VW Faces $17B Fine for Emissions Scam

Gotta love the timing ~
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The e-Golf is already available in 11 states and D.C.

Surprised they didn't wait an see in people opting for the buy back of their TDI would show some interest in the hybrid. Part of the hybrid's low sales was because there was a cheater diesel next to it in the showroom.

 

Interesting thought:

There have been no cheat-diesels sold after September 2015:

	Model	16_02	16_01	15_12	15_11
1	Jetta Hybrid	39	46	65	52

	Model	16_06	16_05	16_04	16_03
1	Jetta Hybrid	44	47	46	47

Those are not sustainable numbers. Perhaps if they tried an SUV hybrid like the RAV-4?

Bob Wilson

 

Or just offered the hybrid in a less equipped trim so people didn't have to shell out $4000 to $7000 more to consider it.

 

Lost me there - What am I missing -
if none are being sold after 9-15, then where are those #s coming from ....
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Excellent point!

I get so pissed at vendors who overload a car for a critical resource. Toyota did that cr*p on the Gen-3 with their advanced safety features. I almost did not buy it because for a $2,000 option I had buy $6,000 of 'bling.' That Toyota did the same d*mn thing on the Level 2 ECO by not even offering TSS-P. Their actions belies any claim of being interested in safety. <GERRRRR, now I will have to take the afternoon off!>

Bob Wilson

 

Are those... units sold?

Wow.

So, there's several things going on here.

First off is a reputation that the Jetta hybrid doesn't get the claimed fuel economy - average fueleconomy.gov driver real-world fuel economy figures are:

	Model Year	Jetta Claimed	Actual	Prius Claimed	Actual
1	2013	45	39.4	50	46.8
2	2014	45	44.2	50	46.8
3	2015	45	N/A	50	46.6
4	2016	44	36.8	52	58.8

So, even when the Prius lags behind, it still beats the Jetta's claimed figures. (And, with the Gen 4, no more lagging behind claimed figures, instead blowing them away.)

Next off is the Jetta's trunk space penalty, where neither the 3rd or 4th-gen Prius had such a penalty.

The Mk6 Jetta was panned even by Volkswagen enthusiasts for being a drastic cheapening of the car, and the Cruze of all cars was considered by journalists to be better. The Jetta Hybrid was a nicer car than the standard Jettas (independent rear suspension, soft-touch interior, higher-spec instrument cluster (all shared with the GLI at least to some extent)), and eventually the standard Jettas got the IRS and soft-touch interior as part of a (very mild) mid-cycle refresh, but the reputation still suffered.

As far as people buying for environmental reasons, who with that as their priority is going to buy a VW now, given this scandal?

Then, for the specific scenario of TDI enthusiasts switching to the Jetta Hybrid... there's a few things there going on alone:

There are some TDI enthusiasts that are Volkswagen fans first, and they might consider the hybrid... except the Jetta is not a car that appeals to Volkswagen fans, they prefer the Golf or the SportWagen, and there's no hybrid version of those models (no technical reason why there couldn't be, though, and the MQB (Mk7 Golf) platform was specifically designed to even take a plug-in hybrid variant with minimal cargo space intrusion, sold here as the Audi A3 Sportback e-tron).

There are some TDI enthusiasts that are diesel fans first, and they'll never buy a hybrid - they'll even buy a full-size pickup if that's the only way to get a diesel. (Those are the ones that are often shouting that they won't get their car fixed (or will immediately modify it to undo the fix), and won't accept the buyback offer.) And, there's a rather strong anti-hybrid and anti-gasoline sentiment that goes on at TDIClub, that diesel is the one answer to all of our transportation problems, that gasoline cars suck to drive and guzzle gas (never mind that a gasoline car can use 14% more fuel for the same distance, and it matches the diesel on carbon footprint (although there's so many AGW deniers on that site that the administration decided to make AGW a banned subject - you can talk about reducing CO2 emissions, though)), that hybrids are the enemy. (It's certainly not the only view, but it's a rather prominent one.)

There's a lot of TDI enthusiasts that do long distance highway (the thing that TDIs do best - going long ranges at high speed on relatively little fuel), an area that anecdotally I've heard the Jetta Hybrid does poorly at in the real world, even though EPA highway mileage is higher than the 1.4T and TDI.

As far as fuel costs, it's also worth noting that the Jetta Hybrid requires premium gasoline (even though the standard Jetta 1.4T, which has the same power and torque figures for the ICE IIRC, runs on regular). That increases fuel costs between $0.20 to $0.80/gal depending on your area.

Basically, the Jetta Hybrid isn't a very good hybrid, it's not a very good car, and the only people who would buy it regardless of that (Volkswagen fans) don't want a Jetta.

As far as a hybrid SUV, they actually had one - the Touareg hybrid. It was the flagship model, though, with a 3.0 supercharged V6 as the ICE, and was rather expensive. They discontinued it, too. And, the current Tiguan isn't considered a competitive product in its space (which would be against the RAV4 and CR-V). The next generation might work as a hybrid, though.

 

Those are for the Jetta hybrid.

 

Great minds:

	Model Year	Jetta Claimed	Actual	Prius Claimed	Actual
1	2013	45	39.4	50	46.8
2	2014	45	44.2	50	46.8
3	2015	45	N/A	50	46.6
4	2016	44	36.8	52	58.8

I put this chart together well before the 'cheat-diesels' were on the market. The diesel defenders were claiming their true numbers were better than the EPA combined:

I could find no such evidence in the data that suggests they were getting slightly worse, zero crossing at 57%. Versus the Prius with zero crossing at 51%. So even before cheat-diesels, their analytical skills seemed a little weak.

This one is a more abstract chart since it is using both Consumer Reports (CR) and EPA specs:

The take-away is only on the highway does the diesel come close to Prius performance. It can not compete in the city or an urban environment making it inadequate for civilized living. The other take-away, Consumer Reports has sh*t for brains.

Bob Wilson

 

To be entirely fair, there's three factors going on there.

A lot of diesel drivers did buy them for long range driving, which means highway, which means they're beating EPA combined easily. (That said, a lot of the claims on TDIClub were of beating EPA highway, which is another argument entirely. However, the TDI responds better to low speed but steady state operation than a conventional (not a Prius) gasoline vehicle, due to the lack of a throttle plate - as I understand, while they do respond to pulse and glide, it's less important than it is in a conventional gasoline vehicle. So, hypermiling in a TDI can simply mean driving slowly, without any further advanced techniques.)

Second, the automatics never did get as good mileage, although the DSGs helped. And, a manual driven properly can beat EPA more easily, because the EPA tests encode specific shift points for which gear versus what speed (that's also why a lot of vehicles have things like upshift indicators, because that way you can shift earlier or later as appropriate for efficiency, during the EPA test), whereas a skilled driver can do things that the EPA test doesn't allow.

But, diesels tend to take a huge fuel economy hit in cold weather short trips (due to the extremely extended warm-up period), which will affect real-world fuel economy if you're not spending time on the highway. (Also, winter diesel is less energy-dense, due to being 30% kerosene.)

 

Source: VW’s Dealers Fume While Waiting for Diesel-Car Fix - WSJ

While U.S. dealers say they welcome the coming Alltrack wagon and a seven-passenger SUV, they are still waiting for guidance on what to do about 12,000 diesel-powered vehicles they aren’t allowed to sell. The thousands of Volkswagen TDI diesel-powered vehicles have been sitting idle for almost 10 months while the German auto maker and U.S. regulators weigh a fix to the company’s use of illegal emissions software.​

Bob Wilson

 

The European Commission has known about diesel cheating since at least 2010, did nothing:

Commission Has Long Known of Diesel Emissions Manipulation - SPIEGEL ONLINE

 

dealers have to be taking a financial hammering.

 

How many heads of Volkswagen are on the commission I wonder.
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I'm not totally certain what your chart is showing, but it does appear that the Jetta is doing well relative to its EPA combined rating.

 

Three states are now suing VW on top of the federal settlement.
Volkswagen sued in three US states over diesel emissions cheating | Business | The Guardian

 

ouch.

 

No problem:

The easiest approach is to take the extremes, left and right side:

If the diesel line crossed at 20% instead of 57%, the diesel owners would be correct that the EPA number was too low. But that was not the case.

Remember this is pre-cheat and though some diesel owners wanted to make the claim, it really wasn't until the cheat-diesel the the numbers matched their expectation.

Bob Wilson

 

That's where I get confused. The line is labeled, "Avg. Jetta MPG", is that line the average MPG reported by users? How would 80% of users be able to get above average? I would always expect the lines to cross somewhere near the middle.

Or is the line actually the EPA rating?

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/20/business/international/volkswagen-ny-attorney-general-emissions-scandal.html?em_pos=small&emc=edit_dk_20160719&nl=dealbook&nl_art=0&nlid=2396563&ref=headline&te=1

The suit by NY, MA and MD says that Muller and Winterkorn knew, i.e. that the guilt goes straight to the top. Here's hoping this doesn't screw up the overall settlement (due to be ratified by the judge next week).