Observations: Diesel Engines and Bumpers
It happens almost daily… I stare at a car’s bumper and worry deeply about the environment.
Do you ever feel like you’re the only person in the world that cares about an issue that you’re very passionate about?
One major international corporation has made me obsessed with checking the bumpers of cars because of the following three letters: T.D.I.
Why?
Well, let’s travel back four years or so. My trusty old sedan, that got me through college, started having random quirks like a window that would fall down, dash lights that wouldn’t light, and, most frightening, the gas pedal taking an extra moment or two to actually make the car go. I decided I’d get a new car.
I left the house with the intention of buying a very specific make and model. It was an economical, compact—yet spacious, fuel-efficient commuter.
I came home with a brand-new Volkswagen Golf TDI (TDI means the engine is a type of turbodiesel engine.) This was not the car I thought I’d buy, but I did, nonetheless.
It was actually quite fun to drive. It was sporty, had a lotta pep, and I could feel great about incredible gas mileage and, what I was told, were environmentally-friendly emissions.
One month later, I’m at a family shindig and my brother makes a crack about my car. He asks if it was spewing black smoke everywhere I drove. I was confused and, upon further inquiry, discovered that Volkswagen admitted they had researched and developed a way to make their cars with diesel engines that cheat EPA emissions testing. The cars on the road were emitting far worse levels of pollution than regulations allowed.
I was stunned. I couldn’t believe a major corporation would go to such amazing lengths to cheat environmental regulations, exploit consumers’ trust, and put us all at higher risk of health problems from toxic air pollutants.
My shock turned to anger.
Fast forward through about a year of class-action litigation, settlements, and my buying a new car (of an entirely different brand), and here we are today. I’m still staring at car bumpers and thinking about how badly I was duped by one car brand, how little I trust all major corporations now, and how little impact Volkswagen has felt from the whole episode.
A quick Google search (yes, this is very dubious “research” at best) reveals that Volkswagen had the second most sales, worldwide, of any brand in 2017.
How did they get away with this?
I’m still angry and confused.
If a well-known food maker developed some kind of way to cheat FDA tests and put harmful chemicals in our food, they would get shut down… wouldn’t they?
I don’t know anymore.
Here’s what I do know: just because an indication of something being clean, environmentally friendly, or healthy is placed neatly, in shiny little letters, on your vehicle (or any other kind of product), does not mean it’s true.
Have you fact-checked your purchases lately?