VW Faces $17B Fine for Emissions Scam

It'd be cool if you could post it - understandable if it's too big a hassle.
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It would be a little too much, it's 29 pages.

 

Cut it down to a mere 20 pages & in the legal World, they'll then call it a brief.

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Hmmm, I guess it could go to the Pentagon and they could lose it? Oh, sorry they do Trillions....

 

I found this, the settlement, in a nutshell.
htt ps://www .vw courtsettle ment.co m/e n/

paste it and close the gaps.

 

what?

 

Look again, it wouldn't link, so I put gaps in. Close the gaps and try pasting it in a search.

 

thanks!

 

Thanks.

In any case, I misunderstood a bit of what was going on initially (you weren't comparing the TDIs to their claimed mileage, but rather directly to the Prius, and the lines in the original graph were an average of what people were getting - so it's merely that there were outliers driving the user average up, such that it was above the 50th percentile of your sample set).

As far as the pattern of the cheating common rails matching the 2006s relative to their EPA MPG, there's two hypotheses I have here. The first is that the EPA test doesn't properly account for lean burning, high NOx output engines and their fuel efficiency - these engines were legally allowed to emit a lot of NOx, after all. The second is that some of these cars may be modified, especially as they've aged, and there's a notable positive impact to fuel efficiency when modifying these cars - advancing timing and disabling EGR (remember, these 2006 and older TDIs run wide open all the time, so disabling EGR won't cause the throttle to close more, it'll instead just make the engine run leaner) are known to improve it on the TDIs. I know I've got a modified car in the 99.5 Golf manual dataset...

In any case, I think I'm going to try to figure out this data, and maybe see what happens when I compare a manual 2003 Jetta (the holy grail of TDIs according to many TDIClubbers - actually, the wagon's the holy grail, but I suspect the sedan gets a bit better mileage) to the 2003, 2004, 2006, 2010, and 2016 Prius. The 2003 is, of course, the best of the best, yes?

I'll be sending you a PM, as well.

 

I would say the biggest factor between actual mpg and EPA mpg is that the EPA changed the formula in 2008 and reduced the official EPA mpg ratings. The old standard (pre 2008) underrated diesels and the new standard (2008 on) underrated them even more. The EPA knows it's formula isn't a good fit for diesel engines but there aren't enough diesels sold to both coming up with a different model specific to diesels. My 2003 Jetta Wagon TDI had no problem hitting the mpg on the 2003 window sticker.

The is from the EPA official report explaining the 2008 change:
Final Technical Support Document: Fuel Economy Labeling of Motor Vehicle Revisions to Improve Calculation of Fuel Economy Estimates

"As can be seen, diesels appear to perform the best with respect to their label fuel economy, outperforming the label by 4.3%. Conventional gasoline vehicles come very close to meeting their label, falling short by only 1.4%. Conventional vehicles with relatively high combined fuel economy (here assumed to be 32 mpg or more, representing the top 10% of conventional vehicles in terms of fuel economy) performed only slightly worse, falling short by 1.7%. Hybrids fall short by a much larger margin, 8.2%. Thus, the greater shortfall seen with hybrids appears to be more related to hybrid technology than to simply high levels of fuel economy.

With respect to the mpg-based label values, diesels still perform the best of the four types of vehicles, now exceeding their label values by 18%. Those conventional vehicles with relatively high fuel economy fall next, followed by the typical conventional vehicle and hybrids. Thus, the YourMPG estimates indicate that hybrid performance differs from that of conventional vehicles, including those with high fuel economy."

(NOTE: "Label Fuel Economy" is old EPA numbers used up until 2008)

 

Good point, I forgot about the EPA noting that - and that was before any of the vehicles accused of cheating were made.

 

I am hindered by not having a test article. There are lots of hypothesis that include the Consumer Reports 'everyone else is wrong and only our undocumented method is right.' <GRINS>

Bob Wilson

 

Here's a graph I made, by the way, regarding the 2003 Jetta versus every generation of US-market Prius:



Lines are EPA combined mileage, I've dropped the top 5% and bottom 5% from the fueleconomy.gov user-reported results for the plots.

2016 Prius has some serious outliers. Worth noting that I'm towards the right side of that graph...

Also, the 2003 Jetta wagon does actually have a higher average on fueleconomy.gov, so maybe I should've used it instead...

However, the 2003 Jetta sedan only beats the 2003 Prius, and it actually falls off faster at the bottom end. The 2004 Prius matches it fairly closely in the middle, and the 2010 and 2016 beat it.

 

RE Gen4: Either Toyota is seriously under quoting the Gen4 or the new testing regime is severely out of wack... Or both!!

SM-G900I ?

 

Source: Bosch Allegedly Helped VW Hide Diesel Problem | TheDetroitBureau.com

Now one of the company’s top suppliers, Robert Bosch GmbH, is facing charges that it helped cover up VW’s cheating on emission tests, according to a lawyer for U.S. owners of VW vehicles equipped with the affected diesel engines.

In a filing late Tuesday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, lawyers cited confidential documents turned over by the German automaker to plaintiffs attorneys in making the new allegations against the auto supplier.​

This makes sense. My understanding is Bosch writes their engine control software so it can be 'tuned' by the manufacturer. The hard code is in the controller and the manufacturer supplies parameters to set the operating range. It is the difference between fabricating a club and the manufacturer picking it up and smashing the EPA emissions standards.

I have no doubt these lawyers are looking for deep pockets and the lawyers may have found one. But it may not be so easy to prove.

If someone is tweaking a new engine, there may be testing modes where emissions should be disabled. For example, tune an engine for peak power by turning off emissions. Then dial in enough emissions controls in a mix to meet standards and measure the performance loss. BUT you are not supposed to turn off the emissions and that was the line VW crossed.

Bob Wilson

 

the documents will be interesting when released. sounds more like vdub throwing bosch under the bus.

 

The chart does highlight how the EPA test underrates diesels.
Is there enough user reported data for the 2014 diesel Cruze?

The new rules make the results more conservative, but the gen 4 hasn't been out for a full year yet. The user reports don't have a winter under their belt. There is also self selection bias; people tracking fuel economy on these sites actually care enough about it to put in the effort.

 

Good point about there not being any winter results, I didn't even think of that.

I might do one of these for diesels only, to compare across models and brands.

 

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