Stellantis pleads guilty, will pay $300m for illegally concealing the amount of pollution created by its diesel engine vehicles

[ShadowsPapa]

We have it really easy here, very easy. Our air is quite clean compared to other places, our laws very relaxed, compared to other places, we have choices of vehicles and more............


From wikipedia -

Air pollution in the United Kingdom has long been considered a significant health issue, and it causes numerous other environmental problems such as damage to buildings,[1][2] forests, and crops.[3] Many areas, including major cities like London, are found to be significantly and regularly above legal and recommended pollution levels.[4][5] Air pollution in the UK is a major cause of diseases such as asthma, lung disease, stroke, cancer, and heart disease, and is estimated to cause forty thousand premature deaths each year, which is about 8.3% of deaths, while costing around £40 billion each year.[6][7]

Air pollution is monitored and regulated. Air quality targets for particulates, nitrogen dioxide and ozone,[8] set by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), are mostly aimed at local government representatives responsible for the management of air quality in cities, where air quality management is the most urgent. In 2017, research by the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change and the Royal College of Physicians revealed that air pollution levels in 44 cities in the UK are above the recommended World Health Organization guidelines.[9][10]

The UK government has plans to improve pollution due to traffic, and is banning the sale of new fossil fuel cars by 2030

Pollutants, notably toxic particles emitted by diesel vehicles are entering children's lungs, potentially getting into their blood streams and their brains. This can effect children's long term health, even lifelong health, their life expectancies and their intelligence. The government lost three high court cases because its plans to deal with air pollution were considered too weak

From other news -

This article is more than 1 year old
UK has broken air pollution limits for a decade, EU court finds
This article is more than 1 year old
Levels of nitrogen dioxide, mostly from diesel vehicles, remain illegally high in 75% of urban areas

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[j.o.y.ride]

Stellantis was only formed in 2021. This sh*t is from 2015 or so...

You are missing the point by a staggeringly wide margin.

 

[j.o.y.ride]

I disagree.

This has "Abusive governmental regulation (EPA) problem" written all over it and the vehicle MFR is the abused employee of its unruly bosses (EPA) if you will.

You can disagree all you want, and try to divert from reality by blaming the rules for their willful lying, but it won't change the fact that they admitted to this.

---

The only reason the murderer is guilty of murder is because the government overreach makes it so difficult for them to do away with people they don't like.

This has "Abusive governmental regulation (cops and DA's) problem" written all over it and the citizen is the abused employee of its unruly bosses (cops and DA's) if you will. They can't even murder someone they dont like! What gives?! #NannyState

 

[ShadowsPapa]

but it won't change the fact that they admitted to this.

And of course they would -
It's cheaper - gets it over, done with and out of the news very quickly. Few will even realize it happened,
When you buy a company, merge, or other similar actions, you assume all debts and past indiscretions that took place, real or imagined. You assume all, good and bad. How that works varies with their corporate structure, but likely those admitting to the wrong had nothing to do with what happened 6 and 7 years ago, many likely not even there. it's the corporation admitting it was done and it was wrong.
In a sense it's like settling rather than fighting for years in court and paying attorneys many millions more than they already do, along with the costs of fighting.

It's easier to say yea, I did it, even if you had no knowledge of it, than fussing with the mess for years.

Sometimes it's cheaper and easier and faster to pay that damned ticket than to take time and fight it - guilty or not. Been there.

 

[Dennis K]

You are missing the point by a staggeringly wide margin.

You directly blame Stellantis for something they inherited...
Never mind. I just don't care about diesel... Or electric for that matter.
Wheel on friend...

 

[j.o.y.ride]

You directly blame Stellantis for something they inherited...
Never mind. I just don't care about diesel... Or electric for that matter.
Wheel on friend...

When you buy a company, or merge companies, the new entity inherits all the good and bad. Whether it was the Stellantis brand or not is irrelevant to what went down and how management willfully lied. Whether it was Fiat Chrysler or PSA isn't really relevant, and many of the people who perpetuated it may well still be within Stellantis after the merger.

 

[Davekayc]

Waiting for the gladiators to be coal rollers on 40s

 

[Fox940]

The ridiculous EPA guidelines force companies to game the system. You have obviously never owned a company in a regulated industry. Where do think those fines are going to go to? They're going to go towards more useless spending on government nonsense.

Green nonsense is costing us all tons of $$ every year.

Yep, when China and India are held accountable then I'll give a shit.

 

[Holes]

Yep, when China and India are held accountable then I'll give a shit.

This times a thousand!

Everyone’s pollution is affected by them. Ours wouldn’t be nearly as bad without them. So government agencies try to make up for the bad actors by strangling all of our equipment to death to “help” the cause...?

I love this place. I love the outdoors and the woods and hunting.

But this sh1t has got to stop. The earth has always gone through warming and cooling cycles. We certainly aren’t important enough or making a large enough impact to ACTUALLY change the climate.
Now the asteroid (or asteroids) that brought forth a catastrophe that blackened the sky for years and killed the dinosaurs and so on...

That’s something.

 

[ShadowsPapa]

And heeeeeeeeeeeere we go........

 

[Ingram81]

The decision to lie and cheat in order to offer a product they knew wasn't going to pass is 100% a Stellantis problem. Nobody told them they had to offer a diesel, and if the only way they could do it is by lying, then the decision to proceed is entirely a Stellantis issue, not an environmental problem.

This $300m that you know they will pass on to consumers is entirely due to the poor management decisions within Stellantis.

Blaming the rules to cover for the liars is very bad precedent.

Shouldn't have these rules in the first place unless you're going to somehow force other countries that pollute on magnitudes more to cut their emissions. But the US doesn't have the cajones to cut off imports from China because Walmart would die...

 

[Ingram81]

I loathe the emissions standards on diesels today. The argument used to be it was like it used to be when cats were first installed on cars. Things would get more reliable. From most of what I have seen the emissions requirements harm or cripple mileage and still tend to be very unreliable.

Having said that, companies know the rules regardless of what I might think of them, so if they knowingly break them, then they have to deal with the consequences when caught.

I'll take great MPG over emissions every day as long as the US doesn't do a thing about the imports we have from China which is bar none the biggest polluter.

 

[Teqsand]

These companies outright cheated to evade regulations that were crystal clear. They either installed hardware or code whose only purpose was to dupe the test equipment. I'm not sure how your argument applies even loosely to this situation.

Crystal clear doesn't mean reasonable....

 

[ShadowsPapa]

Crystal clear doesn't mean reasonable....

What's that got to do with it? No one said it was reasonable, just that it was clear what was done - which was illegal, of course.
No one was suggesting it was reasonable - and reasonable doesn't enter into cheating.
Cheating != reasonable

 

[22_Sarge_Sport]

Crystal clear doesn't mean reasonable....

Maybe you don't find those regulations reasonable. Maybe the FCA/Stellantis employees involved didn't find them reasonable. Maybe every single one of them was an unabashed coal-rolling climate-change-denier in their personal lives. None of that matters. A public corporation has a duty to its shareholders to understand and comply with the laws of the places it does business in. In this case, FCA is accused of (and settled a case for) straight-up cheating to gain an unfair competitive advantage by dumping illegal amounts of bad stuff into the air we breathe. This seems like pretty sketchy behavior to applaud.

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