Where did you come up with those ideas? There's dozens of ways brand new cars can pollute. That's like saying we don't need courts to try murderers because there are laws against murdering people.
The majority of car owners today have no clue on how the machines they trust to get them back home work, and they have no idea how to maintain them. There's two parts to the emissions story. The first part is keeping to a minimum the amount of pollution that will be developed. Ideally that would be zero, and in fact, you can suck on the tail pipe of today's cars and live to tell about it. The second part has to do with addressing those pollutants that still do get developed in spite of all that technology.
Car owners have tried to defeat many of those systems in the misguided attempt at gaining power or better fuel mileage. The world of automotive marketing is so extremely competitive, you can be sure if a manufacturer could advertise one more mile per gallon, one more inch of headroom, or one more horsepower, you can be sure they'd do it. No one is going to buy one model over another because they advertise one less ounce of pollution.
Have you ever thought about why an old Chrysler 318 c.I. Engine could power a motorhome away from a stop sign or up a hill, while that same engine could get a police car up to 120 mph? The simple reason has to do with camshaft timing. Two degrees retarded will seriously increase low-end torque for pulling a load, but at the expense that you'd need a mile or more to pass someone at highway speed. Two degrees advanced will make a police car go from 0 to 60 mph like any old 6-cylinder engine, then it would tear the seats off the hinges from 60 to 90 mph. I had one of each. Standard camshaft timing is a compromise between high low-end torque and high high-end torque. To make that change in cam timing requires tearing down the front of the engine. Instead, the engineers designed the variable valve system that gives us both from a smaller engine that uses less fuel. We don't have to whine and snivel about it. We just have to change the oil when we're supposed to, which, by the way, is a lot longer interval than the standard 3,000 miles from years ago. Oil technology improves all the time too.
Your unrealistic comment about three-month oil changes doesn't stand to reason. I have a '93 Dodge Dynasty, bought new, that now has less than 5,000 miles. It has gone years at a time with no battery and not starting the engine. Should I have been changing the oil every three months? I put about 4,000 miles per month on my 2014 Ram. Should I ignore the oil for three months?
We use upstream oxygen sensors to tell the Engine Computer how much unburned oxygen is in the exhaust. The computer uses that information to adjust how long it pulses the injectors open. We also had oxygen sensors, for the same purpose, as far back as the late 1970s on carbureted engines. That's how the little peppy Horizon Miser got an easy 54 mpg with little pollution.
I have to admit, the engineers have found solutions through the extensive use of unreliable computers where there were no problems, but I would never want to go back to the days with no Engine Computers. You understand parts and systems fail all the time. One of those systems is the exhaust system with its catalytic converter. There's a unit that can easily last the life of the vehicle, except owners will ignore a misfiring engine that leads to a melted catalyst, then some genius will hollow it out, making it totally ineffective. Now you have increased pollution that you think can't happen. Believe it or not, some of our over-educated politicians were demanding the manufacturers design the systems to shut the engines down if pollution went too high. It took some serious lobbying to convince them that shut-down might occur in the middle of a busy intersection, on a deserted country road in the middle of nowhere, on a dark Saturday night, or in the bad part of town. Instead, they came up with the downstream oxygen sensors. All they do is monitor the efficiency of the catalytic converter, nothing more.
Every mechanic who has been around for a few years can relate stories of cars with black electrical tape over the Check Engine light. Way too many people think when that light turns on, the computer will tell you which part to replace. They become frustrated when the light turns back on with the new part installed, so they just cover up the light. Now they have no way of knowing if or when a new problem occurs that could be very minor, but turn into an expensive one when it gets unwittingly ignored. I just answered a question yesterday where the owner has been driving for weeks with a flashing Check Engine light, and wanted to know what to do. And you believe cars can't develop problems that make it necessary for government to step in and make us clean them up?
By your own admission, cars today are a lot cleaner than the older cars, but why is that? It's because of all that technology that you think can break down without consequences. I detest government involvement in every aspect of my life, but with cars and pollution, we've shown them we can't be trusted to keep these systems working properly. They force us to get them inspected to prove I'm not polluting the air you're going to be breathing. Without a little regulation, would you trust your neighbor to keep his car clean?
I also question your assertion about older cars. Why do you suppose they polluted more? It's because we didn't have the technology back then that we do today, we didn't have the testing that we do today, and it was easy to disable or ignore the anti-pollution systems we did have. We also had smog. You'll find the opposite at old car shows. Old rusting hulks don't show up there. Instead, we have meticulously restored vehicles that are tuned to perfection using modern equipment. Most are infinitely cleaner than when the popped off the assembly line. Every single one of those old rusting hulks from the '70s had a charcoal canister to absorb gas fumes and prevent them from going into the air, but every one also had dry-rotted rubber hoses and rusted hose clamps. Every single one leaked gas fumes when just sitting in the garage. Today we have technology for insuring that system doesn't have a leak. You won't find those rotted hoses on restored cars.
You'll have a hard time convincing car owners all that's needed is regular oil changes and no periodic inspections. That means all we need are a bunch of low-trained lube jockeys, and no mechanics. Why then are all the reputable shops' parking lots full of waiting customers?
You said "even if all these high-technology systems malfunction, the pollution still won't be as high as, ... ". Wonderful. So the smog in Los Angeles will be less than it was in the 1960s, but that's good enough. Every single car is going to have part of one of those systems fail in its lifetime. More realistically, there will be over a dozen failures in a car's lifetime. We know if there were no inspections, most of those problems would never be repaired. We know most of those failures would add to pollution.
I have plenty to complain about new cars and the unnecessary use of unreliable technology, but there is no way to defend an argument against proving my car is as clean as it's supposed to be.
I have a gripe about the extremely customer-unfriendly business practices of some manufacturers. I also complain about the use of computers where they aren't needed and were never intended to be needed. No one is arguing that they want less pollution control. You're arguing against proving your car is clean, (which isn't difficult to do). I win.
All of these systems you mentioned reduce pollution in some way, but we know they do break down at times. That means whatever they were doing to reduce pollution, they aren't doing it now. Obviously that means pollution has increased. I might not care enough about you to fix my car unless someone forces me to.
Years from now some people will be complaining about those old days when we drove those miserable polluting 2023 models. They will smugly point to their electric cars, but forget those are just one link in the giant chain of polluting events. We're already being asked to charge our cell phones at night because the power plants can't keep up. How in the world are we going to charge millions of electric cars unless we build new nuclear power plants, or as China is currently doing, building over 1,000 new coal-fired plants? And guess what? Those plants go through inspections a whole lot more rigorous than what your car goes through. Well, at least ours do.
If you still think inspections are a bad idea, consider that many of the tests are performed on-car, by the Engine Computers now Rather than stuffing a probe up the tail pipe, all that's needed is to see that all the on-board monitors have passed, then you're on your way. That takes less time than stopping for gas. Today, proving your car is not polluting is real easy, unless it has a problem you don't want to address.
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Tuesday, March 7th, 2023 AT 1:14 PM
