The issues with difficulty to repair the emissions systems on diesel vehicles should be something to complain to the vehicle manufacture - not the clean air act itself just as the ire of "can't fix a phone" should be focused on Apple rather than people who use a dumb phone or have a pine phone.
This is not a good argument if you have watched diesel truck progression. Even if it was easier to repair, the emissions standards are what partly caused this design mess in the first place, as they were the only reasonable way to meet the standard (all diesel trucks right now are suffering design issues like this), so it absolutely takes blame. Diesel trucks were only designed like this because of the emissions standards.
Imagine a legislature mandated that all smartphones must be watertight to 200 meters deep, no exceptions. They must also be no thicker than 1/4" of an inch, no exceptions. And then if, for example, all the smartphone makers used adhesive instead of screws to do that. Your argument is that the smartphone markers are to blame for the adhesive, not the legislature. I would argue that it really is the legislature's fault.
Edit @scratcheee:
I would first look over how much damage the vehicle actually causes the environment and whether the standards are reasonable. Look up Leaf Blowers vs Diesel emissions for example - it's really ugly how unfairly biased towards Leaf Blowers and other small engines the emissions standards are. They can have absolutely absurd emissions by comparison without any restriction. (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/25/opinion/leaf-blowers-cali...) (This is another reason why, if your vehicle was shut down due to emissions, knowing that a leaf blower is doing more damage is even more infuriating and destroys credibility and faith in the standards.)
After that, assuming that the standards aren't moving downward, I would have a self-service daily exemption system. Basically, send $25 or so to some complaint CO2 capture or similar organization, get a code, punch code into truck, get exception for the whole day. Obviously this adds up ($500+ a month assuming normal weekdays), incentive enough to get it fixed soon. My dad would be the kind of person who would be greatly relieved - because modding your truck to ignore emissions is awfully tempting whenever planning a long road trip. Just knowing you wouldn't be stranded if something went wrong is enough to kill the temptation.
Edit @lcnPylGDnU4H9OF:
Neither myself, nor my dad, bear ill-will towards EVs. Any ill-will towards them is your misinterpretation of the argument. We are, however, arguing that the stringent and very flawed enforcement of emissions standards undermines the credibility of all emissions standards, as well as faith in EVs and other marketed-as-environmentally-friendly solutions. And that, therefore, blame can be shared both ways when we see people opposed to EVs and stricter emissions standards.
Ford and Chevy have had three decades to work at making a system that has the redundancy, tolerances, and repairability to meet with the Clean Air Act requirements.
The ease of repairability isn't something that is legislated - but rather the "this is the minimum fuel efficiency and the emissions for a diesel vehicle". The placement of sensors and lack of redundancy is a choice from the company.
The existence of an electric vehicle has no bearing on using a pickup truck to do long haul loads.
That the company is making it difficult for 3rd parties to repair is exactly the issue of right to repair and intentionally making it hard for 3rd parties to fix even though they are in compliance with the requirements (by the Clean Air Act) to provide this information and parts.
(I will also point out that this sort of intentional tampering and violation of laws is what makes it harder to argue for a right to repair for other things.)
One's ire shouldn't be directed at the EPA but rather Ford and Chevy for making their trucks harder to fix and lacking redundancy in the systems to avoid the situation where it breaks and you're limited to 35mph.
Furthermore, as a working truck, it is probably necessary to have it tuned up more frequently than its passenger vehicle time schedule would suggest.
I think there's more to blame on the proliferation of the purchasing of larger vehicles, considering this will contribute a lot to diesel truck ownership. I so commonly see a diesel truck on the road that it's hard to imagine everyone who's driving one has a need for that specific kind of vehicle for the given trip (probably not even by half). There is more criticism to be aimed at the "common" truck driver who really has no business using a truck as their daily driver.
I do agree that the current state of things sounds bad with the speed limiting, especially for the commercial owner who's more likely to be responsible with the truck, but certainly it's irrational to vaguely blame "EVs" for these problems. That sounds like an anti-EV dog-whistle more than an argument.
> There is more criticism to be aimed at the "common" truck driver who really has no business using a truck as their daily driver.
The 1% trips that need the truck are enough to use it as a daily driver. The fixed costs of owning a truck (for the 1% trip) and a second car for everything else are so much that almost nobody has enough income to afford that.
Every time I say the above someone says "but you can rent", but when I look into it I discover the hassles, cost, and restrictions on renting makes me decide I can't.
It sounds like I think it's irresponsible to take those trips if it means you choose to purchase a truck despite the lack of need for 99% of your use of it.
Indeed, you can rent and you choose not to for reasons you mentioned, which is a decision others can criticize.
I took some more time to read your comments and I still must disagree with your conclusion about the frustration:
> instills complete and utter contempt for emissions standards [and how they are enforced]
Why not hold contempt with the manufacturer who has a bad solution to meet the standards?
What if the manufacturer wants the solution to be bad (malicious compliance)? What if they don't care?
What if they do want to have a good solution and it's just otherwise bad?
You could insist that their trucks do not meet your standards and the manufacturer needs to do a better job of both meeting emissions compliance requirements and not crippling the ability of the vehicle when they fail to.
> the only way to fix it was to replace the sensor, which required taking the entire freaking back axle off
This was a design decision made by the manufacturer and it is their fault that it's so difficult to fix.
This has nothing to do with legislation except for that the sensor needs to exist; the legislation does not specify where that sensor needs to be, nor does it require that the sensor ever stops functioning (again, blame the manufacturer!).
The manufacturer 1) doesn't need to stay in business and 2) needs to meet emissions standards.
I don't see an argument against the emissions standards that doesn't start with the assumption that the vehicle manufacturer either will or should stay in business.
It's only because the manufacturer shifts the blame that you're complaining about emissions standards rather than the decisions made by the manufacturer.
Out of curiousity, what solution do you think would work (assuming you accept that enforcing any sort of emissions standards is a good idea overall).
My best attempt: perhaps as long as systems to maintain emissions standards have failed, the vehicle could be made to pay a fine per X miles travelled that approximates the cost of correcting either the actual emissions of that engine or if such data is unavailable, a plausible worst case emissions of the engine. At a vague guess I could see that being $250 per 1000 miles or so (simplifying emissions to be "4x typical CO2 emissions of a van", which could be way off, and current best-case DAC costs to undo the damage ~$250 per tonne).
That's still a fairly steep fine, but at least it isn't artificially limiting the vehicle.
Living in a state with mandatory annual vehicle inspections, these are obviously the solution. You can put non-compliant parts on your car, swap them out before inspection, find a dodgy shop that will let some things slide, etc. But for the most part it significantly raises the barrier to driving around with a derelict vehicle.
Emissions should be checked with a tailpipe sensor, as they used to do before they started to lazily rely on OBD2. Then digital restrictions on the emissions computers (etc) could then be narrowly scoped to reporting the last time the firmware was flashed. And if someone is still willing to swap that module out and back every year, then just let them. They could also just burn diesel in a 55 gallon drum in their back yard.
That does seem sensible yes, I'm also not particularly interested in preventing people from doing stupid things to their cars if they're that insistent on doing them, it just hurts everyone else.
I guess the problem is how to encourage manufacturers to ensure their emissions functions remain high quality. If the _only_ feedback is customers eventually getting failed inspections and thus higher repair bills eventually, which presumably then leads to them complaining about the cost of the cars maintenance, that's a pretty weak feedback loop compared to direct punishment for producing products that fail emissions checks.
The problem is that once you punish manufacturers more directly they start installing these braindead systems in self defense, after all, if nobody can drive their cars when they're broken then they can't be punished for failing emissions checks.
I guess you could just forbid them from blocking customers at the same time as you punish them, but that's a little unsatisfying.
Maybe just require a way to detect modification or emissions override, and anyone who does that pays the fine if they fail inspection, and for anyone else the manufacturer pays. They'd presumably be begging people to install modifications so they can hand off any fines...
> Maybe just require a way to detect modification or emissions override, and anyone who does that pays the fine if they fail inspection, and for anyone else the manufacturer pays. They'd presumably be begging people to install modifications so they can hand off any fines...
For passenger vehicles (including diesel pickup trucks but not diesel semi tractors), after you buy it, if you make modifications to it, you the owner are now responsible for it. Also note that the diesel pickup truck is classified as a passenger vehicle rather than a commercial vehicle and so needs to meet the standards of a passenger vehicle.
However... where it gets interesting is when you switch to commercial and industrial equipment. In these cases, the manufacture is always responsible unless they go out of their way to lock it down.
For example, if you made a farm tractor and could adjust the software to change the fuel air mixture to optimize it for certain altitudes (farming at 5000 feet has different tuning than farming at sea level) then if it was possible for the person using it to change that... you, the manufacture are still responsible for any things with emissions. For industrial equipment, you need to lock it down to the point where the person doing it is knowingly violating warranties and regulations.
... And then you've got John Deere with its DRM on the firmware to make sure that farmers don't modify them to go racing ( https://youtu.be/hK-WO9SzVcs ) and get the company in trouble (and the EPA is less of an issue than someone modifying the settings for a combine and getting killed).
> Products claims over defective industrial machines are subject to many of the common defenses in products cases, including comparative fault of the user or a third party (CACI No. 1207A and 1207B), misuse or modification (CACI No. 1245), and more.
> These claims may also become a target for the sophisticated user defense, in which a Defendant accused of failing to warn argues they are not liable because the Plaintiff is a sophisticated user who, because of their position, training, experience, knowledge, and / or skill, knew or should have known about a product’s risk of harm (CACI No. 1244).
> Overcoming such a defense requires assessment of what a user knew or should have known at the time of an accident. More importantly, Plaintiffs’ attorneys should anticipate such a defense when bringing a products liability claim over a Defendant’s failure to warn, and explore other alternatives for proving defects based on defective design or manufacturing, if supported by the facts, and especially if a Plaintiff may qualify as a sophisticated user.
> 1. The [product] was [misused/ [or] modified] after it left [name of defendant]’s possession; and
> 2. The [misuse/ [or] modification] was so highly extraordinary that it was not reasonably foreseeable to [name of defendant], and therefore should be considered as the sole cause of [name of plaintiff]’s harm.
Can one claim that changing the fuel settings on a tractor is extraordinary that it can't be reasonably foreseen? If not, then John Deere is still responsible unless they take every possible action to prevent it from happening.
I was curious about the legal justification for your claim, so I read your main source (biren.com). It seems like you're taking what is a possible defense against a product liability claim (CACI 1245), and pulling it out of context. But rather, for that to even apply, there still has to be a fundamental design defect in the product.
So if there is a safety interlock controlled by software, which the end user then disables by replacing the software, and then someone gets hurt - even though the manufacturer could have reasonably foreseen the modification, the manufacturer still isn't liable because their (removed) safety interlock code wasn't defective in the first place.
But regardless of the current state of the law, a new law that prohibited companies from prohibiting modifications to software on devices they sell would obviously affect that. The thing your citing is California jury instructions, that are presumably a distillation of case law. So rather than even needing to be amended by a legislature, they would be implicitly adjusted with the passage of a right to repair law.
> And then we wonder why some people hate EVs
I consider that irrational.
The issues with difficulty to repair the emissions systems on diesel vehicles should be something to complain to the vehicle manufacture - not the clean air act itself just as the ire of "can't fix a phone" should be focused on Apple rather than people who use a dumb phone or have a pine phone.