rob62

Heard this on the news. On 4 cyl. engines they managed to disable emissions while driving but enabled for inspections. Recalls and fines pending. Nice try.

White Out

Only applies to 4cyl diesel cars, mostly found in VW Jetta/Golf. It effects 250k cars made over the past 8 years, which is a tiny amount for one of the biggest automakers in the world.

LDB

The stories I’ve seen refer only to VW’s with diesel engines. But since VW owns Audi, and since the story is just now breaking, it could extend to Audi and/or gasoline engines. See the thread I started called VW technology scandal.

LDB

The stories I've seen said nearly half a million cars, but regardless of the exact number, the degree of dishonesty in a known, planned, intentional bypassing of regulations is unparalleled.

White Out

It has risen to 500k since I read about it last week, but it's limited to 2.0TDI cars: Beetle, Golf, Jetta, Passat and Audi A3. 500k is less than a year of total production for those cars, sort of a drop in the bucket when looking at the big picture of the VW line.

LDB

You seem to be trying to sweep this under the rug as though it doesn’t matter since it’s “only” half a million cars. But that’s completely missing the point. This is intentional corporate dishonesty, with planned in advance breaking of the law. VW execs should go to jail over this. It even had the double irony that these are “image engines”, with VW supposedly showing how environmentally friendly they are by making high mileage diesel cars that are responsive and fun to drive. Except oh, wait a minute, they knew perfectly well that the only way they could make a diesel so responsive, fun to drive, and high mileage at the same time was to cheat, such that they emit 40 times the legal limit of NOX. So they designed them to do exactly that, with the cheating and dishonesty built right in by design. This is not a minor offense that should be swept under the rug.

White Out

Not trying to sweep it under the rug, but not complying with emissions isn't nearly as big of a deal as the GM ignition, Toyota ignition/pedals or Takata recalls over the past few years.

It's also pretty funny that the reason this entire thing came about was independent testing to show how good the 2.0TDI was.

LDB

I disagree. All the cases you cite were originally honest mistakes. They messed up. OK, people sometimes mess up. To whatever extent you want to assess blame in those cases, the blame is that they didn’t admit and correct the mistakes quickly enough. But the original mistake was not criminal. It was a human error. In the VW case, they knowingly made the decision to thumb their noses at legal requirements for their cars. There was no mistake or goof involved. Senior executives sat around the table and knowingly and willingly decided not to play by the rules. While true that more harm may have come from the cases you cite, the original mistake was not committed with intent in your cases. It is the initial cheating intent right from the get go that makes the VW case so terribly disturbing.

White Out

People don't die from not conforming with emissions standards.

LDB

That could be argued, but I understand your point. Threat to life from emissions is long term, while that from your examples is immediate. But you continue to ignore the distinction between honest initial mistake with error of slow response, versus the VW action of premeditated, intentional cheating.

cmicasa

This JUST IN

Crabbers

I find it funny that people want to crucify VW for this. Every automaker massages the system. The EPA sets arbitrary rules that only hinder development. The cars in real life actually get better fuel economy than in testing, they cheated the system with lower emissions than in the real world. None of that makes it right, but this isn't a big deal at all.

This is such a non-story.

LDB

I beg to differ. Without the EPA and associated regulations, and similar organizations in Europe and other parts of the developed world, we’d have air like China, and many waterways without fish. Is the EPA perfect? Of course not. I disagree with certain of their measures such as ethanol. But I certainly don’t want EPA to go away. And if we grant corporations the right to cheat on pollution rules with minimal consequences, we might as well just say that EPA is going away. VW needs to suffer major damage to its bottom line for such a blatant disregard of the regulations.

As to the exact pollutant involved, NOX (oxides of nitrogen) is a major contributor to photochemical smog, which is the visible, eye burning type. Other things being equal, diesels emit much more NOX than gasoline engines, making NOX control the most critical issue in diesels. The VW engines were emitting 40 times more NOX than properly regulated cars. That’s why they performed so well and had such a good reputation as being the most responsive of the diesel cars. But they achieved that by intentional, willful, planned-in-advance cheating. That is most definitely not a non-story.

Shurshot

IMO there a distinct possibility of consumer backlash in the US just because of the audacity of VW for openly displaying so much contempt for US regulations.

Not so sure about this playing on the conscience of buyers in other countries (if at all).

Crabbers

You don't need to explain it to me. I'm an automotive engineer

And if you've ever driven any car, you've bought a car from a company that has massaged the rules for the EPA cycles. That doesn't make it right, but it's not an issue. People are pushing the rules all the time. Sometimes they go over, and sometimes they get caught doing so. The EPA is not fostering an environment for innovation, it's fostering an environment for bending the rules.

LDB

With that attitude, I sure hope you aren’t in a position of any influence in any significant auto company. I spent a career as a chemical engineer with a major oil company, and while as you point out, no person or corporation is squeaky clean, we always tried to act responsibly and do the right thing. If anyone in my company had ever even dreamed of suggesting that we rig a test to allow us to routinely exceed pollution limits by a factor of 40, he’d have been run out of town on a rail. Might we have postponed an EPA-required test if we knew the equipment had some problems on the scheduled test day? Sure, and I suppose that’s a small bit of bending. But we’d fix the problem so that it could legitimately pass as soon as possible. As an auto-related rule bending example, consider the skip shift feature on Vette manual transmissions. Yes, that’s bending in the sense that it is set up to give benefits at the known conditions of the EPA tests, and yes, many owners (including me) bypass it. But two things make it strikingly different from the VW example. First, it is a very minor effect for a test that just barely misses, not a mind-numbing factor of 40 difference like the VW case. Second, it’s all out in front of people for everybody including the EPA to see, not hidden in the hope it will never be discovered like with VW. VW didn’t just bend rules. They flat out ignored them, and should be punished accordingly.

LDB

Basis the comment of CSICASA in post #11, this may be about to explode to European regulations too. And if you judge by things like sensitivity to global warming, and aircraft CO2 emissions, Europe is if anything, more environmentally conscious than we are. So I suspect this is going to turn into a worldwide nightmare for VW, and a very well deserved one at that.

White Out

Also, there is at least one other automaker shaking in their boots because of this.

Yeah, that might be a game changer for VW.

Crabbers

You're very good at assuming things about people you know nothing about. I also never said that I am condoning this at all. And if you think that the CEOs and power people didn't know anything about this then you are extremely naive.

Once again, I am not saying this is okay. What I am saying is that it's a non-story.

YMMV and it obviously does. I wasn't aware that your opinion constituted a fact that everyone has to believe in

LDB

Neither my nor your opinion constitutes fact that everyone must believe in. You may be saying it’s a non-story, but at least for now, the news media and the VW stock price seem to disagree with you. We’ll see how it plays out over the coming weeks and months. As for naiveté, I retired at a level in my company where I personally knew many of the top power people, and was no slouch in that area myself. I think I can say with reasonable confidence that the VW level of cheating would astonish all of them as much as it did me. As noted earlier, that’s not a naïve claim of anyone being squeaky clean. It’s simply that in my opinion and experience, this goes miles beyond any plausible claim of it being typical corporate behavior. Do people and companies take little baby steps in that direction fairly often, such as GM’s manual transmission skip shift? Sure. But this is in a totally different league.