Environmental Extremists Target Diesels, VW First Victim...

[41chevy]

Thank goodness Obama and the democrats via the EPA haven't put through any regulations that are killing US manufacturing and jobs.....

BOTH parties have their hands out for money and are screwing anyone they can.

Didn't the Republicans kill the coal industry to make Obama and the EPA look bad??

More

http://www.livetrucking.com/virginia-trucking-co-just-received-a-record-setting-fine-for-violating-carbs-diesel-emissions-reguations/

[kscarbel2]

Caught Black-Handed: Why Did Volkswagen Cheat?

Car & Driver / December 2015

It’s amusing to watch the mainstream press sink its fangs into an auto scandal. Business-page reporters hurriedly scan the releases and the statements—quickly now, the home page needs updating every 17 seconds—and distill a basic, highly superficial narrative.

Press agents for experts in all manner of non-automotive subjects, from business ethics to crisis management to consumer advocacy, flood the email inboxes of the news outlets, their clients desperate for the exposure that comes from getting a rote observation into quotes. The flames of public outrage get fanned for a few days with hyperbolic and often-inaccurate punditry.

Granted, Volkswagen’s diesel doomsday is not a simple story, rife as it is with technical inside-baseball.

Basically, VW programmed an algorithmic routine into the controllers of its model-year 2009–2015 2.0-liter turbo-diesel engines that recognized the protocols of the EPA’s FTP-75 test, including the US06 and SC03 cycles, and altered the engine calibrations to selectively reduce oxides of nitrogen to make the engine compliant with U.S. EPA Tier 2, Bin 5 limits, all in violation of sections 203(a)(3)(and 203(a)(1) of the Clean Air Act.

Got it?

Legions of TDI owners who thought they bought a “Clean Diesel” (in spite of the slip-slap sound of the stinky, carbon-rich fuel going into their tanks) howled in indignation. Were they victims of a greedy corporate evil, or of ordinary people in the trenches trying to wriggle out of a difficult spot? Here’s a theory on why a carmaker that seemed to have the world conquered made such a heinously bad, unethical, and trust-eroding decision that equally battered both its reputation and its market value.

While other automakers pursued hybrids and electric cars, VW long ago bet its green-tech chips on diesels. The decision was emblematic of VW’s prioritization of Europe, where diesels are popular, over diesel-averse North America, a market the carmaker has traditionally dismissed as secondary. The pressure on VW engineers to deliver a clean diesel, or one delivering both good fuel economy and low emissions, was titanic, but the effort ran headlong into U.S. regulations.

The decision to cheat must have happened sometime before 2009, two years after the EPA’s Tier 2 emissions standards were in full effect. Tier 2 sets extremely difficult requirements for ­diesels, cutting allowable oxides of nitrogen by 83 percent over Tier 1 regs, to 0.07 gram per mile (fleet average). NO and NO₂ (NO_x), the strange chemical compounds formed by the high temperature and pressure of an internal-combustion engine, especially diesels, contribute to ground-level ozone, or smog. Tier 2 established by far the toughest NO_x standard in the world.

It came at a bad time for VW. The most effective technology to cut NO_x is called selective catalytic reduction (SCR), which involves spritzing small amounts of urea and water into the exhaust stream to facilitate the breakdown of NO_x into nitrogen and carbon dioxide. The problem is that SCR requires a tank, a pump, and plumbing—not easy things to package on a small vehicle platform such as the PQ35, the aging component set comprising the fifth-generation Golf and Jetta.

There’s more to putting a urea tank on a car than just lashing it down with zip ties. The floorpan will likely change, the addition of a secondary filler can mean retooling a quarter-panel, and the reengineered car has to go through full crash certification. Golf V owners liked their multilink rear suspensions, a feature that probably would have to be scrapped in favor of a more compact torsion beam to leave room for the tank. (The larger Passat got a urea system in 2012, but VW programmed it so that, apart from the emissions test, it would be stingier with the urea injections, meaning that the owner wouldn’t be inconvenienced with refilling the tank as often.)

With Tier 2 looming, VW faced spending millions on an aging product to make its diesel engines legal in the U.S., one of the smallest diesel-passenger-car markets in the world. In 2007, diesel passenger cars represented only about 0.2 percent of the American market. Factor in the contemporaneous collapse of the world economy and the plunge in U.S. vehicle sales, and VW’s engineers were painted into a corner.

But a new, totally compliant Jetta TDI appeared as a 2009 model. Its supposed silver bullet was an underfloor Lean NO_x Trap (LNT), in which NO_x is captured, then converted to nitrogen and carbon dioxide via occasional spurts of diesel fuel. Maybe it didn’t work quite as well as SCR, but it was a lot easier and cheaper to retrofit. And there didn’t seem to be a fuel-economy penalty. The companion 2010 Golf TDI advertised stellar city and highway figures of 30 and 41–42 mpg (depending on the transmission), and owners in forums claimed even higher mileage. What nobody knew then was that the engine was programmed to squirt less fuel into the exhaust when the car was off the test dyno, allowing more NO_x out of the tailpipe and raising mileage.

Given the choice of reducing the global problem of CO₂ or the local problem of smog, VW’s engineers chose a middle path with a cheat that would give U.S. regulators the low NO_x they demanded and TDI buyers the high mileage they wanted. As it happened, the fudge would only be needed for six years, until 2014, when Europe, the market that dominates VW’s decision-making, implemented its own tough NO_x standards with the so-called Euro 6 regs. By then, the engineers may have figured, VW could phase in better NO_x-eating technology through normal platform updating. Why VW continued to include the software cheat in engines built in 2014 and afterward is anyone’s guess.

The perpetrators likely believed they wouldn’t be caught, as self-certification is the norm under the EPA, which is too cash-strapped to test but 15 percent of the powertrains on the market and is perennially threatened with extinction by Congress. (Independent researchers discovered the ploy.) And if they were caught, VW probably figured, the penalty and market fallout would be small. Perhaps it was an easy choice to cheat. The European competitive environment is rife with deception. Just look at FIFA soccer, where officials are under indictment by U.S. prosecutors. Europeans have a win-by-any-means streak that sometimes emerges under intense pressure. There certainly was pressure.

Then-CEO Martin Winterkorn, who took over Volkswagen AG in 2007 determined to make VW the world leader in volume and profit, ordered his staff to deliver a clean diesel that could be sold worldwide and could carry VW’s diesel religion to the New World to convert nonbelievers. And they did deliver. Did Winterkorn know the details? Maybe he didn’t want to. He has denied any knowledge of the deceit.

From a moral and legal standpoint, the fraud was a colossally bad decision. Whether it was a bad financial decision remains to be seen. A half-million cheater diesels were sold in the U.S., with 11 million sold worldwide. Meanwhile, the costs of the scam will take years to measure. It took four years for the federal government to slap a $1.2 billion penalty on Toyota for hiding evidence in its sudden-acceleration investigation, so it’ll be a while before we know how many pounds of VW’s flesh are in play. It almost certainly will be a fraction of the $18 billion widely speculated upon in the press. The rules allow Uncle Sam a lot of wiggle room. This was an emissions issue, after all, not a safety defect involving crashes and fatalities.

If you look at the settlement pattern—$935 million for GM, $1.2 billion for Toyota—the fines tend to be starkly punitive but not crushing. Then again, European regulators will likely demand something and there will be civil suits to settle.

Once all the shouting is over, VW’s decision to break the rules may prove hugely damaging, a shattering of its recent momentum that distracts and dispirits the company, opens a crack in its armor for competitors, and scuttles demand for the diesel technology upon which VW has staked so much. Or it might just be a break-even, forcing both VW and government regulators into some uncomfortable but necessary changes while being a financial wash against the sales it generated. Or it may even prove to have saved the company some money over the alternatives available to the engineers at the time.

Only VW’s accountants will ever know the whole truth.

.

[41chevy]

The only difference between VW and others vehicle makers is VW got caught.

[kscarbel2]

The only difference between VW and others vehicle makers is VW got caught.

C'mon now, that's far from the truth. The other carmakers were using SCR which can meet Tier 2 Bin 5, but VW tried to save money over the 2009-2015 period and use a much cheaper Lean Nox Trap on their smaller models, which is insufficient in ability but much cheaper. They planned to start using SCR on the smaller models from mid 2015, and did so.

They gambled, knowing the added cost of SCR on smaller, more price-sensitive car models way back in 2009 would hurt sales.........and it would have. Cars like the Golf would have been too expensive (with the diesel option), prohibiting the volume sales they wanted.

I do wonder who let the cat out of the bag, and don't believe the official story line.

[Dirtymilkman]

Someone was not happy or didn't get their demands met. A buddy of mine has a Chevy cruze diesel and loves it. I don't know if it meets emissions but it does get 40 to 45 mpg on freeway. He went on a 700 mile trip with it and got 49.

[bts-4120]

only thing Vw getts those kinda mpg in a much larger car than Chevy has been able to. hybrids are about a big of joke as us running our pickups on lp back in the 70 s

[kscarbel2]

Someone was not happy or didn't get their demands met. A buddy of mine has a Chevy cruze diesel and loves it. I don't know if it meets emissions but it does get 40 to 45 mpg on freeway. He went on a 700 mile trip with it and got 49.

Piech wanted Winterkorn removed, but instead Piech got ousted as chairman. He still wanted Winterkorn out, and now wanted revenge for his ousting (he had led VW for several decades). There's little doubt that Piech had something to do with the emissions scam coming to light.

[kscarbel2]

only thing Vw getts those kinda mpg in a much larger car than Chevy has been able to. hybrids are about a big of joke as us running our pickups on lp back in the 70 s

The first and second generation GM Volt, brought about by the brilliant Bob Lutz, and the high range (about 200 miles) pure-electric Bolt, are no joke. With GM's new deeper cooperation with LG, you're going to see some amazing developments.

[Ol2Stroker]

I'm really proud of VW for sticking it to the EPA and their bullshit. These greenies need to be rounded up with the liberals and shot.

[Bullheaded]

The fallout is already starting, even up here in Canada. I know some guys that had Diesel Spec deletes done on their new trucks and they just got caught and had to put everything back on. They are starting to look close now, and have new testing equipment.

[kscarbel2]

Following up on the Volkswagen emissions scandal:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The New York Times  /  April 26, 2016

A PowerPoint presentation was prepared by a top technology executive at Volkswagen in 2006, laying out in detail how the automaker could cheat on emissions tests in the United States.

The presentation has been discovered as part of the continuing investigations into Volkswagen, according to two people who have seen the document and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the legal action against the company. It provides the most direct link yet to the genesis of the deception at Volkswagen, which admitted late last year that 11 million vehicles worldwide were equipped with software to cheat on tests that measured pollution in emissions.

It is not known how widely the presentation was distributed at Volkswagen. But its existence, and the proposal it made to install the software, highlight a series of flawed decisions at the embattled carmaker surrounding the emissions problem.

Those decisions exposed the company to billions of dollars in fines as well as criminal investigations. Last Friday, Volkswagen reported a record $6.2 billion loss, after setting aside $18 billion to cover the costs of fines, legal claims and recalls. As a first step in a broader settlement under negotiation, Volkswagen agreed to fix or buy back 500,000 diesel vehicles in the United States, beginning with model year 2009.

At various junctures over the last decade, executives at Volkswagen ignored or underplayed warning signs.

As the PowerPoint underscored, people inside Volkswagen were aware that its diesel engines were polluting significantly more than allowed. Yet company executives repeatedly rejected proposals to improve the emissions equipment, according to two Volkswagen employees present at meetings where the proposals were discussed.

Even when regulators started asking questions in 2014, Volkswagen continued to install the cheating software for more than a year. And the company further compounded its problems by underestimating the potential penalties and the risks to its reputation, according to court documents.

Volkswagen declined to comment, citing the continuing investigation. The company has said that top management was not aware of the cheating software, known as a defeat device. Ansgar Rempp, a partner at Jones Day, the law firm heading Volkswagen’s internal inquiry, also declined to comment.

What is now clear is that the current crisis at Volkswagen traces back to the PowerPoint presentation a decade ago.

Volkswagen engineers at the company’s research and development complex in Wolfsburg realized that the emissions equipment in their newest diesel engine would wear out too quickly if it were calibrated to meet American pollution standards. The emissions rules in the United States are more stringent than those in Europe.

A technology expert at Volkswagen offered a solution in the PowerPoint presentation. Just a few pages long, the 2006 presentation included a graph that explained the process for testing the amount of pollution spewing from a car. In a laboratory, regulators would try to replicate a variety of conditions on the road.

The pattern of those tests, the presentation said, was entirely predictable. And a piece of code embedded in the software that controlled the engine could recognize that pattern, activating equipment to reduce emissions just for testing purposes.

Elements of the presentation were reported earlier by Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper and several German broadcasters. Under German privacy law, the executive cannot be named.

The software evolved over the years. It was later upgraded to detect other telltale signs of a regulatory test, like a steering wheel that was not moving.

During regulators’ tests, the engine software would turn up the pollution controls. When it was on the road, equipment designed to neutralize harmful nitrogen oxides would turned down, resulting in emissions that were up to 40 times the legal limit.

Volkswagen had a growing awareness of that emissions discrepancy in recent years.

In a court filing, the company lawyers, as part of a defense in a shareholder lawsuit, suggest that the discrepancy was common knowledge within the industry.

“The vehicles of all manufacturers exceed various emissions limits in normal street use,” Volkswagen lawyers said in a court filing. They further argued that the differences between road emissions and lab emissions were tolerated by regulators.

The management board led by Martin Winterkorn, the CEO who resigned in September after the admission of cheating, repeatedly rebuffed lower-ranking employees who submitted technical proposals for upgrading the emissions controls, according to the two people who attended meetings where the proposals were discussed. The management board rejected the proposals because of cost, the people said.

More effective emissions equipment would have made Volkswagen vehicles hundreds of dollars more expensive, without providing a benefit that customers could perceive. In the United States, even a modestly higher sticker price would have made it more difficult for Volkswagen to compete with rivals like Toyota and Honda.

But cleaner diesel would also have spared Volkswagen a scandal that has already caused sales in the United States to plunge 13 percent from January through March. And repairing diesels in the United States will cost additional hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars.

Court documents filed in Germany by lawyers for Volkswagen show how the company vastly underestimated the potential penalties.

After American officials began asking questions about Volkswagen emissions, company executives, including Winterkorn, thought they could deal with the problem quietly at a relatively low cost, according to the court documents.

An American law firm hired by Volkswagen to examine regulatory issues, Kirkland & Ellis, told the carmaker in an August 2015 memo that the previous record penalty was $100 million. The fine was imposed on Hyundai-Kia in 2014 for violating the limits on greenhouse gas emissions involving 1.1 million vehicles, or nearly twice as many cars as in Volkswagen’s case.

At that level, the penalties could have easily been absorbed by Volkswagen, which had sales of 213 billion euros last year, or around $240 billion. But the potential fine for Volkswagen is likely to dwarf the previous record, based on what the company has already set aside.

Court documents filed by Volkswagen indicate that the technicians thought the chances of being caught cheating were slim when the deception began in 2006. While technology to test cars under road conditions was available, it was not widely used by regulators.

“The seemingly small danger of discovery may have been a factor in tempting the VW engineers to make the impermissible software alteration,” Volkswagen lawyers said in the court documents.

In recent years, the chances of discovery increased. It became easier to buy emissions testing equipment from suppliers, and numerous environmental groups or independent laboratories did so to show that many carmakers were understating diesel emissions.

Signs of irregularities in Volkswagen cars were discovered in 2014 by a nonprofit group, the International Council on Clean Transportation, based on testing performed at West Virginia University. Still, Volkswagen continued to install defeat devices in its cars, including some Audi and Porsche models, until last year.

Volkswagen also underplayed the potential threat of the diesel problems, as well as the wrath of American regulators. Mr. Winterkorn and other top managers were used to deferential treatment by government officials in Germany, where it is one of the largest employers.

After the American regulators started looking into the emissions issue in 2014, the company didn’t give the problem much weight.

Winterkorn received a two-page memo in November 2014 that summarized the technical problems with Volkswagen vehicles in various locations. Plans to recall about 500,000 diesel vehicles in the United States because of the emissions issue were granted a single terse paragraph at the bottom of the second page, according to the memo.

The emissions problem was not corrected with the recall. And despite the regulators’ growing impatience, Volkswagen did not appear alarmed by the possible consequences (German arrogance).

During a meeting in July 2015 of high-ranking Volkswagen managers to discuss regulatory issues around the world, diesel engines in the United States was one item out of six on the agenda. It was allocated 10 minutes, in a meeting that was set to last 1 hour and 45 minutes, according to a copy of the agenda.

On Sept. 3, 2015, Volkswagen finally admitted to American regulators that diesel vehicles had a defeat device. Still, executives were shocked at the response.

Stuart Johnson, a Volkswagen executive responsible for relations with American regulators, said in a memo in January that the EPA gave him half an hour’s notice before announcing on Sept. 18 that the carmaker had admitted installing defeat devices in diesels.

Although more than a year had passed since the E.P.A. first raised suspicions about Volkswagen diesels, Mr. Johnson said in a Jan. 19 internal memo that he believed that Volkswagen still had four months “where we could discuss the issue privately.”

“I was very disappointed by this turn of events,” Mr. Johnson wrote.

[bts-4120]

there is a $5,000.00  per car   emmision trust fund per car  that the owner gets no matter what on top of the grand we already have  then VW must fix or buy back  the car   it should work out for the car owner if they hand them back  problem is where do you find a car with as much room as a passat  gets 46mpg  driving it hard  that lists for 30k or less    bmw  is the only one that comes close  put you gotta shell out the dough

[TeamsterGrrrl]

I'm in the same position- I've got a 2013 Sportswagon TDI with 32k miles. If VW gives me a buyback at pre-dieselgate retail value plus $5k, that'll be what I paid for it      before taxes and hard to resist. But if I can't get a new 40 MPG car with the Sportswagon's hauling ability, that $5k will get eaten up by fuel costs long before I wear out the TDI. So unless I can get another TDI, I'll probably hang on to this one

[kscarbel2]

VW misrepresented the cars at the time of purchase (fraud).

Every car owner has the right to expect a full refund, the original purchase price.

The Honda Accord hybrid has as much useable space as your Sportswagon and gets 50mpg, starting at $30,000

[bts-4120]

1 hour ago, kscarbel2 said:

VW misrepresented the cars at the time of purchase (fraud).

Every car owner has the right to expect a full refund, the original purchase price.

The Honda Accord hybrid has as much useable space as your Sportswagon and gets 50mpg, starting at $30,000

 have you ever tried getting 50mpg out of  a hybrid  cause out in rural America the only way it will is if you haul or pull it half the time

[kscarbel2]

5 hours ago, bts-4120 said:

 have you ever tried getting 50mpg out of  a hybrid  cause out in rural America the only way it will is if you haul or pull it half the time

Trust me, the Honda Accord hybrid will deliver near 50mpg in comfort for just $30,000. It's a normal car with the economy of a diesel that uses cheaper gasoline.

http://www.caranddriver.com/news/2017-honda-accord-hybrid-photos-and-info-news

I personally would buy the four-cylinder Honda Accord Sport with the 6-speed manual, a rare bargain at $25,000. It offers the driving pleasure of a far more expensive European car.

[TeamsterGrrrl]

I'll take the bait and run with it... I don't think that Honda wagon is available in this market. Heck, there's hardly any wagons left in the American market, most of the makers preferring to push SUVs (Stupid Useless Vehicles) on us. Apparently VW AG was slow to get the memo on that one, and persists in offering us the option of the Golf Variant (Sportswagon).  I joke that VW doesn't sell pickups because their cars do that job, and it's true- even the Golf hatch has over a thousand pounds of payload, and the Variant is good for a half metric ton and with the seats folded flat there's two cubic meters of space. Despite their high rooflines, few SUVs can match that capability. So to be honest, the only real replacement I can find for the Sportswagon is another Sportswagon, and hopefully I can get one with a diesel. As for the 50 MPG, Consumer reports tested the Accord hybrid in sedan form and got 40 MPG, about the same as a TDI. That's when new, after a decade with a near dead battery the Accord Hybrid degrades to a 30 MPG conventional gasser. At that point the TDI gets another routine service and goes on at 40 MPG for another decade...

 

[Bullheaded]

I applaud VW for giving us a more reliable diesel that is more efficient and better on fuel. Too bad they got caught.

New ones can still be had here. I just did a deal on one. They just put some mileage on them and sell them as demo's.

And like I said to dealer....it will never be back for an ECM reflash or anything else, LOL.

[kscarbel2]

On 4/29/2016 at 10:45 AM, bts-4120 said:

 have you ever tried getting 50mpg out of  a hybrid  cause out in rural America the only way it will is if you haul or pull it half the time

Just a quick note, the 2017 Honda Accord "hybrid" sedan is out......49/47/48 mpg (city/highway/combined),

No diesel, just brilliant engineering and great fuel economy with an MSRP of $29,605.

http://blog.caranddriver.com/refreshed-2017-honda-accord-hybrid-pricing-rises-by-300-900/#more-305203

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2016/06/20160615-accord.html

http://www.autoblog.com/2016/06/15/2017-honda-accord-hybrid-comes-with-300-price-hike/