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."

Comments

Link to Reuters News Story...

[silentbozo]

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...

Re:Link to Reuters News Story...

[deviated_prevert]

Really, the driveway, my 6.7L turbocharged Scoprion diesel engine just got 22mph heading to and from Duluth and the twin cities. 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.

As compared to 50-60 miles per gallon on a euroweeny? Yes the euroweeny diesel made a tiny amount more smoke and oxides of N. BUT THE FUCKING GAS HOG MONSTER TRUCK ENGINE JUST PUT a butt tonne more carbon dioxide per mile driven into the atmosphere so fuck off with the gas guzzling bullshit. Move to California and watch it burn, send your dollars to the oil industry and then complain when Bush the Third gets into power and the price of oil goes through the roof again. Short sighted bunch of fucking morons that can't see the forest for the trees. In fact they couldn't care less about the decline of Western Red Cedar happening all alone the west coast of North America. And the steady decline in the West Coast fisheries the severe drought that will eventually hurt the entire rain cycle of the entire Rockie Mountain and Coast Ranges.

Total and complete environmentally stupid morons piled on with more completely ignorant blind and stupid morons and that is the total sum of the issue.

Volkswagen cheating just so it could create an engine that would get better fuel economy is a symptom of the problem. We have our fucking heads screwed on so wrong that we waste resources and think that spewing more carbon dioxide in the air is the answer. I want to know how badly the Euroweeny diesels and Jap turbos that get the same kind of performance and fuel economy actually create NO2 and soot. I am almost willing to bet that on a per gallon basis it is almost the same as the big cummins that everybody thinks is eco friendly. I am almost certain that the amount of soot and NO2 per mile is less in the Euroweeny. So I call bullshit and hefferdust on the who eco diesel scam that we are being sold by Chrysler and the American auto industry.

Re:Link to Reuters News Story...

[Chrisq]

Yes, it has been confirmed. All current VW models in the US do now use urea injection, by the way.

Why the hangup over this particular emissions control technique?

From what I have read in Europe at least there is a perceived consumer resistance to urea injection, as it is seen as "something else that needs to be bought and paid for". It looks like in practice its not a big issue, with it costing under 1% of the fuel costs and only needing filling every 10,000 miles. Hell, in my younger days I needed a new set of tyres every 10,000 miles - though my driving has settled down a bit since then!

As soon as we have reliable facts

[turkeydance]

there are unreliable facts?

Re:As soon as we have reliable facts

[MightyMartian]

Any fact that can cause a loss in profits for a corporation is an unreliable fact.

Yes. So?

[gweihir]

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.

Re:Yes. So?

[mark-t]

The warning makes a difference in that it provides a paper trail of evidence that points at some of the specific people who would have known about the issue. That means that it is also possible to know exactly who some of the people that should be facing criminal liability for this issue are.

Re:Yes. So?

[penguinoid]

I would still blame the test labs for not doing their jobs which would have been actually testing the thing's performance, rather than trusting the vehicle performs like in their rather unrealistic lab setting.

The test labs did their jobs perfectly. It's not their fault the standardized tests they were required to do were faulty. To be honest, it wouldn't even surprise me if the pollution laws were faulty (eg must pass faulty test), and VW technically legally in the right. "Technically legally in the right" includes if they can successfully cast the blame on a small group of underlings.

Of course, VW are still rotten cheaters for exploiting the test like this.

Lucky we found this out before we passed the TPP of "corporations can sue the government if they don't like its laws".

Re:Yes. So?

[jrumney]

Why would a "warning" make any difference?

It's a "cover my ass" letter. Bosch was complicit in coming up with this scam, but wanted to make sure that the final decision to go ahead was clearly VW's. There is no possibility with this letter in existence that VW can deny knowledge and point the finger at their suppliers.

Who Pays

[JimSadler]

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?

Re:Who Pays

[Harlequin80]

No it doesn't. LLC or Limited means that shareholders are only on the hook for the value of their shares if something goes wrong. If you are a shareholder in a non Limited company you can be on the hook for your entire asset pool if something happens. Both forms of corporations exist, however non limiteds are extremely rare.

Re:Who Pays

[dunkelfalke]

VW is not a LLC, though. LLC is more like a German GmbH. VW is an AG, a civil law publicly traded corporation..

Re:Who Pays

[Harlequin80]

Seriously? Ok VW is an Aktiengesellschaft. Aktiengesellschaft, is a German term for a public limited company — a company whose shares are offered to the general public and traded on a public stock exchange, and whose shareholders' liability is limited to their investment. The shareholders are not responsible for the company's debts and their personal assets are protected in case the company becomes insolvent.

Always a warning

[Tokolosh]

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.

Re:Always a warning

[Feral Nerd]

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.

You don't need to be a soothsayer to figure out that cheating on emissions tests and then manufacturing and selling millions of cars based on those falsifications is going to get you into a shitload of trouble. This is especially true if all somebody has to do to catch you red-handed is attach an emissions analyser to the exhaust pipe of one of your cars and drive it through town for a while. Even when the idea of doing this was first proposed it was just bloody obvious it was a dumbs thing to do. Between plunging stock prices, the product recall, the government fines in the US/EU, the class action lawsuits that will doubtless be filed in the USA, law suits by VW stockholders, falling sales and the massive damage to VW's reputation there is a chance this could bankrupt VW. I just got through watching a debate on German TV where they were talking about this costing VW several tens of billions of euros and most of those costs could have been calculated accurately enough to demonstrate the galactic stupidity of cheating on emissions tests years ago and without the use of a crystal ball.

Re: What else would you expect from...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Serious Investigations...

[Anonymous Coward]

... to find a couple of middle managers and engineers to throw under the bus.

Re:In The End...Consumers Are Stuck With The Cars.

[c]

Volkswagen needs to replace all models concerned with a brand new compliant car.

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.

Re:The Facts (if anybody is interested)

[Baloroth]

-> it looks like this motors are only a bit off in the laboratory test (they are almost EURO 6 - but not without the cheat)

"Only a little bit off"? They emit 10-40 times as much NOx as they're supposed to (EPA source[PDF warning]). That's not "a little bit", that's "actually a fuckload".

-> EURO 6 from VW is fine (see http://www.theicct.org/nox-con...) as other German manufacturers, but some others have problems.

The linked paper only shows test results from a single VW vehicle. Not enough to say anything about VW's general compliance or lack thereof.

hahaha "years ago"

[drinkypoo]

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.

Re:hahaha "years ago"

[Harlequin80]

When your vehicle is cold the combustion is less complete and there is left over fuel. On top of this your catalytic converter is cold. So air is injected into the exhaust for two reasons. The first is to provide oxygen for unburnt fuel to be burnt and the second was to rapidly increase the temperature of the catalytic converter to it starts working.

Then once you car is up to temp the air is pumped into the exhaust system just infront of the cat. This allows the cat to be much more efficient and more complete in its transformation.

They were called smog pumps because they reduced smog. But it wasn't through bending the rules it was actually because it did something to reduce emissions.

Re:hahaha "years ago"

[drinkypoo]

Then once you car is up to temp the air is pumped into the exhaust system just infront of the cat.

No, that's backwards. The smog pump is only supposed to pump air into the exhaust system until the car is up to temp. When the car is cold, it runs rich, so additional oxygen is needed to make the catalyst burn all the fuel, which in turn makes it come up to temp quicker. Once it comes up to temp, the car goes into closed loop mode and crosses back and forth across a stoichiometric ratio somewhere from 2-10 times a second based on feedback from the O2 sensor[s] and there's no longer any need for a smog pump.

Re:Every since emissions happened people cheated

[geoskd]

We are treated this worse then a safety issue where people died.

This is a safety issue where people are dying. NOx causes premature death and a whole host of respiratory illness'. Just because you can't grab a single person out of the mix and say "this person is specifically dead because of it", doesn't mean that people are not dying as a result of the deception. Its people like you who keep voting for the liars and scumbags that are ruining every democracy in the world. If someone came up with a law to disqualify people with your demonstrated lack of ability to understand consequences, I would support that law, no matter how flawed the test was, just on the basis of having some chance of keeping you and your ilk out of my political system.