Is GM lying or just playing by the rules? Hm, hey, it’s Tim, pickup truck, plus SV talk we’re reading through a lot of Courthouse documents this morning, legal e, so bear with me I’m going to get this information out to you the best way. I understand it. We’Ll kind of go over things and I’m really curious. You guys’s opinion on this because well I found it pretty fascinating and I’m going to go ahead and share my screen here with you guys and we’ll talk more about this.
Oh, I got to scroll up for a second uh. This story was found by managing Manor Jill selo sent it to me yesterday and I’ve been kind of digging through this morning. So truck owners argue to reinstate claims against GM for lying about clean diesel engines. A class of consumers says deceptive marketing, duped them into buying dermax diesel trucks which emitted higher amounts of plants than their gas burning counterparts. So let’s kind of dive into this.
So basically, what it is is the uh class action lawsuit about GM and Robert Bosch against those two for making some online defeat. Devices me remember, like Volkswagen, did this and they got caught uh the fudge Mission numbers for his durmax clean diesel truck engines. So these defeat devices were used to pass emissions test and not really do that well in real world testing. We’Ll see more about this in a little bit. So the idea is, according to the explains GM used, deceptive marketing to T the engine whopping reduction in carbon emissions.
Despite knowing that, once the defeat devices were disabled in real world driving scenarios, the pollution number would exceed Federal limits. Consumers were duped to paying more for the shark for the Sham of clean de technology. Now a federal judge dismissed all these claims since GM in 2023 or July 2023 and rued. The suit was preempted by the Clean Air Act, we’ll get more to that. In a little bit, I again, I read through a lot of stuff.
Let me let me slow on let’s, let’s talk about this complaint, though it’s from uh hagb, they’re, a pretty large lawsuit or lawsuit, pretty large firm in Seattle, they do a lot of class action. Lawsuits I find their stuff pretty interesting. I just it’s me a report on it. So, according to the firm’s lawsuit, much like Volkswagen Fiat, Cher Mercedes General Motors has allegedly intentionally sold silver, Auto Duramax Diesel 3/4 ton, one ton trucks with emissions, cheating devices that mask the vehicle’s release of illegally high levels of KNX, the Alle alleged use of De defeat Devices means consumers overpaid for these trucks dup than buying them. They wouldn’t have bought these trucks, otherwise is what they complain is saying.
It does affect the Chevy Sado and GMC Sierra I’m going to see if I can’t zoom in this inut graphic, I pull it up. It’S really small, so they’re saying there’s three defeat devices, really what it is. It’S it’s software um their expert found a terminology called online dosing, we’ll get more into this, so they uh there. They want this lawsuit reinstated. They say GM lied.
They said fuel fishing, the best of any full-size truck, which I find is interesting because uh 3/4 one ton trucks, don’t have EPA fuel economy, numbers, uh, low emissions, High fuel economy and Powerful torque and towing capacity. Durmax diesel engines tuned turned heavy duty. Diesel fuel into a fine Mist delivers low emissions. Wiing reduction Engineers have accomplished remarkable reduction of Fleet of of diesel emissions. There’S lots of information going on there.
Okay, let’s D dive into this. So this is what the lawsuit is. Basically pertaining to it is this is the brief that was sent in to argue they should reopen the claim, and what I found in this was basically this guy. This expert was brought in to drive the trucks and various terrain, Justin Smithers um. So his I don’t know why I’m saying Smithers he’s a great guy, I’m sorry, sorry Justin SMI Smithers.
If I could say Smithers this morning, uh he explains he was asked to evaluate them, so he took them all. He took these trucks out, he drove them on different terrain, different uh City, Highway, Towing grades non grades and he put uh emissions, uh capturing equipment on the truck and measured the emissions output. What he found was that the vehicles at issue emit KNX in excess of regular standards and circumstances that Vehicles commonly encounter in real world driving explain. The results are also well above the vehicles’s performance during regulatory testing that, because GM and Bosch develop developed program, the device to hide real effects of online dosing during testing and increase its use and the consequent increase in nox emissions where the trucks are operating outside. Of the test cycle boundaries, so basically he just he explained the truck diesel truck uses.
A Cass technology called the itive calic reduction scr designed to reduce emissions of nox from the engine by more than 90 % in most real world driving scenarios. The strr system in the dermax trucks, neutralizes KNX emitted by theem Mission combustion chamber by using a solution called de diesel exhaust fluid, which reacts with the catalst and the scr to reduce KNX when online dosing is used for extended periods of real R driving. The cast is depleted, resulting in increased nox emissions, so I didn’t know what online dosing was and I was able to find this document that was from a German company, analyzing Mercedes-Benz, uh diesel engines, and it talks about what’s going on here. So s defa is basically ammonia, so you have the selective, calic reduction right system. So you add ammonia to this.
It interacts with the combustion coming of the engine. It neutralizes the knocks going out. So what typically happens is you do? Is you would take the scr you would put enough ammonia in it to at a certain point, so we keep filling it up and that way it reduces the amount of knocks coming out so extra ammona left over. It then remains an Str Cal, so you’re going to fill this thing up, but what he’s saying is there’s another way to look at this too.
This is where the online dosing comes in, and this is going to be right here. The alternative model is to only feed the truck an amount of death fluid. It needs to keep it below an excessive limit in this, so as described above so, if you’re going to, if you’re going to put ammonia into the Str you’re going to keep it at a consistent level, keep filling it up you! You can get around this by saying that if you have too much ammonia in there, if you overload it under underdose it, you do have some problems to re remedy. This Bosch and another Eco manufacturers implanted an alternative control strategy which is vastly simplified.
This alternative control strategy is often called alternate model or online dosing pre-control feed forward. In this mode, no attempt is made to keep the strr catalst at high ammonia levels, so you don’t keep it filled. Instead, you add blue, which is um, which is their terminology for the death. You is dosed at an amount that is needed to reduce the current load of nox. Only the calculation for the amount of dosed ablo is done, based on the estimated nox load reduced to expected efficiency.
The expected efficiency is a computerized program as far as mathematical to understand how much death you actually need to put in there to get an efficient level of enough death plus reducing knocks. So what he’s? What back to our lawsuit? What Smithers is saying is that when he did this truck in real world driving and lot, some of this reacted redacted because of it’s under seal I’m going down. He said that the success of the online dosing comes as the cost of increased nox emissions during real world driving, not during testing.
Okay, the results show the average city driving emissions of four Duramax 2500 test. Trucks was about 3.2 times the federal standard during real Ro driving, so they use online dosing to not keep the strr full of ammonia, but to only add enough to make it really efficient. So you have better torque, better horsepower, better power, and but that also increases the amount of federal standard during real world driving in certain scenarios right. So so, as Spenders identified numerous specific times when online dosing and durmax trucks cause excessive nox emissions during real whe driving was not revealed during testing under EPA standards, so he’s saying at average or cumulative Road grades above 2 % KNX emissions were 1,137 milligrams per mile.
That’S 2.8 times a standard of 400 milligrams per mile. You also have compared to emissions when not Towing. The Tex test vehicles are 23 to 45 times higher when Towing on road grades, greater than 2 %, okay and then cold start. So in cold start scenarios.
The trucks emit 2.8 Times Higher emissions than they would in normal driving scenarios. Okay, so what does this all mean it? It means that GM has developed or D has developed a a computerized system that reduces the amount of uh death, fluid that goes in the scr, depending on the conditions. Now the lawsuit was tossed out because the Clean Air Act gives the APA the right to set standards for emissions and they work with manufacturers, since the consumers are not directly buying from General Motors, but instead they’re buying from a dealership they’re, not directly in contact with Manufacturer they cannot get involved in this process.
They, the lawsuits, are saying, look, you know if you were you’re, not directly um impacted by this, so you can’t sue. What they did say was that the people suing should be. The dealerships dealerships should be suing GM for falsifying these claims and go that that route, but as lawyers have pointed out in some of the briefs, I read. Why would the dealership have any interest in suing G Motors in this case, for not Adit meeting the regulations and then the other part of this whole equation is: did GM really cheat to develop these online cheating devices like online dosing when the EPA sets the test Requirements and General Motors basically builds vehicles to those test requirements so see where this gets complex, like who’s really at fault. Does it really matter and what’s going on, what’s going to happen with this, and so the lawsuits being amended and they’re asking to have the pellet Court look at it again by saying look, consumers have to have way to sue the manufacturer.
We can’t just have the dealership sue, the manufacturer, that’s just ridiculous, because dealerships never Sue manufacturer and then you have companies like G, GM and BOS are saying: why do we get sued, we’re just following the test protocols put up by the EPA if the APA has Got a problem with it: they should change the testing protocols and then come back in us which what happened, Volkswagen, Volkswagen lawsuit, was mandated by the EPA EPA, went to went and sued to the Department of Justice sued Volkswagen. Well, I hope I got most of that right. I hope that’s about clear as mud about what I got from that. So I’m curious. What are your thoughts below?
Did GM really chew? Cheat or did they just follow testing protocols or should more real world testing actually be impactful in or part of EPA testing chin rub all right for more check videos over here website down blow pickup trt talk.com. As always thanks for watching. I will see you down the road
