VW Faces $17B Fine for Emissions Scam

irony of ironies - presuming GM can quantify their lost sales/profits caused by the EPA hold back, will most certainly be jumping on the law suit bandwagon
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Mobile test system developed over a decade ago but was not used on passenger cars...

"More than a decade ago, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency helped develop a technology that ultimately was used by an independent laboratory to catch Volkswagen's elaborate cheating on car emissions tests. But EPA used the technology primarily to test trucks rather than passenger cars because such heavy equipment was a much bigger polluter...

"If EPA had used the technology back then (on diesel cars), we could have caught it," said Margo Oge, who was director of the EPA's office of Transportation and Air Quality at the time and headed the office for 18 years until 2012. But she doesn't regret EPA's decision to focus that technology on manufacturers of trucks and heavy equipment, which had a record of cheating on tests and accounted for a much bigger portion of U.S. pollution than the nascent diesel car business."

*Margo Oge is currently on the Board of Directors of ICCT.


Honor system of self-reporting...

"...they rely on automakers to self-report data in a kind of honor system... They trust the auto companies to tell the truth. And the auto companies have proven time and again that they don't tell the truth," said Dan Becker, director of the Safe Climate Campaign and a veteran of the fight for tougher car emissions regulation. "We can't allow the students to test themselves and submit their own grades."

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I wonder if the focus on diesel trucks was triggered by the 1998 scandal where heavy-duty diesel engine manufacturers installed a similar defeat device. That scheme involved Caterpillar, Inc., Cummins Engine Company, Detroit Diesel Corporation, Mack Trucks, Inc., Navistar International Transportation Corporation, Renault Vehicules Industriels, s.a., and the Volvo Truck Corporation.

Perhaps VW learned - or DIDN'T learn - from the best

Wiki: history of defeat devices

 

'The Empress' did not arrive at HP until 1999, the day after my unit was spun off as an independent entity under a new name. Did any of the above fiasco happen under her tenure?

PS. While at HP, she was already spending more time lobbying for higher office than running HP. World Bank President, U.S. Senator from California, etc. My anger is in what she did to the company stock I still held.

 

My rule of thumb is to sell my company stock when they and I part company. So far, it has always worked. My thinking is any company not bright enough to keep me is headed for the crapper and that has turned out to be true.

Bob Wilson

Source: Steenman: Portland Green Test Drive. What we did and why we did it. | Steenman Associates

. . . We chose instead to do an “experiential” experiment where our objective was to intensively drive and experience the cars in a real world environment traveling a significant distance over a relatively short time.

For those of you solely fixated on stats, the MPG part of this was that the CBTDI Jetta acheived an average of 41.4 MPG against the Prius 40.96 MPG (corrected).

Honestly, this isn’t great mileage for EITHER vehicle, . . .​

In light of the CR results, ~90% reduction of the highway MPG, the corrected Jetta MPG should be:

• (46/50) * 41.4 ~= 38.1 MPG # 2011 Sportswagon
  
• (50/53) * 41.4 ~= 39.1 MPG # 2015 Jetta TDI

We really won't know until the 2009 model Jetta metrics are remeasured. Since these are highway numbers, something anyone with a clue and 2009-2013 Jetta TDI should be able to run.

Bob Wilson

 

1.8B in fines .... is that BEFORE or AFTER all the $$$ VW raked in for "clean-car" credits ... ie does VW have to give back the value of credits? ... or can they just buy a boat load from Tesla as an offset ;
VW: $50 Million In Tax Credits, Wanted Electric-Car Credits For Diesels Too

Sorry, I just find it so ironic that Volkswagen would hold the view that electric cars aren't worth their time, and now due to fines, they may have to depend on them to bail them out so to speak.
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My guess is the goverment will ask for the $51 Million back. That is $0.051B not really much in the scheme of things. These have nothing to do with the zev credits that vw can buy from tesla or nissan. GM and Honda have already bought a lot from tesla, butr with the model X and new 30 kwh leaf there will be lots for both companies to sell next year. The amount of money for ZEV is not very much to a company like honda, chevy, or vw but they hate the fact that they are giving money to support R&D at a competitor auto company.

 

Leo dicaprio, former prius owner, current fisker owner (he was an invester in fisker too) is going to produce a film about the volkswaggen scandal.

Leave it to Hollywood, we don't have many of the facts but they already are set to make the movie. He gave a great performance as the wolf of wall street also based on a true story. I wonder how the diesel of wolfsburg will be.

 

He'll be the good guy. Vin Diesel will be the bad one!

 

Is there a good guy in this story?

I always liked schwartzenagger as the german bad guy. These execs are kind of old.

 

Hollywood have already done it; "The Fog"

Perhaps this will end the same when "6 will die"?

 

I'd much rather see "The Rock" play the good guy.

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Another victim of the VW fraud: Fuel Sipper Smackdown 2: Which Car Gets the Best Fuel Economy?

The Back Roads
The champ: 2010 Toyota Prius with 47.2 mpg
2nd Place: 2010 Honda Insight with 44.1 mpg
3rd Place: 2009 Volkswagen Jetta TDI with 41.2 mpg (37.9 MPG rjw)
4th Place: 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid with 39.6 mpg
5th Place: 2009 Mini Cooper with 38.5 mpg

The City
The champ: 2010 Toyota Prius with 48.7 mpg
2nd Place: 2010 Honda Insight with 43.4 mpg
3rd Place: 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid with 35.1 mpg
4th Place: 2009 Volkswagen Jetta TDI with 31.6 mpg (29.1 MPG rjw)
5th Place: 2009 Mini Cooper with 30.1 mpg

The Highway
The champ: 2010 Toyota Prius with 47.4 mpg
2nd Place: 2009 Volkswagen Jetta TDI with 40.6 mpg (37.4 MPG rjw)
3rd Place: 2010 Honda Insight with 38.6 mpg
4th Place: 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid with 36 mpg
5th Place: 2009 Mini Cooper with 33.3 mpg​

One takeaway is the Jetta TDI drops one or two positions in each test. In effect, the cheat hurt not the leader Prius as much as shuffling the lower ranked cars. But I took a single correction and there are multiple choices.

I used the 2011 Sportswagon, highway effect reported by Consumer Reports because VW had already started implementing a true system. The older system is more likely the true correction factor of the 2009.

My sympathy is with Edmunds who is as much victim, perhaps more, because they make a living reporting facts and data.

Bob Wilson

 

i think a movie, well written and with the right cast, could be riveting. they might have to 'go hollywood' with the known facts a bit, but that's fine with me.

 

BEVs in some states can pollute more than Diesel. I hope the adoption and rollout is strategic.

 

I don't think you should put much time into re-calculating everything. While an interesting experiment, the CR test was with a software-only change, while the official fix is going to require hardware changes as well. So the CR test is not representative of what the fixed cars will be.

 

Defeating the software is easy enough and probably gives the low end correction. If somehow the cheat had been turned off when these articles were written, we have a basis of estimate about what the results would have been.

Given what VW reports about the fix, it won't be rolled out terribly fast. Until we get test articles, this is all we have. But I would be interested in other approaches to estimate the effect.

Bob Wilson

 

I believe ~ means approximately and I don't believe there's an approximately 90% reduction in highway MPG anywhere.

 

I think he mean't approximately 10% reduction. i.e. down to approx. 90%
Actual numbers used appear to be 8% reduction for one car and about 6% for the other

 

How is this relevant? This report is from 2011, we are in 2015 going into 2016.

 

Ok, let's use the EPA numbers versus Fuelly.com:

• 34 MPG - combined city highway, 2012 Jetta TDI sedan
  
• 41 MPG - Fuelly.com average, 2012 Jetta
• 34/41 = 82% loss of performance

Feel free to document your percentage and some basis for using that source. Yes, there are multiple choices for a correction factor. For example:


I'm open to any reasonable choice.

Bob Wilson

Correct!

I tend to think of correction factors to translate from one value to another. I forget others have different approach. I'll go back and make sure it is clear.

Bob Wilson