VW Faces $17B Fine for Emissions Scam

Emission Standards: USA: Cars and Light-Duty Trucks—California
For cars carb dropped allowable NOx from 0.4 to 0.05 beginning in 2004. I assume that 40x is the carb number or 2 grams. That is way too high, but for half a million cars in the US, not exactly a big health hazzard.

http://www3.epa.gov/otaq/consumer/420f08026.pdf
EPA says the average diesel school pumps out 10.5 grams per mile of NOx. The average diesel (older, not clean) city bus 14.8 grams.

Kids with asthma are probably more at risk by their school buses than the vw diesels out there.

The problem with vw is not the health hazzard, but the fact that they so blatently lied. Yep all the big auto companies have done that, and we have some self policing of bad actors. But this seems to be the most extreme, when they found their vehicles could not pass with the power that they wanted, instead of not releasing them, like mazda is doing (mazda diesels pass the easier japanese test) they put in software to cheat, and kept it there for 6 years.

 

More like: "It is amazing what tightening fuel economy regulations around the world have started".

 

The problem with high NOx locally is smog, ozone, regionally acid rain, and some other stuff.

It would be interesting to understand Ca. sales of these VW's ...if they are overly popular in Ca. like hybrids, then they could be off-setting air quality improvements from cars like Prius.

A little silly to think we are running around in near-zero emission cars, burning a very expensive EPA special reformuated gaso blend...and then this. Meanwhile EPA is planning even harsher ozone regs for gaso vehicles .

 

Yes, it should, and all owners should see is an increase in the amount of DEF used.

The emission increase being used in head lines is the max amount detected during the test. So the majority is happening under some specific condition. I don't think it is at higher power. The diesel is injecting more fuel at that time, which leaves less oxygen in the cylinder to react with nitrogen. The higher heat and hydrocarbon emissions from that are also needed to regenerate the NOx trap. It is likely during idle and low load, when there is an excess of oxygen in the cylinder.

First, it isn't 40x, that is what news agencies went with.
"Real-world NOx emissions were found to exceed the US-EPA Tier2-Bin5 (at full useful life) standard by a factor of 15 to 35 for the LNT-equipped vehicle, by a factor of 5 to 20 for one, and at or below the standard for the second urea-SCR fitted vehicle over five pre-defined routes categorized based on their predominant driving conditions, namely, i) highway, ii) urban/suburban, and iii) rural-up/downhill driving." - In-use emissions testing of light-duty diesel vehicles in the U.S. | International Council on Clean Transportation
So it's 35 times during the worst case, which conditions and length of time we don't know from the study's abstract. I'm sure it is there in the full paper for those that are willing to wade through it. The NOx emissions aren't as bad as reported, and the school bus your kid rides, or you got stuck behind emits more. For the numbers sold, these cheater VWs extra pollution will be smothered by the trucks, buses, trains, and maybe even planes.

The real issue and damage is in the cheating itself.

Second, when news reports use X times, step back and try to find the hard numbers. Take Polychlorinated biphenyl - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. PCBs are bad for you, and they end up getting concentrated in seafood from areas where there is a history of industrial pollution. A report once came out about farm raised salmon having 8 times the level of PCBs found in wild salmon. I was shocked at first, but it turns out that wild salmon mostly come from clean, undamaged areas, and contain a ridiculously tiny amount of PCBs, and even at 8 times, the farmed fish are well under the safe limits.

I exceed the 2008 EPA on my gen2 Prius by 15mpg, was I cheating?
I replied over at Fuelly, but left this out. The diesel BMWs exceed EPA, and it was a BMW that met or exceeded the emission limits in the study that started this.

I saw an ad link on a Google search earlier today.

 

What VW intentionally did was wrong and they will be chastised/fined and made example of for knowingly breaking the law so others won't. In the big picture though, the smog contribution of this specific violation is negligible at best in the big picture. Now for the hyper environmentalists of the world...if you really want to concentrate on the person transportation aspect of pollution, truly measurable results would only be achieved buy requiring "all" cars and light trucks, new and used, to pass current standards...worldwide. Good luck with that though.

 

And VWs share price?

 

Hopefully this wake up call for VW will be the solution to their real problem, product reliability and low TCO.

 

It appears some of the French car makers have been at it too. Can't find a link that isn't in French. (obviously this won't affect you guys are the French daren't sell their wares your way)

 

Anybody taking bets all manufactures have been cheating a little. It's easy to pass any test when you know the questions ahead of time.

 

The 40% over city was without a trailer, which isn't being questioned. With a trailer, it drops down to same range as the non hybrid. Diesels don't suffer as much of a mpg penalty when towing.

 

Fuelly shows two models of BMW 328 diesel engines and a GreenCarCongress reports an updated engine came out in 2014. Now sometimes the Fuelly users are not very strict about their vehicle model so it could be a user data entry problem. I really need to go to the EPA data page and see if there are two, different, 2.0L diesel entries.

Later,
Bob Wilson

 

What's the problem with the Prius in the mountains? Mine gets the same mileage in the mountains, and I've never had it power out on hills. Is there something I'm missing?

 

Yes that the OP is over two years old and this member hasn't been here in nearly a year......

Still don't know how/why this current thread got attached to that post.

 

What has any of this to do with the subject of the post?

 

I think it's a data entry issue. There's only one 2.0 liter diesel engine available in BMWs, including the X3 28d.

According to the CARB certs, all BMW diesels currently sold in the U.S. have both LNT and SCR for NOx emission control.. I assumed that was their strategy for fully complying with Tier 3/LEV III.

 

Assuming TCO is Total Cost of Ownership, I've never minded when my TCO was low.
I assume you mean that their problems are product unreliability and high TCO.

 

Fuelly's data on engines is getting cleaned up, but it is still a mess for some cars. The US didn't get the 328d until 2014 though.

The car only has the 2.0L here, and it is the same for all available model years.
Compare Side-by-Side
The first letter refers to production year.
http://efotg.sc.egov.usda.gov/references/public/CA/TN-AQ02-CPS372_EngineFamilyName-TIER_Standards.pdf

 

The guy who discovered the VW prob at WVU expects an easy fix is possible.

The Unassuming Engineer Who Exposed Volkswagen

 

BBC4HD in the UK is tonight doing a special programme "The Engine That Powers The World" telling the story of the diesel engine and how it's our friend and indispensable. The good ol' EUSSR eh? Can't have us falling out of love viv ze German diesel engine now can ve?

It is shocking propaganda. You guys should try and track it down and watch it. Dreadful stuff.

BBC iPlayer - Watch BBC Four live