Hot! Diesel ban approved for German cities to cut pollution


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Diesel ban approved for German cities to cut pollution


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German cities will be allowed to ban older diesel vehicles from some areas following a landmark court ruling.

The Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig said the cities of Stuttgart and Duesseldorf could legally ban older, more polluting diesel cars from zones worst affected by pollution.

The government had opposed the bans, which set a precedent for the country, arguing they would cause disruption.

Analysts said the decision could lead to similar action across Europe.

The ruling by the country's highest federal administrative court came after German states had appealed against bans imposed by local courts in Stuttgart and Duesseldorf, in cases brought by environmental group DUH.

The group said bans were necessary after about 70 German cities exceeded European Union limits for nitrogen oxides (NOx) last year.

Diesel emissions containing nitrogen oxides can cause respiratory disease.

What happens next?

The likelihood now is that the German government will rush to introduce some sort of national policy, to ensure at least some level of consistency across the country.

It's not just about Germany either - cities across Europe are struggling to meet EU air quality standards, and may well see the German ruling as setting a precedent.

New diesel cars won't be affected, but that's not really the point. Consumers are already moving away from the technology - and the prospect of city bans will only accelerate that process.

So diesel's decline is likely to gather momentum.

That's a problem for the industry, because while diesels produce high levels of nitrogen oxide - a major urban pollutant - they emit relatively low levels of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas.

So moves to control one environmental problem may end up undermining efforts to combat another - unless we all start driving electric cars very soon.

Diesel vehicles have faced greater scrutiny since VW's "dieselgate" scandal.

In September 2015, the car maker admitted it had used illegal software to cheat US emissions tests. Some 11 million cars worldwide ended up being affected by the scandal.

DUH said it hoped the bans in German cities would end the industry's "resistance" to refitting older, more-polluting cars to meet the latest EU standards.

ClientEarth, an environmental law firm that worked on the case, said the win was "a tremendous result for people's health in Germany and may have an impact even further afield".

Lead clean air lawyer Ugo Taddei said: "This ruling gives long-awaited legal clarity that diesel restrictions are legally permissible and will unavoidably start a domino effect across the country, with implications for our other legal cases."

However, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said emissions levels in most German cities were only slightly above EU limits, and further measures were only needed in a few cities.

"We are examining the ruling and will discuss with municipalities and the communes how to proceed," she said.

Refit costs

The impact on German drivers could be marked, with millions being forced to leave their cars at home on days when harmful emissions are particularly high.

It could also depress the value of diesel cars affected by the ban.

Of the 15 million diesel cars on Germany's roads, only 2.7 million meet the latest Euro-6 standards, according to data from Germany's automotive watchdog.

Car companies could also incur huge costs to refit vehicles at a time when consumer interest in diesel is falling.

The market share for diesel vehicles in Germany fell from 48% in 2015 to around 39% last year.

Seeking to avert bans, German car makers have pledged software improvements for millions of diesel cars and offered trade-in incentives for older models.

The German government meanwhile has floated alternatives, such as making public transport free in cities suffering from poor air quality.

Paris, Madrid, Mexico City and Athens have all pledged to ban diesel vehicles from city centres by 2025, while the mayor of Copenhagen wants to ban new diesel cars from entering the city as soon as next year.

Carmakers including VW-owned Porsche and Toyota have also signalled they will move away from diesel technology.

Analysts at Evercore ISI said the latest German ruling had "set a strong precedent for similar action across Europe".

"Note, the judge previously commented that the EU has clear rules on emissions and cities have a 'duty' to meet pollution targets."

Source: Diesel car ban approved for German cities
 
German Court Puts Millions of Diesel Cars at Risk of Bans

By Karin Matussek

27. februar 2018 12:18 GMT+1 Updated on 27. februar 2018 16:02 GMT+1
  • Stuttgart, Dusseldorf told to develop plans to cut pollution
  • Judges backed diesel-car bans in principle to meet targets

Germany’s top administrative judges put millions of diesel cars at risk of being banned from city centers in a ruling that sent the shares of the country’s carmakers lower.

The judges in Leipzig refused to overturn lower court decisions that pushed Stuttgart and Dusseldorf toward plans that would remove older diesel vehicles from inner cities. The court said the towns can be forced to implement bans if they are the last resort to cut pollution but some drivers can get exemptions to avoid disproportionate effects.



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Judge Andreas Korbmacher in Leipzig, Feb. 27.


“Bans are generally permissible and can be implemented in a way to avoid disproportionate effects,” Presiding Judge Andreas Korbmacher said Tuesday. “European Union rules require that cities must implement them if there are no other effective measures to reduce pollution.”

Shares of carmakers declined after the decision. Volkswagen fell as much as 2 percent, while BMW fell 0.8 percent and Daimler shares were down 0.6 percent.

Drivers and carmakers have been anxiously watching the case, which leads to questions about the future of diesel models. The judges’ decision is a blueprint for more than fifty other municipalities that also struggle with regulation-busting pollution levels of nitrogen dioxide.

“This is a full win for us,” said Juergen Resch, head of environmental group DUH, which brought the initial cases. “We now expect the car industry to upgrade cars and the federal government to provide the necessary rules to allow cities to apply bans coherently.”

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Shares of German carmakers react to court ruling that could lead to ban of some older diesel cars.

The lower courts had argued that banning diesel cars in inner cities is the most effective way to meet EU pollution limits. No other proposal would bring cleaner air to quickly mend the situation, the Stuttgart court decided. Car owners’ property rights are less important than protecting the health of citizens, according to those rulings.

In 2017, 66 German cities failed to meet the EU standards, although some only break the threshold by a few grams.

“We have legal clarity now," said Wolfram Sandner, a lawyer for Baden-Wuerttemberg, Stuttgart’s home state. “The ruling allows the sort of flexibility we wanted to get. The federal government now should amend laws to allow a coherent application across Germany.”

Feature: How German Rulings Could Bring Diesel’s End: QuickTake

The ruling should bring to an end the era when policymakers try everything to protect the auto industry, Claudia Kemfert, a transport policy expert at the Berlin-based DIW research institute, said in a statement.

“Policymakers and car companies now finally have to act,” Kemfert said. “The auto makers are at last obliged to effectively retrofit models with excessively high emissions.”

Diesel engines are the main emitters of nitrogen dioxide, which causes respiratory problems and has been linked to premature deaths. Under European Union rules, member countries had to keep the gas under 40 microgram per cubic meter in the air by 2010. Six years years after that deadline, the average levels in Stuttgart were still about double of what’s allowed.

Owners of diesel cars with Euro 5 emissions technology face a “significant” drop in the resale value of their vehicles, consultancy EY said in a report. The court said Euro 5 cars must be exempt from bans until Sept. 2019, while older Euro 4 vehicles and earlier models can be removed from the streets immediately.

The cities must also include exceptions for some service providers and small businesses who need to have access to inner cities, according to the court.

While federal law doesn’t provide the necessary rule to easily implement bans, that doesn’t mean they’re illegal, Judge Korbmacher said. National law must be set aside if it’s an obstacle to meet limits set by EU standards. Korbmacher also urged lawmakers to provide for a national legal framework to avoid having different kind of bans in every city across Germany.

The cities now must revamp their anti-pollution plans. There’s no strict deadline and the process will take at least six months. Stuttgart was ordered by the lower court to use bans and Dusseldorf was told to seriously consider them. The appeals court now said that bans must be implemented if they are the last resort to improve air quality.

Diesel Growth
The industry promoted diesel as a way to reduce output of CO2, a greenhouse gas blamed for global warming. That encouraged carmakers to stick with the technology despite difficulties in meeting tougher standards.

EY said sales of diesel cars will continue to slide and may only make up 25 percent of the total this year, compared to 51 percent in 2015.

That’s the year VW admitted using software to cheat emissions tests on 11 diesel models. The company has already paid out more than 25 billion euros ($31 billion) in fines, settlements and other costs since the scandal came to light, and other carmakers still face probes.

Diesel bans are the wrong way to solve a problem that only affects specific places under specific circumstances, Thilo Brodtmann, managing director of Germany’s VDMA machine makers association, said in a statement.

“It would be much more sensible to keep the air clean by improving traffic management and making public transport more attractive, "said Brodtmann. "Driving bans lead only to an increase in monitoring and a patchwork of new regulations.”

The cases are: BVerwG, 7 C 26.16 u.a.

— With assistance by Iain Rogers, Angela Cullen, and Elisabeth Behrmann

Source: Bloomberg
 
Been saying this for a while that the internal combustion engine is on its deathbed. By 2021 (possibly sooner), sales of gasoline cars will fall of a cliff.
 
Game over for diesel, which is a damn shame, for a everyday car its still the best option economically and maintenance wise.

Tragic decisions
 
ICE are going nowhere.
We had a brutal winter this year, and all the tree-huggers like the rest of the people were busy running the cars idle, burning whatever they can find to keep warm.
ICE are the backbone of the mining industry- think mining of copper, cobalt, lithium, iron ore, coal(used in steel production).
Maybe parts of Europe might phase out ICE but not going to happen in NA,SA, Australia,Asia, Africa.
So all the EnvironMentalist and their political lapdogs can keep pretending all they want, truth is we all like to be comfortable.
So to think that we are witnessing the last days of the ICE is a bit short-sighted.
 
Game over for diesel, which is a damn shame, for a everyday car its still the best option economically and maintenance wise.

Tragic decisions
Industrially it is a tragic decision. No company, or society gives up its competitive advantage and survives.
 
The implementation of any ban is really where it'll make any difference. Making it legal to do so doesn't bother me so much, as long as it's done in a fashion where the financial burden falls on all road users, not just those that bought a car in good faith but now find they can't use it.
 
So is this a end of the Dieael Era would it be advisable to buy a new diesel in next year or so if you live in UK or Europe.

I mean already in London you pay double for parking in central London.

I have been a full on diesel buyer since about 2007..
 
Im just happy my w212 diesel has low tax and is worth roughly 15k euro now should have been 20k ish but ile keep it until it dies or they ban me from using it. The damn thing is far to good to sell for 10k ish.. i rather keep it. It only has 100k km on the clock, and it averages a stupendously low 0.6l.. brilliant machine

With all that said I will sure as hell not buy a diesel next
 
That is like arguing horses will be still used in farms at the turn of last century.
Horses are still around by the way.
Horses were replaced by the combustion engine(coal,wood,petrol,whale oil,petrol,gas,jet fuel, diesel) in several applications: industrial, transportation, farming etc
 
The ban only applies to diesel cars which have a lower rating than EURO 6d if memory serves me right. So if you drive the latest diesel you have nothing to worry about - for now.

This is obviously not good news for owners of "outdated" diesel cars and it's also not good news for owners of soon-to-be "outdated" gasoline cars like my 2007 BMW 118i, which is EURO 5a. Think about it. Sooner or later these tight emission laws are going to force you to keep buying perceived cleaner cars, regardless if they are gasoline- or diesel-powered. Where is the environmental friendliness in that if cars have to be replaced within years because of silly and frankly unrealistic emission laws? Those poor souls who now own an emissions-compliant EURO 6d car will probably have to get rid of it in a few years when EURO 7 comes along - worst case scenario.

In my opinion this is a poorly thought-out, knee-jerk reaction to the ridiculous pressure from environmental groups and the idiotic German media which has for the most part been painting a very negative picture of the diesel engine (controversy sells...). It's also very discriminatory against the people who bought these cars in good faith or who need a diesel because they need the fuel economy - which is the result of the government taxing the hell out of gasoline but subsidizing diesel fuel. The government is also to blame for these conditions - and they are basically saying F*** Y** to the people whom they pushed into this situation. Believe me, those of us who drive a lot (20,000 km+ a year) really benefit from a diesel. Last year I drove 21,000 km and my fuel costs were insane - and I am driving an economy car!

I also don't think highly of electric cars and I don't think they are the solution. The whole production process alone (especially the batteries) causes so much pollution. Current range and charging times on affordable electric cars are a joke (especially in the winter). Worst of all, studies supposedly indicate there are not enough rare elements available to produce the batteries that will be needed for millions of electric cars for various markets.

Once again I find myself returning to the horrible range of affordable electric cars. Yesterday I saw a test between the Renault Zoe, Volkswagen E-Up! and the Hyundai I-ONIQ Elektro on television. The testers wanted to see the range of these cars during winter conditions. Battery fully charged, heating set to 22 degrees C and seat heaters turned on. The results were (from memory) as follows. The E-Up! has a claimed range of 160 km. During the test it only delivered something like 95 km of range. The Zoe's range is claimed to be 400 km - it delivered roughly 200 km. The I-ONIQ Elektro has a claimed range of 200 km, it provided 115 km of range if memory serves me right. Needless to say the range dropped when the cars had to drive up a hill. The regenerative braking provided literally zero battery charge in downhill conditions with the heating and seat heat turned on. This limited endurance is fine for the city, but for those of us who have to drive longer distances and where time is important these cars are useless and impractical.
 
This is obviously not good news for owners of "outdated" diesel cars and it's also not good news for owners of soon-to-be "outdated" gasoline cars like my 2007 BMW 118i, which is EURO 5a. Think about it. Sooner or later these tight emission laws are going to force you to keep buying perceived cleaner cars, regardless if they are gasoline- or diesel-powered.


In my opinion this is a poorly thought-out, knee-jerk reaction to the ridiculous pressure from environmental groups and the idiotic German media which has for the most part been painting a very negative picture of the diesel engine (controversy sells...).
I would say this is another victory of the car producers' lobby. This only ensures them a constant demand for new cars. The real solution is to upgrade the existing cars will lower emission levels up to the required level and all this should be covered by the car producers. Otherwise all the costs go to the owner of the vehicle, which is not fair.
 
I would say this is another victory of the car producers' lobby. This only ensures them a constant demand for new cars. The real solution is to upgrade the existing cars will lower emission levels up to the required level and all this should be covered by the car producers. Otherwise all the costs go to the owner of the vehicle, which is not fair.

Yes, that also makes sense. Cars have become a throwaway product. Buy it, drive it for 3-5 years and then dump it even though there is nothing wrong with it. And this cycle of consumerism creates so much pollution. Ironically it’s those pesky Green Parties which demand these newer cars - without realizing that the whole production process requires resources and energy and creates pollution. Then again, the Green Party in Germany is full of idiots. :D
 
^Did you know that the EU permits roughly 50% more NOx in offices? Reason: Kids and old people spent more time at mainroads rather than in offices. On top of that, the NOx limit isn't fact based. It's made by politicans in Brussels. Hilarious.
 

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