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Cars

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Re: Cars

alfablue said:
Well, for those of us car people who don't look at either of those thread, I figured that a car subject would show up in the car thread.
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And now going through the headline thread- there are many things going on at the same time. Kinda hard to have a good discussion, seems to me.

So if you have a VW, here's some FYI for you- http://www.vwdieselinfo.com/

What was interesting on how I saw this going down- we were in Europe, and a lot of this is shifting the EU stance on emissions and how they test- their NEDC is more of a joke, compared to the jaded EPA75 that is the US core test. So their off cycle emissions are much worse than here. Then the EU gave easier standards to diesel as well as lower fuel tax. Which now as resulted in some serious air quality problems in Europe. Bob Lutz mentioned in one interview how he now understands his former GM engineers telling him that they could not replicate what VW was doing- as VW wasn't actually doing it.

For the US, ~500k vehicle affected. It would not be hard to hold both registration and insurance for all of them, since they are easily ID'd via the VIN. Stunning to see someone cheat like that- and like was suggested in the other thread- it's really uncommon to cheat. The penalties are just not worth it- when faced with criminal proceedings- not only are fines up for grabs, jail time can be, too. Although, many speculate that for this case, Germany will take care of what the US will want to do.

I also really wonder what the fix will be. Retrofitting a urea system would be really hard, but it's also virtually impossible to get a lean nox trap to work at the levels required.

BTW, a few times when I googled the subject- a class action lawsuit came up. Not a shocker at all.
 
Re: Cars

alfablue said:
And now going through the headline thread- there are many things going on at the same time. Kinda hard to have a good discussion, seems to me.

So if you have a VW, here's some FYI for you- http://www.vwdieselinfo.com/

What was interesting on how I saw this going down- we were in Europe, and a lot of this is shifting the EU stance on emissions and how they test- their NEDC is more of a joke, compared to the jaded EPA75 that is the US core test. So their off cycle emissions are much worse than here. Then the EU gave easier standards to diesel as well as lower fuel tax. Which now as resulted in some serious air quality problems in Europe. Bob Lutz mentioned in one interview how he now understands his former GM engineers telling him that they could not replicate what VW was doing- as VW wasn't actually doing it.

For the US, ~500k vehicle affected. It would not be hard to hold both registration and insurance for all of them, since they are easily ID'd via the VIN. Stunning to see someone cheat like that- and like was suggested in the other thread- it's really uncommon to cheat. The penalties are just not worth it- when faced with criminal proceedings- not only are fines up for grabs, jail time can be, too. Although, many speculate that for this case, Germany will take care of what the US will want to do.

I also really wonder what the fix will be. Retrofitting a urea system would be really hard, but it's also virtually impossible to get a lean nox trap to work at the levels required.

BTW, a few times when I googled the subject- a class action lawsuit came up. Not a shocker at all.
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I think SCR is the only current technology that will be able to reduce NOx to acceptable levels. And good luck packaging that in a retrofit situation, on a compact car.
 
Re: Cars

They're not going to do that. The recall will basically remove the dirty mode and force the cars to run in "more efficient, less power mode". Then again, that could be crazy expensive on the civil suit side.
 
Re: Cars

dxmnkd316 said:
They're not going to do that. The recall will basically remove the dirty mode and force the cars to run in "more efficient, less power mode". Then again, that could be crazy expensive on the civil suit side.
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That assumes that the clean mode actually passes with full useful life hardware. Given the risk that VW took by doing a cheater like that, it's possible that it may not pass under the microscope that I'm sure will be used for this.

And, like you suggest, it opens VW to a massive amount of very mad customers. Who probably wont have good access to tunes thanks to the rather obvious tune that can be stopped.
 
Re: Cars

Maybe.

In the words of my boss's boss who owns a Jetta TDI when asked if he would give it back to have it modified to operate with lower power just for better emissions:

No. Fu**ng. Way.
 
Re: Cars

dxmnkd316 said:
Maybe.

In the words of my boss's boss who owns a Jetta TDI when asked if he would give it back to have it modified to operate with lower power just for better emissions:

No. Fu**ng. Way.
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I bet he wont have a choice. So easy to prevent the car from being re-registered and prevent getting insurance.

It's a massive deal on a nationwide basis, and all cars will be fixed or not driven. As they stand right now, they are not legal for use. How long they will wait to let them get fixed is to be determined.
 
alfablue said:
I bet he wont have a choice. So easy to prevent the car from being re-registered and prevent getting insurance.

It's a massive deal on a nationwide basis, and all cars will be fixed or not driven. As they stand right now, they are not legal for use. How long they will wait to let them get fixed is to be determined.
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I can confirm that during interviews I heard on our local NPR with state officials, they said it is very definitely not allowed to register a car in CA that has not had an emissions-related recall performed. However, it was not clear from the interview if the system would somehow block you from registering, or if it was just "not allowed" so that you would get some sort of fine if you were caught doing it.
 
Re: Cars

I'm curious to see how this plays out... Currently in the market for a used car that I want to last 3-5 years... Been looking at Subaru's, but wonder how much of a hit Touaregs will take on the window sticker... Seems like it might be worth looking into... I can end up with something much nicer and with less mileage than what I would have otherwise...
 
Re: Cars

RaceBoarder said:
I'm curious to see how this plays out... Currently in the market for a used car that I want to last 3-5 years... Been looking at Subaru's, but wonder how much of a hit Touaregs will take on the window sticker... Seems like it might be worth looking into... I can end up with something much nicer and with less mileage than what I would have otherwise...
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Do you think the gasoline versions are going to take a hit based upon reputation alone?
 
Re: Cars

The Touareg TDI is not affected by the emissions issues. Only the smaller TDI engines. As for the Touareg gasser, I suppose only time will tell.

Unless you're thinking of the Tiguan, in which case no TDI engine is offered with that.
 
Re: Cars

St. Clown said:
Do you think the gasoline versions are going to take a hit based upon reputation alone?
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I think it's likely not only here but in the rest of the world. At least to the point where I see a lot of people ignore faults with VW's. Their pass for being German has gone away.
 
Re: Cars

dxmnkd316 said:
They're not going to do that. The recall will basically remove the dirty mode and force the cars to run in "more efficient, less power mode". Then again, that could be crazy expensive on the civil suit side.
Click to expand...

Also, it is LESS efficient, clean mode. Low emissions and efficiency don't go hand-in-hand.

edit: I think the "clean mode" was run at the same power as the "efficiency mode" because it would be way too obvious for the engine datatag to NOT match the power run during the cert test. EPA would have caught that right away. So the emissions test was run at the right power, but the real question is, as alfablue said, while running in "clean mode" can VW meet all of the EPAs requirements for service life/intervals.

And there is no way people will have a choice. The government will make it required, as they should, to get the fix, and withhold registration if it isn't fixed.
 
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Re: Cars

St. Clown said:
Do you think the gasoline versions are going to take a hit based upon reputation alone?
Click to expand...

The possible penalties the EPA can put on VW include suspending ALL certs for the company, for this kind of flagrant offense. I don't think they would do that, but they could.
 
Re: Cars

bigblue_dl said:
The possible penalties the EPA can put on VW include suspending ALL certs for the company, for this kind of flagrant offense. I don't think they would do that, but they could.
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In terms of government reaction, for sure. There's no reason to extra penalize- and if they do any extra checking- it will be to all cars from all companies, as opposed to focusing on VW.

But I think that the public may take a different view. I would not be surprised if VW's gas cars will take a value hit in the used car market, as well as lower new car sales. Consumers already look the other way for some nagging problems VW has- I think this will have them not doing that anymore. "German Engineering" doesn't hold the same value today as it did 3 weeks ago.
 
Re: Cars

alfablue said:
In terms of government reaction, for sure. There's no reason to extra penalize- and if they do any extra checking- it will be to all cars from all companies, as opposed to focusing on VW.

But I think that the public may take a different view. I would not be surprised if VW's gas cars will take a value hit in the used car market, as well as lower new car sales. Consumers already look the other way for some nagging problems VW has- I think this will have them not doing that anymore. "German Engineering" doesn't hold the same value today as it did 3 weeks ago.
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Frankly, when it comes to the term "German engineering", the value has been pretty ****ty when it comes to cars for while outside of one brand. Most of the rest of them have awful reliability reputation.
 
Re: Cars

dxmnkd316 said:
Frankly, when it comes to the term "German engineering", the value has been pretty ****ty when it comes to cars for while outside of one brand. Most of the rest of them have awful reliability reputation.
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But it was a case of public perception not agreeing with reality. Yeah, VWs were, for the most part, piles of ****, but the public perception of them was anything but that. Hopefully this brings people a little closer to reality, and more people realize that "German Engineering" is a fallacy, and a catch phrase that came from marketing to pull in the people too lazy to do research.
 
Re: Cars

Yeah, I'm going back to Japanese for foreign-built vehicle after this one. That was decided before this story broke, too.
 
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