違規醜聞後 柴油車愛好者難對大衆說再見

LONDON — A loyal Volkswagen owner for years, Jane Kelley was “shocked,” she says, by recent revelations that the German company had cheated on emissions tests in the United States.

倫敦——作爲大衆(Volkswagen)多年的忠實車主，簡·凱利(Jane Kelley)說，最近得知這家德國公司被曝曾在美國的排放檢測中作弊，令她感到“震驚”。

Snug in Ms. Kelley’s garage in North London recently was a white 2013 Passat powered by a 2-liter diesel engine. The company says that as many as 11 million of its cars — Volkswagens, Audis, Skodas and SEATs with diesel engines — were equipped with software designed to fool emissions testers.

在凱利位於倫敦北部的家中，車庫裏最近停放的是一輛配有2升柴油發動機的2013年款帕薩特。大衆表示，該公司有多達1100萬輛車——包括配有柴油發動機的大衆、奧迪(Audi)、斯柯達(Skoda)和西雅特(SEAT)品牌車型——裝載有可以誤導排放檢測員的軟件。

But as disturbed as she was to learn that Volkswagen had cheated, Ms. Kelley does not necessarily want anything done about it. “Are they going to take my car away and fiddle with the engine?” she said with a worried tone, as she served tea in her sunlit dining room.

儘管在得知大衆曾經作弊之後感到不安，但凱利卻不見得希望有人爲此做些什麼。“他們會把我的車開走，擺弄它的引擎嗎？”她一邊擔憂地說着，一邊在自己陽光普照的餐廳給來客端上茶水。

As with at least some European diesel drivers, Ms. Kelley is in no hurry to abandon the car just because it may spew more noxious fumes than she originally thought. “I do feel that it is a very safe car,” she said. She also admires the acceleration of the turbocharged diesel, which she credits with helping her recently escape a potential hazard. “There was a guy weaving, maybe drunk, so I just shot by,” she recalled.

和至少一部分歐洲柴油車車主一樣，凱利並不想僅僅因爲它排放的有毒氣體可能比自己原先想象的多，就急着拋棄它。“我真的感覺它是一輛非常安全的車，”她說。她也很中意這輛車的渦輪增壓柴油發動機所具備的加速能力，還把它歸爲自己最近能逃脫一次潛在危險的原因。“當時有輛車左搖右擺的，大概司機是喝醉了，所以我就飛速開了過去，”她回憶道。

Ms. Kelley is one of millions of fans of diesel cars across Europe, where fuel prices and taxes make the cost of filling an automobile’s tank much higher than in the United States. Drawn by diesels’ superior fuel economy over gasoline engines and the lower price of diesel fuel, European consumers have long leaned toward diesel cars — a collective habit that might be difficult to break, despite the new scrutiny the Volkswagen scandal has given to diesel’s dark side.

在整個歐洲，像凱利這樣的柴油車愛好者有數百萬，那裏燃油價格和稅費高，使得加滿一箱油的費用比在美國高出很多。而柴油機節油性能比汽油發動機強，而且柴油價格比汽油低，所以歐洲消費者長期以來一直傾向於購買柴油車——這一共同習慣可能不容易打破，雖然大衆醜聞讓人們開始重新審視柴油機不好的一面。

While diesels have struggled in the United States to overcome a reputation as smoke-belching clunkers — they represent about 3 percent of the American car market — they have rolled to dominance across the Atlantic. Diesels accounted for more than half the new cars sold in Western Europe last year, compared with 14 percent in 1990.

柴油發動機在美國一直難以擺脫“噴煙老機器”的名聲——柴油車在美國汽車市場的份額只有大約3%，但在大西洋的對岸卻佔據主導地位。去年西歐銷售的新車有一多半都是柴油車，而這一比例在1990年時還只有14%。

Europeans’ embrace of diesels has encouraged manufacturers to improve the engines’ performance, and it has motivated governments, especially those of Germany and France, to support their auto industries’ diesel efforts. Although environmentalists have been sounding alarms for years, the forces propelling diesel were so strong that it might explain why drivers, carmakers and regulators have been willing at times to overlook diesels’ tendency to be bigger polluters than gasoline cars.

歐洲人對柴油車的偏好促使汽車廠商進一步提高柴高發動機的性能，也刺激政府，尤其是德國和法國政府，支持本國汽車業推廣柴油車。儘管環保人士多年來一直在敲警鐘，但推動使用柴油機的力量太過強大，它或許可以解釋爲什麼柴油車往往比汽油車的污染大這一點，時常會被駕車人士、汽車廠商和監管機構無視。

“Ban diesels? You can’t be serious,” Ségolène Royal, the French environment and energy minister, said recently, responding to a suggestion by a member of the Green Party. “We can’t treat problems of this gravity with ideological slogans at the expense of French interests,” Ms. Royal said, noting that more than half the cars on French roads were diesels.

“禁用柴油機？少開玩笑了，”法國環境和能源部長塞戈萊納·羅亞爾(Ségolène Royal)最近迴應一位綠黨(Green Party)成員的一項建議時說道。“我們不能以犧牲法國利益爲代價，用意識形態口號解決如此重大的問題，”羅亞爾說，她還指出，行駛在法國街道上的車輛有超過一半都是柴油車。

In fact, the percentage in France is around 64 percent, even higher than in Germany, with French-made Renault, Peugeot and Citro渀 diesels joining Volkswagens on the road. There has been no indication that the French automakers cheated on emissions tests.

事實上，柴油車在法國車輛中的比例大約爲64%，甚至比德國還高。除了大衆車以外，法國的道路上行駛的還有本國製造的雷諾(Renault)、標緻(Peugeot)和雪鐵龍(Citro渀)柴油車。沒有信息顯示，這些法國汽車廠商曾在排放檢測中作弊。

So far, Volkswagen has not said how it plans to deal with the deceptive software problem, although the German government has set an Oct. 7 deadline for the company to propose a solution. Unlike in the United States, where lawyers are already recruiting car owners in hopes of filing class-action lawsuits, there is no similar tradition in Europe that would encourage consumers to collectively demand financial redress.

目前，大衆還沒有對外宣佈它計劃如何解決這一欺詐軟件問題，儘管德國政府已經給出了最後期限，要求它最晚在10月7日拿出解決方案。美國已經有律師在徵集車主，以期對大衆提起集體訴訟，而歐洲與美國不同，這裏沒有這類鼓勵消費者集體尋求經濟賠償的傳統。

Volkswagen said on Tuesday that it would prepare a plan by early October to improve the emissions of affected vehicles. Owners will be notified in the weeks and months after the plan has been approved by authorities, the company said.

週二，大衆表示，它將在十月初準備一項計劃，用以改善涉事車輛的排放問題。該公司還表示，它會在這項計劃得到當局批准後的幾周和幾月內，向車主們發出通知。

“If there is a recall, I would be happy if my car is not included in it,” said Tony Novak, a retired editor for the BBC who lives in Reading, England. In Britain, just over half of new cars sold are diesels.

“如果他們要召回車輛，我希望自己的車不在此列，”現在居住在蘇格蘭雷丁市的BBC退休編輯託尼·諾瓦克(Tony Novak)說。在英國，新銷售車輛中柴油車的比例剛剛過半。

“Diesels used to be terrible — they used to be dirty and slow,” he said. “Now they are brilliant.” Mr. Novak had owned diesel cars previously, but when he bought his 2014 Volkswagen Golf diesel, “I was really surprised by how good it was — you really notice the difference in acceleration.”

“柴油車過去很糟糕——又髒又慢，”他說。“現在棒極了。”諾瓦克以前有好幾輛柴油車，但在2014年買了2014年款大衆高爾夫柴油車之後，“我特別驚訝於它的優越——加速的時候真的能感覺到區別。”

That Volkswagen might have achieved that performance by cheating — it is still not clear whether the company needed the deceptive software to pass Europe’s emissions tests, which are much less strict than the United States’ — is not what matters most to Mr. Novak. “I worry that if they tweak the computer, the performance will deteriorate,” he said.

但大衆有可能是通過欺詐而實現較高加速性能這一點，並不是諾瓦克最在乎的。目前還不清楚，大衆是否需要在車上安裝欺詐軟件以通過歐洲的排放檢測，後者的標準比美國寬鬆得多。“我擔心他們在計算機上進行調整之後，車輛的性能會下降，”他說。

About five million of the affected cars are Golfs, Passats and other Volkswagen-brand cars. An additional two million are Audi brand cars, and the rest or Skoda and SEAT brand cars, or light commercial vehicles.

有大約500萬涉事車輛是高爾夫、帕薩特和其他大衆品牌車型。另有200萬輛是奧迪品牌車型，剩下的是斯柯達和西雅特，或輕型商務車。

Matthias Müller, a company insider who was appointed chief executive of Volkswagen last week, told top managers late Monday that the deceptive software was activated in only a portion of the 11 million vehicles that have the so-called EA 189 diesel motors. But Volkswagen did not specify how many cars were designed to cheat on emissions tests.

上週，大衆內部人士馬蒂亞斯·穆勒(Matthias Müller)被任命爲首席執行官，他在週一晚間告訴公司高層管理人員，在配備所謂EA 189柴油發動機的1100萬輛車中，只有一部分車上安裝的欺詐軟件被激活。但大衆沒有明確指出，它對多少輛車進行了此類設計，可以在排放檢測中作弊。

Some industry experts say that the Volkswagen scandal could prove a turning point in the diesel love affair, if the new scrutiny of European emissions standards and testing makes it easier for the environmentalists to be heard.

一些行業專家表示，如果對歐洲排放標準和檢測的新一輪審視讓人們更容易聽取環保人士的呼籲，大衆醜聞就有可能會成爲柴油機熱的一個轉折點。

The premise of the “clean diesel” notion that Volkswagen promoted was partly based on the fact that on a per-mile basis, diesel engines emit less carbon dioxide — a big contributor to climate change — than gasoline engines. But diesel exhausts, unless cleaned in ways that Volkswagen’s software was designed to sidestep, produce larger quantities of other harmful gases — nitrogen oxides — along with fine particles that contribute to stubbornly persistent air quality problems in European cities.

大衆宣傳“清潔柴油”概念，有一部分是基於這樣一個事實，即車輛每行駛一英里，柴油發動機排放的二氧化碳比汽油發動機少，而二氧化碳是氣候變化的一大因素。但除非像大衆那樣以特別設計的軟件進行欺詐顯示出經過“淨化”的結果，否則柴油車排放的尾氣中會包含更多氮氧化物等其他有害氣體，還有更多細微顆粒物質，後者是一些歐洲城市難以消除的空氣質量問題的成因之一。

“There is a recognition that, fundamentally, it is going to be difficult to control all of the problems with diesel — smoke production is not going to go away,” said Peter Wells, co-director of the center for automotive industry research at Cardiff Business School. “In the very long term, diesel has had its day.”

“人們有一種共識，即很難從根本上控制柴油機存在的所有問題——煙氣排放不會消失，”卡迪夫大學商學院(Cardiff Business School)汽車工業研究中心聯席主任彼得·韋爾斯(Peter Wells)說。“從比較長遠來看，柴油機的好日子已經過去。”

According to the European Environment Agency, which monitors air quality, 20 to 30 percent of urban residents in Europe are exposed to particle levels — mainly from diesel exhaust fumes — above those considered safe by the European Union, while about 10 percent are exposed to unsafe levels of nitrogen oxides.

進行空氣質量監測的歐洲環境署(European Environment Agency)的數據顯示，有20%至30%的歐洲城市居民被暴露在高於歐盟安全標準的顆粒物質污染中——主要源自柴油機排放的廢氣，而被暴露於達到不安全標準的氮氧化物中的人羣比例約爲10%。

London and Paris have among the highest pollution levels in terms of nitrogen oxides. In March of this year and last, the smog in Paris reached such levels that the authorities were forced to temporarily limit the number of cars on the road each day.

倫敦和巴黎是氮氧化物污染最嚴重的地區之一。去年和今年的3月，巴黎的煙霧嚴重到當局被迫暫時對每日上路的車輛數量進行了限制。

Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, which is playing host to the United Nations climate conference in November, is among those who have suggested an eventual ban on diesels in the city.

巴黎是即將於11月份舉行的聯合國氣候會議的主辦地，該市市長安妮·伊達爾戈(Anne Hidalgo)是建議巴黎最終禁用柴油機的人士之一。

The mayor of London, Boris Johnson, plans to establish an ultralow emissions zone in London by 2020 where older diesels will be penalized. A recent report by the environmental committee of the London Assembly, the city’s legislature, said the mayor should consider banning all diesels from the zone.

倫敦市長鮑里斯·約翰遜(Boris Johnson)計劃在2020年結束之前在倫敦建立一個超低排放區，在那裏駕駛老一代柴油機車輛上路將被予以處罰。該市立法機構倫敦議會(London Assembly)下設的環境委員會發布的最新報告寫道，市長應該考慮在該區域禁行所有柴油車。

But environmental efforts must contend with deeply rooted diesel economics. Automotive fuel in Europe costs several times as much as in the United States, mainly because of higher taxes. The average price of gasoline in London in August, for example, was 521 pence, or about $7.92, per gallon. In most of Continental Europe, diesel sells for about 15 percent less than gasoline.

但環境保護方面的努力必須和根深蒂固的柴油經濟相抗爭。在歐洲，汽車燃油費用比美國高好幾倍，主要是因爲稅費更高。比如，8月份倫敦汽油平均價格是每升521便士（約合50人民幣）。在歐洲大陸大多數國家，柴油的價格大約比汽油低15%。

Part of that difference is because the taxes that help keep fuel prices high are typically lower on diesel fuel.

之所以有這種差別，部分原因在於導致歐洲燃油價格高的稅費，在柴油類別中通常相對更低。

In Germany, the lower taxes on diesel fuel amount to an annual subsidy of 7 billion euros, or about $7.8 billion, for diesel owners, said Daniel Moser, a transportation analyst for the environmental group Greenpeace.

環境保護組織綠色和平(Greenpeace)的交通運輸分析師丹尼爾·莫澤(Daniel Moser)表示，在德國，柴油稅費更低，其差額總計相當於給所有柴油車車主提供了每年高達70億歐元的補貼。

“These policies are not in accordance with what we would have to do to protect the environment and people’s health,” he said.

“這些政策與我們爲保護環境和人們的健康所該做的事，是不一致的，”他說。

And then there are vehicle tax breaks that various governments offer to diesel owners, because of the cars’ lower emissions of carbon dioxide.

而且，歐洲各國政府還制定了給柴油車車主減免車輛稅的政策，因爲這些車輛排放的二氧化碳更少。

Also, new diesels are often only slightly more expensive than their gasoline counterparts. In Britain, a Volkswagen Golf Match with a 1.4-liter, turbocharged gasoline engine sells for 20,955, or about $31,800, while a similar model with a 1.6-liter diesel engine sells for 21,960, according to Carbuyer, a British website.

而且，新柴油車的價格往往只比同等汽油發動機車輛略微高一些。英國汽車網站Carbuyer的數據顯示，在英國，一輛配備1.4升渦輪增壓汽油發動機的大衆高爾夫Match售價爲20955英鎊（約合20.2萬元人民幣），而類似車型的1.6升柴油發動機車售價爲21960英鎊（約合21.2萬人民幣）。

With all those factors taken into account, owning and operating a diesel car in Europe is the more affordable way to go.

考慮到所有這些因素，在歐洲購買和駕駛一輛柴油車要更划算。

In the United States, with much lower gasoline prices, “there is no point at the margin, buying a diesel,” said Garel Rhys, a professor emeritus at Cardiff University. He said Europeans’ embrace of diesels made perfect sense. “Essentially, growth came because consumers are economically rational individuals,” Professor Rhys said.

在美國，因爲汽油價格低得多，“沒必要購買柴油車，”卡迪夫大學榮休教授加勒爾·里斯(Garel Rhys)說。他還表示，歐洲人更接受柴油車是完全說得通的。“從本質上講，購買柴油車的人數會增加，是因爲消費者在經濟考量上都是比較理性的個體，”里斯說。

But a continued yen for diesels may not necessarily translate into an abiding love of Volkswagen, for some Europeans at least.

但是人們對柴油機有持續購買慾望，不一定就意味着他們會永遠喜愛大衆，至少對一些歐洲人來說是這樣。

Jon Devereux, who drives a diesel-engine Volkswagen Touareg, manages a hotel in Milford on Sea, in southern England. Each winter, he takes the four-wheel-drive vehicle to his winter home in the French Alps. The Touareg, he said, has “been brilliant for 10 years.”

在南英格蘭米爾福德港(Milford)經營酒店的喬恩·德弗羅(Jon Devereux)擁有一輛配備柴油發動機的大衆途銳(Touareg)。每年冬天，他都會駕駛這輛四驅車去他在法國阿爾卑斯山的冬季別墅。他說，這輛途銳“在過去十年表現得一直很不錯。”

But when it comes time to replace it, his next diesel will not be a Volkswagen. The emissions scandal has soured Mr. Devereux on the carmaker. “Would you buy a VW car or any car in the VW group?’’ he asked.

但說到替換這輛車，他要買的下一輛柴油車不會是大衆。這起排放醜聞讓德弗羅對這家汽車廠商感到失望。“你會買一輛大衆車或大衆集團旗下的任何品牌嗎？”他問。