Volkswagen diesel scandal
#31
Lexus Fanatic
This is clearly the use of illicit device/software to circumvent government regulations and gain market advantage.
I hope they just ban them from selling cars here for a couple years. That would serve as an example to other corporations and a lesson to VW.
#32
Plus that would probably put about 30,000 people or so out of a job who make the Passatt in Chattanooga TN, and those that supply parts for that car(and other VW's made in Mexico).
I always wondered how VW was able to sell small, affordable diesels that met emissions regulations without using Urea Injection, while nobody else bothered. It was sort of a niche market, but damn their diesel customers are loyal, and their diesel cars have proven to be very reliable and long lived, something I cannot say about their gassers.
I always wondered how VW was able to sell small, affordable diesels that met emissions regulations without using Urea Injection, while nobody else bothered. It was sort of a niche market, but damn their diesel customers are loyal, and their diesel cars have proven to be very reliable and long lived, something I cannot say about their gassers.
#33
Lexus Champion
Thread Starter
This is blaming it on the victim. It is incorrect to blame this problem on the EPA. Yes, the EPA did approve the vehicles for sale but based on good-faith on the part of the automaker.
1. The EPA does not test all vehicles. They allow the automakers to test their vehicles and then verifies the results, and only performs their own tests on a select few. The EPA may not have actually tested VW Diesel cars. We learned this through the after-the-test problems found with Hyundai/Kia and Ford.
2. Unless the cheating device is right out in the open, it is very difficult to find; in other words, you must go looking for a hidden cheating device to find it.
It is even more difficult to find bad software that has been embedded in a device that has other, legitimate, functions; if the cheating algorithms are embedded in the ECU software and hardware, you will not find it unless you suspect it is there, remove the ECU hardware, pull the executable code from the memory chip and then look through the code, line by line (perhaps after decompiling it so that instead of machine code, you are looking at a high-level coding language).
This is an awful lot of effort (not to mention cost) to go through with every model that the EPA certifies for sale. Remember that the EPA does not even test every model it certifies. It allows the automakers to test the vehicles they wish to sell, trusting that the automakers will do so in good faith.
Now that VW (and Hyundai/Kia and Ford) have been caught cheating, the EPA will be more diligent when conducting their after-the-test audits but it is still bound by the budget that Congress gives it. There is only so much that the EPA will be able to do.
The EPA is not to blame. VW is completely at fault and, surprisingly, they admitted to it.
And this is NOTHING like the individual who installs an after-market device to gain more performance. The individual is doing so openly because the device will be easy to find; VW hid its cheating device by embedding software code, likely in hardware that has a legitimate purpose. The individual is cheating for his own purpose, which, in the grand scheme of things, is minuscule; VW is cheating to gain an advantage for business purposes, which, in the grand scheme of things, is worth millions of dollars. Honda and Mazda have tried to do the Diesel business and have not been successful; for a small company like Mazda, it probably would have cost much, much less -- with much, much greater gains -- if they had tried to cheat like VW did.
#35
Lexus Fanatic
And this is NOTHING like the individual who installs an after-market device to gain more performance. The individual is doing so openly because the device will be easy to find; VW hid its cheating device by embedding software code, likely in hardware that has a legitimate purpose. The individual is cheating for his own purpose, which, in the grand scheme of things, is minuscule; VW is cheating to gain an advantage for business purposes, which, in the grand scheme of things, is worth millions of dollars.
for a small company like Mazda, it probably would have cost much, much less -- with much, much greater gains -- if they had tried to cheat like VW did.
Last edited by mmarshall; 09-19-15 at 10:29 PM.
#36
Two new things that we know:
- VW issues stop sell on 2015 TDI models in the USA
- EPA is refusing to certified 2016 TDI models.
Also - looking over German automotive media, they are all ignoring this for now... when Toyota recalls happened, they published stories about it, most with sensationalist headlines that made Toyota sales in Germany fall heavily and never recover properly.
- VW issues stop sell on 2015 TDI models in the USA
- EPA is refusing to certified 2016 TDI models.
Also - looking over German automotive media, they are all ignoring this for now... when Toyota recalls happened, they published stories about it, most with sensationalist headlines that made Toyota sales in Germany fall heavily and never recover properly.
#39
Lead Lap
#40
But overall they get fined + they have to fix the issue on cars on road... now thats the real problem here, because they wont be able to fix the problem without installing very, very, very expensive SCR hardware, if thats even possible.
Assuming that they have to "fix" the issue, quite possibly they might have to buy-out these vehicles... nothing like this has ever happened so I have no idea what they have to do from law point of view.
#41
#43
Pole Position
companies get fined usually, sometimes if they are foreign, they go to jail too :-)
But overall they get fined + they have to fix the issue on cars on road... now thats the real problem here, because they wont be able to fix the problem without installing very, very, very expensive SCR hardware, if thats even possible.
Assuming that they have to "fix" the issue, quite possibly they might have to buy-out these vehicles... nothing like this has ever happened so I have no idea what they have to do from law point of view.
But overall they get fined + they have to fix the issue on cars on road... now thats the real problem here, because they wont be able to fix the problem without installing very, very, very expensive SCR hardware, if thats even possible.
Assuming that they have to "fix" the issue, quite possibly they might have to buy-out these vehicles... nothing like this has ever happened so I have no idea what they have to do from law point of view.
There is no way to fix this issue without spending major euros. So most likely EPA wont even punish them but rather force them to spend additional money to fix this. Somehow I don't see EPA punishing them into extent of billions of dollars but they would be pushed to fix this however they can.
#44
Lexus Fanatic
I have a sneaky suspicion that we are going to see a CR article in October saying that 40% of diesel owners in a survey are reporting smellier drives to work and polluted clouds over their homes at night. Of course CR will not let anyone know how many vehicles are in the study or how they actually came to their headline baiting findings.
Last edited by Toys4RJill; 09-21-15 at 04:44 AM.
#45
I have a sneaky suspicion that we are going to see a CR article in October saying that 40% of diesel owners in a survey are reporting smellier drives to work and polluted clouds over their homes at night. Of course CR will not let anyone know how many vehicles are in the study or how they actually came to their headline baiting findings.