21st Century Wire says…
Volkswagen’s fuel scandal and imminent collapse has consumer advocates reeling over corporate malfeasance, and also the future of the combustion engine.
“The revelation that VW was selling diesel vehicles secretly designed to fool emissions tests while allowing them to produce up to 40 times the maximum allowable pollution in real-world use has triggered investigations in the U.S. as well as overseas, where millions more diesel models were equipped with the suspect software,” said CNBC auto correspondent Paul Eisenstein.
According to billionaire entrepreneur and founder of the electric automotive sensation Tesla Motors, Elon Musk, “We’ve reached the limit of what’s possible with diesel and gasoline.”
For years, technology pundits and inventors have pointed out how the automotive industry, in collusion with the petroleum industry, (especially in the US) have been intentionally ‘sand-bagging’ when comes to energy efficiency – by supplying only low mileage combustion engines to market – ensuring high profits for the global fuel industrial complex.
Bill The Greek, co-host of the ACR’s new technology show, Electric Car Talk thinks Musk might be jumping the gun. He explains:
“So, ‘Defeat Devices’ have only been found on German cars. Did they really lose the war?“
“The truth is that proponents of the peak oil theory are not crying into their stock portfolios. Oil is cheap and now is the time to buy. It’s going to take another 15 years for infrastructure to reach satisfactory completion for long distance driving. Meantime, Mr. Musk will sell you a long distance battery for a measly $30K grand.”
More from RT…
While the Volkswagen emissions scandal has prompted investigations into other car brands in both Europe and the US, Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk said the time has come to give up on fossil fuels and embrace new technology.
Speaking to reporters recently, Musk said that the Volkswagen fallout over doesn’t mean there’s a lack of a faith in green technology, but the opposite.
“What Volkswagen is really showing is that we’ve reached the limit of what’s possible with diesel and gasoline,” Musk said. “The time I think has come to move to a new generation of technology.”
Elon Musk thinks gasoline and diesel fuel are dead: http://t.co/rublHhcNw3 pic.twitter.com/efvPKcnw1o
— Motherboard (@motherboard) September 28, 2015
Tesla manufactures luxury electric cars powered by rechargeable lithium-ion batteries and, for now, relies on electricity from a power grid that burns fossil fuels.
The cars are produced in a factory in Fremont, California. The company is also building a battery-making facility in Nevada, and Musk is looking for places to build a factory to produce Tesla vehicles in Europe. He told reporters that Flanders, Belgium might be a possible location for the factory.
#VIRAL: Elon Musk’s Hyperloop to start construction in 2016 http://t.co/j7Q7Z3h2qS pic.twitter.com/8tCl2bGgBW
— RT America (@RT_America) August 23, 2015
The emissions scandal first came to light when the US Environmental Protection Agency announced that researchers discovered irregularities in the performance of Volkswagen’s 4-cylinder diesel cars from 2009 through 2015.
On Monday, meanwhile, a European environmental group said it had found some new models of Mercedes, Volkswagen and BMW vehicles that consume more gasoline than their lab tests say they do, reported Fox News.
The group, Transport & Environment, said its research shows that the gap between lab test results for fuel economy and real-world performance rose last year to 40 percent on average – up drastically from 8 percent in 2001. It also found that the difference for Mercedes A, C and E class models was over 50 percent.
The group said it had found no proof the cars were equipped with “defeat devices” like those installed on Volkswagen vehicles, but its discovery has led to a wider probe into “defeat devices” that covers gasoline cars as well…
READ MORE TESLA NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Tesla Files
