered to let the company move forward if it recalls all 104,000 EcoDiesel models of...
As automakers await the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's new fuel-economy rules for 2022 through 2025, due March 30, regulators from California and Washington are still hammering out the specifics. A meeting between state and federal regulators on fuel-economy and emissions targets took place on Monday as both sides attempt to...
One year ago at the Detroit auto show, a company called Achates Power unveiled models of a new kind of internal-combustion engine. With opposed pistons in the middle and crankshafts at either end, it was sufficiently different to startle most visitors who paid attention. That engine came with some audacious claims, too: How about an EPA combined...
Pick-ups and SUVs are rapidly taking over the American automotive landscape, but there's at least one measure in which it benefits an automaker to sell fewer of those vehicles. In the Environmental Protection Agency's latest "Light-Duty Automotive Technology, Carbon Dioxide Emissions, and Fuel Economy Trends" report, Mazda was named as the...
Though the Environmental Protection Agency has already ruled on ethanol-blended gasoline mixtures for 2018, that hasn't stopped ethanol advocates from pushing for a higher 30-percent blend for non-flex-fuel vehicles. The latest call for ethanol comes from corn-state ethanol refiners, farmers, and an ethanol-producer trade association, all of whom...
Just one year into the Trump administration, numerous high-level government officials have denied, downplayed, and eliminated government mentions of climate change and its effects. The man running the Environmental Protection Agency—who is charged with protecting the nation's air, water, and land from pollution—sued it more than a...
As they say, the best compromise is usually the one that leaves all parties equally dissatisfied. When it comes to the Environmental Protection Agency's renewable-fuel mandate, it seems regulators have reached equilibrium. The latest skirmish in the long-running battle over the U.S. renewable-fuel standard appears to have been settled, at least...
In grade school, students commonly ran through the halls when teachers or other school staff weren't looking. Signs forbidding the act of sprinting past lockers did little to deter the practice, since there was no incentive not to run unless someone present was enforcing the rule. The same can be said for industrial polluters and environmental-law...
EPA head Scott Pruitt will likely go down as one of the most controversial agency chiefs in that agency's history of almost 50 years. The former Oklahoma attorney general, who sued the EPA 14 times on behalf of fossil-fuel interests during the Obama administration, has a radically different view of how the agency should operate compared to most of...
When the Environmental Protection Agency quietly issued its new four-year plan in mid-October, the phrase "climate change" did not appear anywhere in the 38-page document. It is now clear the Trump Administration intends to delay, halt, or erase government efforts to limit U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide, the global-warming gas that is the main...
The EPA recently announced it will roll back the Clean Power Plan, one of former President Obama's milestone efforts to fight climate change, and now the agency plans to axe another rule limiting emissions. Next on the chopping block is a regulation that limits emissions from large trucks and their components. Remarkably, the regulation that EPA...
EPA head Scott Pruitt told miners in Kentucky on Monday that he intends to begin dismantling former President Barack Obama's signature climate-change agenda effort to curb greenhouse gas emissions from coal power plants. Standing alongside Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Pruitt told reporters at an event in Hazard, Ky., that, "The...
Since 2007, the Renewable Fuel Standard has required increasing levels of ethanol in gasoline blends sold in the U.S. Most fuel stations across the United States no longer offer pure gasoline, with E10—a blend of 10 percent ethanol and 90 percent gasoline—prevailing. After years of debate, the EPA has now announced it will study the...