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Reports: Volkswagen Was Warned of Emissions Cheating Years Ago
An anonymous reader writes: More fuel was thrown on the Volkswagen fire today after two German newspapers reported that Volkswagen's own staff and one of its suppliers warned years ago about software designed to thwart emissions test. Volkswagen declined to comment on the details of either newspaper report. "There are serious investigations underway and the focus is now also on technical solutions" for customers and dealers, a Volkswagen spokesman said. "As soon as we have reliable facts we will be able to give answers."
This is a Reuters news story - why is the submission linking to Newsweek, which locks the article behind their ad wall?
Here's a Reuters link:
http://www.reuters.com/article...
there are unreliable facts?
Why would a "warning" make any difference? They knew what they were doing. You cannot just completely change the emission profile of a motor by magic, so every competent motor designer knew the performance the VW diesel-engines where claiming to have was bogus. That alone will be up to a hundred people. Of course their bosses knew and so did the VW leadership. The really interesting thing is whether this can be proven.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Before this becomes Naci bashing thing, just some facts:
-> this cars are probably illegal only in the USA (where they should conform to almost the same standard as EURO 6) in EU they are declared to be EURO 5
-> it looks like this motors are only a bit off in the laboratory test (they are almost EURO 6 - but not without the cheat)
-> in real life all cars produce more exhausts as allowed => problem is in the testing procedure which should be fixed (see reports bellow)
-> EURO 6 from VW is fine (see http://www.theicct.org/nox-control-technologies-euro-6-diesel-passenger-cars) as other German manufacturers, but some others have problems.
And nobody is talking about the elephant in the room (http://www.theicct.org/laboratory-road-2015-update), especially look at the page 6, Figure 5. for hybrids... What a joke...
But in the end it is again a stupid bean counter who caused all this as he did not allow SCR system for cars in the USA which would cost 300 € per car... So to save 150M they will spend 7B. Nice work!
So, yeah, "Volkswagen" is "really concerned" about these "allegations".
Some people will be shuffled around and that is supposed to suffice.
In the end, everyone that bought one of the cars at issue now owns a non compliant car.
Volkswagen needs to replace all models concerned with a brand new compliant car.
No half ass "this should fix it" shit.
End of story.
The share holders end up paying for this mess and the share holders never had a clue. Meanwhile the typical manager or executive who was responsible has probably already sold off their shares and are beyond punishment. Seriously when will people get the point that corporations exist in order to avoid responsibility. Doesn't the term LLC (Limited Liability Corporation) declare upfront the intent to not be liable or responsible?
>> Volkswagen needs to replace all models concerned with a brand new compliant car.
ummm. no.
aaaaaaa
Whenever something bad happens - 9/11, Challenger, Katrina, Bill Crosby, SUV rollovers, every president, Deepwater Horizon - someone will selflessly step forward and say "I knew it was going to happen, I warned you, but nobody would listen!"
Next time a screw-up is in the news, pay attention and wait for the inevitable soothsayer.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
I think you're overestimating the socialist influence. I worked there from 2010-2014, and most of the upper management I met there was definitely capitalist rather than socialist.
Volkswagen needs to replace all models concerned with a brand new compliant car.
Sure thing, buddy. We'll just bankrupt the entire nation of Germany, that'll really make the rest of the world a Happy Place for everyone. Would you like to detonate a nuclear bomb somewhere in the Middle East while you're at it? How about have the U.S. CIA assassinate Vladimir Putin and Bashar Al-Assad and publicly take credit for it while we're at it? I'm curious, AC, is this remarkable level of stupidity of yours a natural talent, or did you go to a special Academy of Moronic Skills to learn to be this fucking stupid?
Hey, wanna' buy a 2013 TDI Jetta?
ummm...yes!
The cars should be replaces with brand new cars in that same class (gasoline or diesel as the consumer chooses) from any manufacturer the consumer chooses.
This was a flat out malicious cheat, and consumers bought the cars in good faith.
Sounds like a good precedent to me.
Maliciously misrepresent the car being sold and you are liable to replace it.
Capitalists always overestimate the socialist influence when the issue in question is a symptom of something wrong with capitalism, which this situation is.
Short term profits at any cost at all, including extra pollution, lying, deception. The surprise isn't that they did it, it's that other corporate misdeeds aren't published to this extent.
I'm actually looking to buy one if the price drops out on them.
... to find a couple of middle managers and engineers to throw under the bus.
Unrealistic.
The existing cars are already able to run in a compliant mode. All VW needs to do is patch them so they're always in that mode rather than only during emission tests.
Mind you, resulting engine performance will suffer and they'll probably get sued for false advertising, end up paying major penalties on top of what the governments are going to hammer them with, and have an uphill battle for future sales which might make them wish they could have just offered everyone brand new cars.
Log in or piss off.
Every since emissions began to be implemented cheating to bypass them has gone on. From the "test pipe" for catalytic converters to chips that basically fool the system into adding more fuel thus making horsepower or putting custom pipe in place a emissions. Today with VW it simply proves a gradual technical step in trying to get around emissions. I think its clear rather then just simply lightning regulations and testing procedures. We need to be asking how can we make sure almost everyone can accept and meet these regulations? We have countries that have no regulations and frankly you see many car makers more happy to build and sell there. The consumer might be benefitting from cleaner air but also burning more fuel, spending more on autos and repairs and simply choosing not to repair emission related parts. I worked in the automotive repair industry for 15 years. Many owners don't care to repair stuff that actually makes their car run worse.
In the 80's it was not uncommon for me to find people had EGR valves removed or bypassed, catalytic converters removed, those lousy air pumps, and let's not forget the so called electronic carburetors. The only guilt VW has is that it discovered a easy way to simply tweak software to know when it was being tested. We are treated this worse then a safety issue where people died. Why is it that a little more smog makes VW evil? I mean diesel is not even a popular engine option in the US for autos. Its going to be a quick software update, pay a huge fine for governments basically a tax and everyone will go back to "fixing" their engines to run right.
If you just watch Autoline After Hours 303 (if you're not interested, you can skip all the stuff about the Honda unibody and jump to after the break) you'll hear that the EPA was warning automakers about the illegality of "defeat devices" (terminology which covers device or code) for gaming the emissions tests in the seventies. This is so far from being a new idea, it's not even funny.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I hate to be a Godwin Nazi, but the German system of government/politics has nothing to do with a corporation cheating on American laws for profit.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
The will be a class action lawsuit and the issue will be decided by a judge or jury.
Consumers bought the cars in good faith and got the performance they were promised. They didn't get the emissions controls the state was promised. The customers got "better performance than was possible with compliance " cars, despite the regulators attempts to artificially suppress MPG for the sake of NO2 emissions.
The only* reason consumers should be unhappy is if they are forced to get 2016 firmware upgrades to pass smog testing. Under those circumstances: they will no longer be getting the performance they were promised and have a right to be pissed off.
*assuming they don't care about pollution/global warming
Corporate citizens have sovereign immunity from the laws of mere nations.
*assuming they don't care about pollution/global warming
That is a pretty huge assumption.
There is a pretty large group of people that prefers to keep pollution away from themselves for health reasons.
VW just needs to fix the cars to meet emission standards (at their own cost) and pay a compensation fee that is reasonable and proportionate. The same should go for every other manufacturor who did the same, as there are probably some more to follow.
You, on the other hand, need to stop using quotation marks at random positions in your text.
The nazi's are not socialists. They did called them selfs national socialist. Really socialists are anti-nazi and many where killed by the nazi's.
If the manager at A or B level are half as clever as those I know, they will have left no paper trail. They will have organized informal meeting with the engineer/C level manager/underling telling them to ignore the things. Face to Face. No per email or paper. The underling will be where the trail end off cold , despite the underling protest they reported the problem there will be no trail. Not the first time I have seen that happen.
My advice to all "underling" involved in such a story : make sure to make a solid paper and email trail leading to your superior. Do not under any circumstance limit yourself to verbal acknowledgment.
As for those who will ask me Why no advice to whistleblow ? Well duh because this is the easiest way to not only torpedoe your carrier, but the story will be buried AND nobody will hire you again for your honesty.
Once TTIP is in you'll be fine - they will be able to import VWs because they met the European spec. Juts the same as Europe will have to take cars which meet the US crash test criteria but will fail theirs
Unless you are driving your car around in your home, I don't think you have to worry about keeping the pollution away from yourself
As soon as nobody wants these cars and they are worthless I am sure I can drop a 30 year old ls1 in them and make it a real car.
The amount of compensation could be more than the value of the car. People are talking about hundreds of Euros a year in fuel, plus the devaluation of the car itself. If you take the lifetime of the car to be 15+ years, no unreasonable for a well made diesel engine, that could easily be more than the current value of the car itself.
In that case I wonder if VW will try to write those cars off and simply pay the pre-revelation market value.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
As it turns out, you're right, that's what GM did with the smog pump. No wonder they fail, they have to run all the time. Sorry. Hope I get this comment in past the too many comments per minute filter before you squeeze off a reply.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Really, the driveway, my 6.7L turbocharged Scoprion diesel engine just got 22mph heading to and from Duluth and the twin cities.
You're proud of 22mpg? Seriously? That's not even remotely impressive. If you got that kind of mileage out of a 6.7L engine then it means you weren't hauling anything which means you have a ludicrously over sized engine for the trip. 22mpg isn't anything special by the today's standards for truck fuel economy.
And all with with no black soot what so ever in the tail pipe, looks just like the day I bought it, shiny new metal inside the exhaust.
Unless you bought it yesterday I'm going to call BS on that one. No tailpipe, diesel or gas, stays shiny on the inside for long. I'm sure it's a nice truck but I'm equally sure about what comes out of the tailpipe and the corrosive properties thereof.
Diesel engines haven't produced visible amounts of soot for over thirty years years.
I will be happy to show you any number of vehicles that will prove that statement incorrect. Furthermore even if it isn't visible it doesn't mean it isn't present and isn't a problem. I don't generally seem much of the exhaust from my truck but I'm quite sure it pollutes plenty despite its ULEV certification. Diesels today are MUCH cleaner than they once were and I'm sort of a fan of diesel engines (in relation to gasoline ones) but it's not as if they don't have room for improvement.
Come on.. .. the limit is 0.053 parts per million..... 40 times that 2.12 parts per million.
40X is 40X. The limits exist for a reason and the PPM figures themselves are not important to the discussion. This is no different than any other company illegally dumping or burning toxic waste instead of paying to having it properly disposed of. Just because 2.12 PPM doesn't sound like a lot to you is irrelevant. They had the ability to dispose of this pollutant properly and knowingly chose to pollute instead to save a few bucks. I don't care if they were just barely over the limit or way of the limit like they actually were. What I do care about is that they committed fraud and that they made the air needlessly polluted.
I am suggesting they don't have much room for improvement, unless by improve, you mean : change to electric vehicles.
Diesels can almost without question be made substantially cleaner than they currently are. Far more research and money has been put into making gasoline engines clean than diesel if for no other reason than because diesels don't sell in the US car market. I have little reason to doubt that diesels couldn't be similarly improved.
That said your point is a fair one that we probably are well into diminishing returns on emission controls for internal combustion engines of any description. I think electric vehicles and plug in hybrids are the future. Honestly I'd buy one today if they sold a good one in the type of vehicle I'm looking for for a vaguely reasonable price. (pickup truck) I think it's just a matter of time.
Perhaps VW can claim that their hack was with the best of intentions.
It let them build a car that both optimized emissions by raising fuel efficiency and also pass a wrong headed emissions test.
They might have bent a rule, but they did their best to meet the spirit of the air pollution law in spite of the EPA.
No doubt a lawyer could argue this.
Ignoring for a minute where the letter of the law and regs stand,
The interesting question is do the physics support this?
Just trying to find some good in this mess.
Actually, the current VW was founded by the British Army. There wasn't much left of the previous company in 1945, since it wast mostly engaged in the manufacture of weaponry and military support vehicles and the Royal Air Force and its overseas allies bombed the place heavily during WW2. The Beetle-project was mostly a way for the Nazis to get the public to fund a new major manufacturing centre. In the end, they never got round to mass manufacturing the Beetle.
What was left of the factory was initially repurposed as a workshop for British military vehicles. The British tried to get someone to buy it, but no-one was interested. However, Major Ivan Hirst found a pre-war prototype of the Beetle and he saw potential. With a number of VW workers, they set up a production line with the various parts lying around that were not destroyed or taken and they started up production. At first, it was a mediocre car and the production was inefficient. However, the British hired a former workshop manager and former Opel employee named Heinz Nordhoff to run operations. He then spent the next twenty years improving production. In the meantime, the British military administration transferred ownership to the state of Lower Saxony.
Ironically, Ford has somewhat more of a nazi past: Henry Ford actually wrote a bundled called "The International Jew, The World's Problem". He and Adolf Hitler admired each other and Ford requested that slave labourers be sent to his German factories to increase wartime production.
Why should they have to accept another VW car? They should get their full retail purchase price back since the sale was a fraud. Then they can buy a vehicle from a trustworthy manufacturer.
Yeah, a replacement from VW isn't fair. They need a full refund to buy a car from a different manufacturer.
Just so you know, though, you can't register and drive them on public roadways. They don't meet emissions requirements.
If a car falls short of power claims, the manufacturer should buy it back at full retail. http://usatoday30.usatoday.com...
...You, on the other hand, need to stop using quotation marks at random positions in your text.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes
Scare quotes are used to imply an element of doubt or ambiguity regarding the words or ideas with in the marks
And the lawyers will get $$$MEGA and retire while all the car owners get the firmware "upgrade" that kills their performance and a $10 off coupon for an $80 oil change at the dealer.
Isn't this kind of a non-story.
They specifically designed a system to cheat the emissions test.
It's like saying bank robbers were warned they were robbing a bank.
Unless VW is some kind of wild west company, nothing gets done in large corporations like this without a project, funding, management buy in, probably management pressure.
In the US, the common calculations for vehicle lifetime all use 5 years, not 15.
Seeing as only the US government is taking action against VW at the moment, that means VW isn't going to have much of a payout to the individual car owners. Anyone with a 2010-or-older car is going to get essentially jack-squat. Any corporate depreciation schedule would have zeroed that car's value out by now. Only the NADA is forgiving enough to recognize trade-in or private-sale value of a vehicle that old. And they're the dealerships' trade group!
No, VW owners won't see a penny from this. The government will inflict a massive fine on VW. The government might even demand that these cars be either modified to pass the test properly or taken off the road (by refusing to license certain models unless they're modified). Which means that the owners won't just be screwed by VW, they'll also be thoroughly screwed by the government, too.
Not sure how you came to that conclusion given that the same article you linked to lists (all the way down at the bottom) some situations ending in other than just a full buy-back (and ranging all the way down to "fuck all").
Log in or piss off.
Even if the cars were modified to meet emission standards, they don't qualify as "lemons", which is pretty much what is necessary to *force* a complete buyback. They function okay, they're not unsafe, etc. They just don't perform as advertised.
Some compensation might happen, but I'd be surprised if on average it amounts to more than a few tanks of fuel...
Log in or piss off.
I made the conclusion that it's the right thing to do based on the fact that it's the right thing to do. I provided evidence that some car makers have done it. (Mazda) Some have not. But VW should be issuing full refunds and trying to get these noxious pollution machines out of circulation as quickly as possible.
If advertised MPG is half real world MPG when the fix has been applied then it would seem people are entitled to sue for half their fuel costs every year. For many people that will be hundreds, maybe thousands of Euros a year. Diesels are often bought as company cars due to having low taxes (due to low emissions) and engines that can easily do 500k+ miles.
If the car is worth â5,000 and you expect to get at least about 200,000 miles out of it, the lifetime fuel cost due to decreased performance is likely to be much more than the value of the vehicle. In such cases the law normally allows the person with the liability (VW) to simply hand over â5000 and tell the owner to get a new car, much like an insurance company would if the cost of repair was > value of the vehicle.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Except the cars have been getting BETTER than advertised MPG for the past 5 years. Only when the full emissions controls are put on do they go down to the advertised MPG. So, there is no false advertising to the consumer if they get re-flashed and suddenly get 20% poorer fuel economy. The only false advertisement has been to the rest of society, who was expecting a car that had 1/40th of the NOx emissions that it actually spewed.
Even after I wrote this comment, my prior comment got modded up.
Incidentally, if anyone is wondering where the smog pump went, they moved to better catalysts and it did indeed go away because you indeed don't need it once the vehicle is in closed loop mode and the catalyst is hot.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Yeah, 22mpg sounds pretty low until you realize that he can get that while pulling 10,000lbs+ behind him more than likely.
No he won't. He'll be lucky to get half that pulling a trailer. The weight of the load plus the wind resistance will drop his fuel economy like lead balloon.
the 3.0L turbo diesel in my wife's Ram 1500 is very clean.. the tailpipe chromies still shine on the inside after 16,000 miles
Well that would be a first in my experience. Interesting since that's the very truck I'm considering for my next vehicle when I replace my current ride. I'm dubious that it's actually clean inside the tailpipe but I won't argue the issue.
The payback period for the added cost of the diesel engine is about 30-35K miles.
Diesel is about 15-20% more efficient than gasoline for an engine of equivalent power. If the price of diesel exceeds the price of gasoline by more than 20% then you will never recoup the added cost. Right now where I live diesel is about 25% higher than gasoline so for a comparable engine I would be losing money on the diesel.
Don't be an idiot
Of course what WV advertised and auto magazines tested was MPG with the pollution-cheating hack off, not the MPG in cheat-the-pollution-tests mode. You didn't see any auto magazine enthusing about cars that were so much better than advertised MPG performance didn't you ?
You can't get the advertized pollution levels and advertised MPG levels toguether with those motors, the whole point of the hack is to shift from low pollution levels to low MPG mode depending on what people are measuring.
Ah yes. Between Chairman Mao and Uncle Joe (Stalin) the world would have been all unicorn sex parties but the nasty Americans ruined it all along with those Israelis.
I think you're overestimating the socialist influence. I worked there from 2010-2014, and most of the upper management I met there was definitely capitalist rather than socialist.
I think he's overestimating the socialist influence of Nazis, in that Nazis outlawed socialism, arrested tens of thousands of German socialists and communists, put them in concentration camps and executed them, years before they began arresting Jews; and were supported in this Godly activity by major US corporations, such as Ford Motors, General Motors, Standard Oil, ITT, Chase National Bank, etc. and American rightwing individuals such as Henry Ford and J. Edgar Hoover.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Reagan stated "facts are stupid things" and corrected himself after saying that. Are you attempting to claim that the correction after the statement completely negates the statement? That, is irrational to the extreme.
The person provided a _correct_ quote. Is your next argument context that was not provided?
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Bullshit. The government is not going to saddle consumers with millions of dollars in car loans for a vehicle which cannot be driven. They'll do the politically expedient thing which is to move the goal post for these specific vehicles. Then they'll fine the manufacturer an amount proportional to the environmental damage(these numbers already exist for hydrocarbon emissions coming from non-automobiles) for the remainder of the vehicle's expected lifespan multiplied by the number of vehicles.
In total, all of these VW's combined probably emit less Nitrous Oxide in a year than a freight ship does in a day while burning bunker oil 12 miles off our shoreline.
Gasoline Taxes are a hidden tax paid by consumers to prop up the trucking industry, and Carbon Dioxide/Nitrous Oxide emissions controls are hidden taxes paid for by consumers to subsidize the shipping companies that enable their jobs to be outsourced in the name of free trade. Think about that one next time you're filling your gas tank and need an extra gallon to compensate for your artificially depressed MPG numbers.
The only feasible thing for VW to do is to actually install Urea systems to scrub the NOx out of the exhaust without changing the performance numbers (if this is possible). It won't be cheap, but they can't nerf a bunch of peoples cars. A recall that totally kills the power on a car is unacceptable to owners. A recall that fixes the emissions issue while not changing the performance is acceptable.