VW Faces $17B Fine for Emissions Scam

It made worst when they bannered around their cheating diesels to be "clean", deceiving even the most educated. The cheating is the most damaging, to a lesser effect the up to 40 x more in NOx emission.

This is a very sophisticated cheat even if the software might be simple to construct. They knew that the EPA simply look at the fuel consumption as the basis for emission, i.e. the more MPG, the less emission. Ironically, if those 4 uni dudes did not pursue to prove that VW diesels were clean enough for the US market, this cheat will never be discovered.

I somehow think that ALL VW cars have this software, it's too good of a cheat not to be used for all their models. That's why they are getting incredible fuel consumption on paper, e.g. Golf GTI rated at 6.2l/100km (45.6 MPG), whereas in reality they only get 8.3l/100km (34 MPG - fuelly.com) that's a huge 11.6 MPG gap! With diesels though, the cheat is even more effective as diesels tend to get better fuel consumption WITHOUT emission control system activated.

During 2010-2011, 5 out of 10 car awards went to VW cars in this country, most praising its fuel consumption while having incredible power. People wondered why would you ever buy a hybrid, too slow and only saving a few litres of petrol, what's the point? We hybrid owners had to endure being ridiculed and said you are not saving anything, just buy a diesel and ditch that Prius.

There's a lot of back pedaling in the media during the last few day, and I will be giving it back to those "clean diesel" advocates for sure!

 

1) YOu are making mistake comparing Max with average. x35 times was in the worse case scenario, on avg VW was putting x5 times more than limit.

2) x5 makes it 0.25g/mi, or ~x60 less than avg for older bus.

3) in our state by law school buses can be ran 12 years, and then they can get another year through waver. After that they sell them to the states which do not have such laws.

4) Don't you think that a bus carrying 60 kids vs a car with 2 people makes it x30 times worse? you are exposing 60 times more kids after all, plus all the stops and take offs at the stops with high concentration of kids/adults?

 

As bad as it is for the owners of VW cars, there is a huge number of dealers, sales-critters, and reporters who were suckered in by the VW cheat. I would recommend sympathy and magnanimity are better karma.

Now if they try to waffle about "NOx is not so bad" propose they run a small tube from the tail-pipe to the cabin of their car so they can tell us how good it feels:


Bob Wilson

Bob Wilson

 

Intended emission.

 

we live across from an elementary school. twice a day, about 20 buses pull in, and when they leave, they floor it right in front of our house. the prevailing wind blowing in our direction. it's so bad, if i'm out there, i'll come inside for awhile, though that probably doesn't help. the lady we bought it from died from all timers.

 

Mercedes rumored to be exiting diesels, moving to BEVs and PHEVs:

Mercedes Plans to Phase Out Diesels, Replacing them with Hybrids - autoevolution

 

I should have put a severe sarcasm mark in my post.
Yes, the floormat issue was ludicrous, especially the aftermarket one put on top of the regular mat in the car that killed four people, a loaner car at that. A couple of other car makers did a peddle fix as well, which the media covered, hardly at all.

If Toyota had handled the matter up front in a common sense way, who knows how it would have turned out? But regardless, Toyota had a target on their back at the time, and the media never let facts get in the way of a good beatdown with enormous publicity.

In other news, VW has admitted to deceit and outright fraud. The entire world should be embarrassed by the Toyota deal, but they're not. Car and Driver did a very commendable thing by actually testing different brands, including Toyota, in a test that showed vehicles stopping when mashing down on the gas pedal and the brake at the same time. Interestingly enough, except for various settlements and lawsuits, the entire issue was laid to rest when the runaway Prius driver was shown to have fraudulently invented the story to get out of a lease. The media pretty much stopped the harassing stories right after that. Although for some time, the entire sorbid affair was detailed over and over again when discussing the multiple serious recalls of other car makers.

Shameless they are.

 

It doesn't take the VWs to 5g/mile. At most, using the headline exaggerated 40 times and the high mileage EPA limit, it would be 2.8g/mile for the NOx trap/LNT models. Using the same high mileage limit of 0.07g/mile, and what the study actually found, the cars could emit 0.7 to 2.45 g/mile. The SCR model is 0.35 to 1.4 g/mile.

At least one death in a Camry has been linked to poor software engineering design and quality control, but it wasn't intentional.

Take that report with a grain of salt. It doesn't offer evidence that BMW was knowingly cheating, or even cheating to begin with. The ICCT report I think they are referencing also shows gasoline cars exceeding emission limits on the road. Now the gasoline cars didn't exceed anywhere near where the diesels did, but, without any other evidence, this study is more likely just proof that current regulation emission testing doesn't reflect the drive cycles cars see on the road today. In short, the test methods and cycles need to be updated.

Again, it isn't 40 times. "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

VW did wrong and cheat. That isn't an excuse to spread mistruths.

On SCR cars, the cheat would have no measurable affect on fuel economy. It just allowed less DEF/urea to be used. More importantly, the reported fuel economy ratings were measured when the emission controls were fully operational. They wouldn't have passed emissions otherwise. The cheat was in no way a method to inflate advertisible numbers.

The official figure for the GTI you are using is either NEDC or JC08. Both are laughably easy tests to get high fuel efficiency numbers on. That's why the user reports values are worse than the official. By the EPA, and assuming these are US and not imperial MPG, the Fuelly users are exceeding that.

But BoB, it would be the carbon monoxide from a gasoline engine that will kill them in such a situation. The NOx from a diesel might just make them high.

 

Not if it is a hybrid. <GRINS>

I remember reading at least one report of a failed suicide attempt with a Prius . . .

Bob Wilson

 

Also, the floor mat pedal issue(red herring) occurred when 2 car companies here were going bankrupt.

 

don't take me wrong what VW did is absolutely despeakable and they should be published. However this has been taken out of the context and blown out of proportion. And the context isn't pretty. The amount of pollution produced by commercial vehicles is much larger and being mostly ignored. B/C trucking lobby blocked any advances in that area.

 

What I am saying is the cheat made the real world fuel consumption even better WITHOUT the emission control system. This will not only giving a lot of satisfaction to the owners, the EPA would assume the emission would be lowered due to better real life fuel consumption, which is not the case here.

Golf GTI quoted as 25/34 = 30 combined MPG-US, fuelly 28.5 MPG-US, much closer but still not exceeding as you claimed.

Granted, the US EPA figure is much more realistic than the EU/AU ones, even both were measured in a lab... go figure.

 

Rules are rules. They cheated and got caught. I could come up with many cheating analogies but there's no point.

The question is who's going to take over VW?

 

I will also add that most people don't realize (or care) that Diesel fuel has more energy-per-gallon than gasoline. This fact is almost never taken into account ( especially by diesel owners ) when doing comparisons. I have a VW TDI owner at work here that loves to 'compare' his TDI with my Prius. Whenever I bring up fuel analysis he tends to ignore me. Needless to say, it has been fun the last few days.

 

Even though this is from a humorous site, it's still quite apt;

Company founded by Nazis risks damage to reputation

Car expert Tom Booker added: “There’s a danger that when people hear the name ‘Volkswagen’, their first thought will be ‘cheats’. Shareholders will be desperate to turn the clock back to a time when ‘Volkswagen’ meant nothing more than Aryan racial supremacy.”

 

Actually the West Virgina University team was involved in finding "blocking devices" in the commercial trucks. This is why they had the equipment and experience to know what to do. Their papers released by the ICCT are technical gems.

Let me suggest communicating with 'the powers that be' about your problem. Talk first with a follow-up letter (keep a copy.)

• Phase 1 - identify the responsible parties for air pollution and the vehicles.
• Phase 2 - begin discussions and research how to measure the problem. Propose solutions such as possibly running exhaust to top of vehicle and 'aimed high' . . . dilution can mitigate the worst aspects. Note: this would be an excellent topic in "environment" forum.
  
• Phase 3 - air samples and lab testing. This is when you begin gathering the evidence a lawyer would need.

Bob Wilson

 

I think my county has the largest school bus fleet in the USA. And we are not known for being too eco-minded either. Just runoff from washing all the buses got us in trouble with EPA.

 

First, the fix for the SCR equipped models won't experience reduced fuel economy or even performance.

Second, the EPA wouldn't assume the emissions of a diesel won't be lower due to better real life fuel economy. For the purpose of applying emission and CAFE regulations, they use the test results and not any assumptions. The EPA knows the test can under report diesel fuel economy, and they could have added a fix if they wanted to back when they made the test changes in 2008, so they wouldn't have to do any assuming.

VW's cheat was purely for emissions, and getting higher than test fuel economy for LNT models was not an reason to break the law for them.

I was working under the assumption that the 34mpg in your original post on the matter was was in US units because your profile doesn't include location. That would exceed EPA if it were the case. The actual US mpg of 28.5 is still reasonably close. The average for Prii on Fuelly don't meet EPA.

Diesel does contain more energy by volume, which makes like comparisons to gasoline a little off. The diesel can be converted to MPGe, if desired.

However, the increased fuel economy of a diesel can't be completely explained by the difference in fuel energy content. The diesel engine is a more thermally efficient design than a spark gasoline one. The new Prius engine has a thermal efficiency of a little over 40%. Modern diesels have been at that point for awhile, and exceed it. For every unit of energy going into a diesel engine, more of it can be converted into useful work than even an efficient gasoline engine.

 

I don't really know the numbers west virginia university, EPA, CARB, and VW are the ones that know the real numbers. I think someone could get some good numbers from WVU.

As to the busses, they were very stinky in cold weather when I was growing up. The solution is not to make all the parants drive their kids to school (mine couldn't as both worked, and would have been late, some parants don't have cars), but to replace them with cleaner diesels and/or cng busses. I just think as a health hazzard in the US its not that big a deal, we are exposing people to worse from school and city busses. In europe where most of these diesels run its more of a health problem. The scandal is spending money to cheat through a defeat device, and if other companies do it, how bad it would be for health (and I believe other companies are probably cheating but maybe not with software.

This is the testing rig that caught Volkswagen riding dirty | The Verge
THe good professor that caught this scandal did it with a really small budget. I would add that it is scandalous that CARB and EPA spend so much money on putting through tough regulations, but took a year and a half after the first report to really try to replicate or get their act together to catch and punish VW, and stop the polluting cars. That points to the probability of the need to reform the epa enforcement.

 

It is not only because of more-energy-per-gallon
FYI: Fuel Properties Comparison
Low Sulfur Diesel ~ 113% gasoline's energy per gallon
Biodiesel ~ 103%(B100) to 109%(B20)
BUT also because of higher thermal efficiency
for example
a diesel ICE in car could archive less than 200g/kWh
and that number for the Prius G3's 2ZR-FXE is around 220g/kWh
a normal non-hybrid gasoline ICE would be even higher.
This comes from the nature of diesel ICE's high compression ratio and lean burn
although lean burn means more NOx ...