The Diesel Revision?

At some point on Friday, there was a report out of Spiegel via Deutsche Welle, that discussed joint meetings between the CDU and SPD (the new coalition government) and the idea that they would support an effort to retrofit all diesel cars to meet the spec's required for 'clean' exhaust.

This is coming as cities are moving ever so close to banning diesel cars from entering, as their solution to the future.

The cost factor?  Well....what the two political groups are suggesting one single fund (into the billions) that would be covered by car companies and the German government.  No one says the mix (50-50, 40-60, etc).  The hint is that it'd be for diesel engines where retrofit kits already exists (notably.....built for US imports).

The odds of this occurring?  I'm guessing the companies will flat-out say NO....and with a massive threat held against them...eventually agree to some deal around 35-percent of the cost factor.  As for the government chunk of this?  I strongly suspect a 10-to-20 cent tax will be added to diesel fuel, and over the course of three years....pay back the whole amount that the government had to spend.  Naturally, diesel owners will go nuts over this when they realized that they basically financed the whole deal themselves, minus the company part.

The odds of the retrofit kit decreasing mileage?  Well....it's best not to bring this up.  My best guess is that it'll do something to the mileage but no one can hinder this deal from happening.

The other issue at play here....in recent days, there's been this little discovery by folks that maybe the bad test numbers that the cities have used for their big negative report.....well....maybe the test collection systems were placed in places where the numbers would be inflated.  I essayed about this two weeks ago, where some folks have figured out that if you put the collection device on a very busy street, but against a tall building structure....you get one number, and if you go across the street to an area with an open area (say a parking lot), then you'd get an entirely different number and less inflated.  If people start to dig into this testing business and find corruption, it'll ruin the whole story of the evil diesel car business.