VW cheating on diesel emissions.....

[enjoyther1de]

Volkswagen will be fine. With our tiny attention spans these days, it will be forgotten in less than 2 months. And who gives a shit anyway?
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HBB took me to BBV.

[intric8]

Study: Some car models consuming around 50% more fuel than official results
http://www.transportenvironment.org/press/some-mer...-new-study

The automaker with the largest gap between its claimed improvements in fuel economy and its actual on-the-road performance is GM - far worse than VW and Mercedes.

This story is going to keep spreading beyond defeat devices, IMO, and into an industrywide chronic manipulation of the numbers.

[KTPhil]

This gets revisited every few years, then the EPA changes up the procedures. I presume it is similar for European testers.

A few recent wrinkles I wonder about:
- Ethanol fuels require more volume for a given energy content... does the EPA use pure gas, or E10?
- It is well known that the EPA driving cycle is skewed. Some (like the Toyota Prius) really tuned their engine management and even some hardware to do best on the EPA simulated run. Not cheating, just optimizing, but the result is a mismatch to real world results).
- The testing is done in a lab, and fuel use is calculated and correlated with emissions... it's a calculated, not measured figure. And at room temperature.

All these will tend to bump lab figures above real world driving results.

[vanagonjr]

[Randall]

VW actively buried whistleblower reports after an internal audit showed problems with VW’s diesel engine testing back in 2011.

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/215079-vw-warne...stleblower

This came to my attention after hearing about it on a radio talk show. What seems odd to me is that the article linked above was posted two days ago yet it is the only link I could find on the subject. Usually information like this where a whistleblower is ignored becomes a major story.

[ach60]

I've been following this debacle since it started,
since I've been following the story, and reading all the articles, my Facebook page reflects that interest,
and every third "Suggested Post" is now some Lawyers fishing for TDi owners to join the class action lawsuit against VW.
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Good Luck
Al

[Zeen]

[itskyle]

First, to get stuff out of the way:

I do believe mankind should take better care of the planet.

I've owned a Prius, but would never be confused with a tree hunger crowd. I've probably burnt forests worth of firewood on all my camp outs with the scouts.

My Prius was an 02, and I will agree it had flaws. The big one was that Toyota only has five battery chargers for all non plug in Prius vehicles.

The second, and definitely most hypocritical of me to point out as a current vintage bug owner, is that I really don't care for the looks of the newer generation Prius. I liked the 02 styling better. I also can chime in with some of the minor flaws at least as far as they were pointed out about tire balancing, tack, etc at least on the 02 model.

The 02, if I remember correctly, had a 1500 ic engine. For what that's worth.

But, let's get back to the topic at hand...

Vw Diesel gate

First off, thanks to Everett's post with the mime. It lightened my mood today, and left me wondering if somebody would follow it up wit some sort of Cheech and Chong tie in. Guess I'll keep waiting, or have to do it myself...

A lot of posters here point out politics and $$$. My, myself, I'd like to see all CEOs held more accountable than they are now like some other posters mentioned. That being said, here's what I know about vw leadership:

They've changed CEOs three times in about as many months.
First to go was the grandson of Dr. Porsche, Ferdinand Piech. He was the engineer type who got kicked out for wanting to develop a cheap, inexpensive, reliable car to sell to the masses (seems like a stretch, right?)

Then Winterkorn came in. He was Ferdinand Piech's cousin. More of a business man kind of guy. Because of diesel gate, he resigned his position.

Now, Matthias Mueller, of the Porsche company, has been named as interim. He warned the employees of Vw that cuts were coming, and they were going to hurt.

Some of the business articles I've been reading speculate that what VW needs is Piech to come back and takeover and really kick some a$$, barring that, some other "outsider" who would challenge much of whatever is wrong at vw.

The German articles I've been reading?--"Der Spiegel" anyone?

Mention a bit more about vw than most people have been posting here.

1. This wasn't on just cars here in the states. And, the states aren't a majority of the sales anymore.

2. The German government, specifically lower saxony, has a 20% stake in vw stock. That being said, the politician in charge of that area has acted like a typical clueless politician and never bothered with the oversight task he was charged with.

3. Piech has a majority share in the stocks, along with other of Dr. Porsche's offspring, including Winterkorn and even I think Mueller.

So, those guys have already lost a lot.

I do look forward to hearing how high this went at VW and I'm not surprised that other car manufacturers are doing the same thing.

This reminds me of acceleration gate for toyotas, of which some would say my mom was a victim but she's dead now so I'll never know.

One thing perhaps troublesome for Piech's return was his shortsightedness in not buying Chrysler when he had the chance. Truly, a dumb business move, perhaps he heard from the Mercedes Benz people that they thought that Chrysler would never make it. Beside stat, a total miss on historical irony, or maybe they thought that the irony had already played out with Benz.

All this being said, what is the way forward for Vw and what can we expect to see?

I think used Vw diesel prices will go down. Vw will also have to be very creative to win back customers who now may be on the hook for additional taxes from their local governments because their clean cars weren't as clean as they were claimed to be.

(That last is, oddly enough, a big problem in Europe, and especially Germany.)

Now, maybe I can finally pick up a used diesel vw wagon either Jetta or Passat for cheap with a decent amount of miles on it. My inability to find this was what lead me to the Prius. When the Prius finally gave up (engine overheated) not battery related, I ended up with Herbie, my 66 beetle.

What would I do if I were in charge of Vw?

Vw has already issued out apologies in many periodicals in Germany. That's a start.

Besides fixing whichever vehicles, are affected, with owners permission, they should offer them a discount to trade in the old model, on an e golf or perhaps hybrid Jetta. I would actually like to see an e beetle.

I would start cranking out e beetles, bring back the bus in some form, even a camper model and finally lay challenge the claim that the Chrysler was the first minivan rather than rolling over and badging those same Chrysler minivans as their own.

I would also modernize the Ghia, and bring it back as the Ghia cc, with a high performance engine.

I would also make a "classic" line modeled after the type 3 but with all of the new stuff, perhaps even a hybrid notchback, squareback, and fastback line. Maybe call it the sentimental wind.

I would also start tooling up replacement parts of classic vws. Every classic vw on the road is a reminder of a time when Vw wasn't deemed to be as deceitful as the big three.

I would also propose one big class action lawsuit, in order to make it easier for them to deal with the litigation that has been trickling in.

They have publicity now. It's more than they had before. What they do with it, while they are in the spotlight, will make or break the company..

So, that's what I've got for now.

Kyle
66 bug
Many stories
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--
69 or 72 Autostick Bug current
66 Bug (We both miss it)
74 SuperBeetle Auto Stick (I miss that car)
73 SquareBack, Straight Stick (Wife misses this one.)

[Zeen]

Epic post, almost embarrassed to admit I read it all. But here's the part that caught my eye.

[GArBa]

well in the last 20 years they managed to kill autobianchi, innocenti and lancia, closed down the historic alfa romeo arese plant, sold off the whole maserati historic collection and shut down more than half of their own turin plant... I mean, now they own chrysler, what could possibly go wrong?
_________________
cars:
'97 type 1 1600i
'14 type AA Seat Mii (sadly dead after 270.000 km)
'22 type C1 T-Cross
'23 type AC3 Hyundai I10 (VW no longer makes small cars!)
-------------------------
moped:
'82 Benelli Magnum 3v

[TDCTDI]

[busdaddy]

So.... watching the news today I hear it was all contrived by a couple of rogue engineers, and no execs or board members ever knew about it or approved anything even close, rrrrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiigggggghhhhhttttt...........

Never saw that coming
_________________
Rust NEVER sleeps and stock never goes out of style.

Please don't PM technical questions, ask your problem in public so everyone can play along. If you think it's too stupid post it here
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Слава Україні!

[wcfvw69]

[vdubyah73]

[mark tucker]

I wonder if they will ever coralate the explosion in china that distroied all those new vw's with this conspiracy?????probably not. after all it was just improper stored and not authorized.........Y

[GArBa]

while I do agree that top managers should be held responsible, I don't find it difficult to believe they actually didn't know about this scheme. In big corporations executives set goals and push for problems to be solved, they don't ask for the solutions' details.
_________________
cars:
'97 type 1 1600i
'14 type AA Seat Mii (sadly dead after 270.000 km)
'22 type C1 T-Cross
'23 type AC3 Hyundai I10 (VW no longer makes small cars!)
-------------------------
moped:
'82 Benelli Magnum 3v

[KTPhil]

[GArBa]

yes. that's why I started with "I do agree that top managers should be held responsible". edit: I just was pointing out that it's far from uncommon, whether intentional or not, for managers of manufacturing corporations not to get directly involved in the technical aspects of the product, even when they come from an engineering background.
_________________
cars:
'97 type 1 1600i
'14 type AA Seat Mii (sadly dead after 270.000 km)
'22 type C1 T-Cross
'23 type AC3 Hyundai I10 (VW no longer makes small cars!)
-------------------------
moped:
'82 Benelli Magnum 3v

[e&m_ghia]

[Randall]