From triumph to disaster: rise and fall of diesel

The first patents for a compression ignition engine were registered by Briton Herbert Akroyd-Stuart in 1890. In 1891, Richard Hornsby & Sons bought the patent and started producing stationary hot-bulb engines, called semi-diesel or "head hot "in Brazil. These engines were the first to use a pressurized injection system, with combustion happening in a separate chamber instead of in the cylinders.The man behind the diesel engine as we know it was the German Rudolf Diesel. Born in 1854, he registered his first patents in 1892, and within five years he had a functional engine. With their engines, air and fuel were injected into the combustion chamber. With the Akroyd-Stuart engine, only the fuel was injected. The Diesel project also used a much higher compression ratio to maximize thermal efficiency.Diesel is much less volatile than gasoline. Instead of putting fire in the air-fuel mixture with a spark, like in a gasoline engine, the fuel in a diesel engine is compressed until it catches fire alone. That's why the compression ratio of a diesel engine is so much higher than that of a gasoline engine. This is also why diesel has the distinct "castanets". One of the reasons the diesels got quieter was by dropping the compression ratio, from somewhere around 25: 1 to something typically in the 14: 1 to 16: 1 range.In 1912, the first diesel-powered ship began operating, the Selandia. Two years later, the first diesel locomotives began to do their work in Germany. Meanwhile, in September 1913, Rudolf Diesel was on a ferry, crossing the English Channel towards the United Kingdom, when it disappeared, never to be seen again. Did he jump or was he pushed?
Peugeot Type 156 25HP (1922)The first diesel car was the 25HP, in which a Tartrais diesel engine was installed. It was more a single model than a production model, but it worked and could accelerate up to 70 km / h while delivering a parsimonious consumption of 6.4 km / l. A year later, Mercedes launched its first indirect-injection diesel truck. Rival Man would launch a truck with a direct injection in 1924.

Diesel in the USA
As part of its plan to do well in the US market, Volkswagen opened in early 2011 a new plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, capable of producing 150,000 vehicles a year. His first product was the 2012 model year Passat NMS. It was a less sophisticated version of the Passat sold in Europe and powered, with diesel, by the EA189 engine.The effort showed some success. Of the 230,000 cars sold in the US in 2007, sales rose to 400,000 units in 2012, of which a fifth were diesel models. Clean Diesel, or clean diesel, was marketed by Volkswagen as both a green and good performance option with the EA189. Diesel promised fuel economy similar to hybrid models, such as the Toyota Prius, but with much better dynamics and more power. Because diesel usually emits less carbon dioxide per km than gasoline, it would also be a suitable choice in the battle against climate change.

Exhibition (2014-15)

CEO by VW

NOx is a key factor in creating the so-called smog, a smog that affects large cities. For geographical reasons, the major Los Angeles is particularly subject to this, something very exacerbated by a high proportion of cars per capita, usage levels and congestion. Therefore, CARB picks up heavy with NOx.The testers initially felt that some of their equipment was incorrectly calibrated, or that that particular car had some specific flaw. So they ran new tests using different Volkswagen models. Anyway, one of the testers reported, "We did so many tests that we could not be repeating the same mistake over and over again."

Recognition (2015)
Volkswagen was alerted to the problem and misrepresented in response, blaming the air pressure and other differentials of the test route. Finally, she replied that the high numbers of pollutants were caused by a technical error that could be solved with a recall and a software upgrade that happened in early 2015. In any case, even though emissions have been reduced, misleading software remained installed and emissions remained above legal US limits.CARB asked Volkswagen whether the repair had led emissions to comply with legal limits, but VW was not able to respond. Then CARB decided to test a car - a Passat 2012- that went through the recall and, therefore, for the supposed repair. High emissions continued to happen. Some at CARB were convinced that, far from being a problem in the testing routine, something more sinister was happening.

The cost
The court settlement between VW and the US government has seen VW agree to repair or buy back all 500,000 vehicles out of legal standards, an estimated total cost of $ 15 billion. A September 2016 study suggested that the vehicles in question emitted between 3,400 and 15,000 tons more than NOx than they should. In January 2017, VW agreed to pay a fine of $ 4.3 billion to the US government on civil and criminal penalties. Several company executives are under investigation and some face prosecutions.
Volkswagen's offensive on the North American market stalled, albeit not disastrously. Sales of 366,000 cars in 2014 dropped to 323,000 by 2016. But diesel, with its deadly reputation, will no longer play any role in VW's US efforts. Nor for many other companies - only 11 five-brand cars were sold with a diesel engine in late 2017 in that Market.

The end?

The scenario in the rest of the world is a bit better: sales of diesel models are expected to fall just 4% in the global market by 2025, compared with about 13.5% today. In the UK, sales of diesel models fell by 25% in January 2018 compared to the same month last year.
Once seen as the fuel of the future, it now seems clear that, given the increasing feasibility of alternatives, diesel has no long-term future other than perhaps as an energy source for extra-heavy trucks and other applications where high torque and reasonable fuel economy are vital. Volkswagen itself launched in 2017 a 7-seat SUV, the Atlas, built in Chattanooga, but it does not have a diesel version. In November of 2016, VW announced that it would not sell more models powered by this fuel in the USA. The North American dream of diesel for Volkswagen has come to a shameful end.

Autocar.com