DOJ sues eBay for selling ‘rolling coal’ devices; fines could hit $2 billion
Rolling coal is the practice of tampering with a vehicle's emissions control system, causing it to spew black clouds of sooty exhaust.
Rolling coal is the practice of installing a tampering device to pump more diesel into a vehicle’s engine than it can handle, leading it to spew out sooty black clouds of exhaust that pollute the air.
The practice is sometimes used as a form of anti-environmental protest. Coal rollers, or the drivers who engage in the action, may intentionally target Teslas, Priuses or other electric or hybrid vehicles.
Some people's dedication to being an asshole is quite astonishing. Imagine paying money just to be able to spew soot at other people's electric cars.
Some people are here to watch make the world burn.
It's also a practice to used to attack other drivers, pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclist etc by blowing black soot in your face. Its often dangerous because it creates a smoke screen where you can't even see the road.
Their favourite target is cyclists, as you might expect.
Good, fuck those guys.
I'm not against people having trucks or modifying them for performance or off-roading or whatever, but people who modify their truck for no other reason than to pollute more are nothing but fucking assholes.
As long as the performance mods don't make them louder and they're driving them at night. Or if they do things like put bigger rims on and then complain about potholes in the roads or park in EV spots.
Unfortunately though, a lot of these people are peacocking, and many of them only modify their cars to ensure others notice them (which unfortunately also means annoying/inconveniencing others)
Many of biggest badasses I've met when hiking or mountaineering, drive the crappiest cars ever (some of them drive crappy old sedans)
The bigger the truck, the more fragile the man.
It's called petromasculinity.
These are the same folks who think that the pinnacle of comedy is farting as you leave a crowded room.
Wait... Ebay is merely a marketplace where people or vendors use the platform to sell their goods.
Shouldn't the individuals be sued?
Or maybe it's because they could be in another country, so they go after the platform itself for allowing such devices to be sold?
Going after the marketplace is a more efficient strategy than playing whack a mole with individual sellers.
Agreed, but I hope they go after the sellers, too.
Merketplaces can be held liable for third party sellers merchandise as it's ultimately up to the marketplace to chose what is allowed and prohibited to be sold.
Imagine a marketplace allowed vendors to sell human slaves and the government tells that marketplace that is very much not okay stop it. If that marketplace continues allowing third party vendors to sell human slaves then that marketplace has now also broken the law along with the third party vendor and potentially even the purchaser depending on how the law was written.
Good point
Why not go after both?
They should then request all purchases of the devices, and go after the buyers too.
As a bonus, a lot of the people buying these are probably wife beaters or toxic f**wits. So, screw protecting them..
I dunno, the article is pretty weak on details. Curious what comes of it.
I agree, hitting a couple of these sellers and manufacturers with multi-million dollar fines would be fucking great. They have to go onto X and complain to their drifting buddies that the only way to support Trump would be to bail them out of jail.
I'd love to see a bounty system for this. If I send my dashcam footage of some asshole rolling coal to the DOT I get a (untaxed) cash reward and the coal-roller gets a large fine and mandatory prius they have to drive for 3 years.
Then they'd realize Priuses actually haul ass from a stop and we'd start to see the first lifted Priuses with mud tires blaring twangy songs about going about life blaring twangy songs in a Prius
Prius kick ass.
That is all I have to say about that
Just wait till these guys find out about Tesla's!
now that many are on their second and beyond owners, priuses are mean aggressive little things
Good.
Ebay denied the charges in a public statement, saying it has blocked "more than 99.9% the listings for the products cited by the DOJ, including millions of listings each year."
A court will determine if that claim is true, but if yes, EBay as a market platform won't be liable. A 99.9% interception rate would indicate a considerable effort to prevent illicit trades.
It is true. You will have your listing removed if you try to list something as an emissions defeat device. If you try a second time then your account will be banned.
I listed a carb exempt factory performance ecu made by the vehicle manufacturer and it was removed for going against the tos.
Although they do allow universal ecus like mega squirt. I could see performance programmers sneaking through if they avoid specific language. eBay can't know the specifics of every single item that gets listed.
interesting they're not going after Amazon for the same thing
Hopefully that's a "Not yet," but we'll see
Hopefully reviewers that care will step out and share how crazy the company is. They are full-bore disregarding the entirety of the manual suggesting how to legally sell things.
Not yet..
Sadly, some knobs will go to extreme efforts to try to impress people to be different and stand out. Stuff like this is GENUINELY an attempt to mask their insecurities
I don't know about other states, but in Texas they don't even test diesel emissions during our annual registration / inspection. Totally ridiculous!
Vehicle inspections are going away entirely in Texas in 2025.
Is this a first posture against Amazon? They've been selling fake UL listed (terrible, terrible electrically charged garbage) for years and they have never gotten a take down notice. Clipping on a nightlight outlet face-plate to energized (you can't turn these off with a light switch) active terminals is the craziest one I've soon so far.
edit: Amazon has sold 100k of these, this should be an insurance nightmare......
light arcing corroded metal more resistance fire.
UL is a private organization. They would need to go after Amazon or the sellers themselves.
Ebay doesn't sell anything. It's just a marketplace. Why wouldn't they pursue the people and companies actually selling these devices?
Do you know they're not going after them too?
