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Volkswagen Seeks To Repair Its Image By Focusing On Electric (wired.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The emissions scandal that's plagued Volkswagen over the past month will be tough to recover from. But they're trying. The company announced a number of changes they're making to their line of vehicles. First, they'll be revamping their flagship Phaeton vehicles to be all-electric. (If you live in the U.S. and haven't heard of these, don't be surprised — they aren't marketed there.) Second, they've announced their intention to install top-of-the-line environmental protection systems in their new diesel cars. (In other words, they'll actually do what they're required by law to do, but vehicle prices will jump significantly.) Their press release is difficult to decipher, given the density of buzzwords and vague promises, but they indicate a greater general focus on hybrids and electric vehicles in the future.
I'd say Volkswagon can count on the short term memory of the buying public.
Like a bad breakup, time will heal this, too.
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Er... The EU are looking into it too and they will be recalling cars from there just the same.
It's not an EU only issue, they're in for a world of hurt world-wide.
Bullshit. They conned the entire fucking planet. Europe has far higher emission requirements than the US, and most countries require vehicles to be tested annually. Fail the test, your is rendered illegal for public roads. VW's aim was to mislead the public about the efficiency of their diesel engines, but the efficiency took a dive in clean running mode, so they switched it off only for testing conditions.
Yup. I'm in the UK, and I got a letter from VW yesterday onfirming my car will need a fix. No details except that the are working on it.
Oh no... it's the future.
Depends, the NOx limit in EU is much higher than the US. The CO2 limit in the EU is lower than the US. Different things to optimize or cheat for.
EU has higher requirements for CO and in general lower requirements for NOx, except maybe very latest EuroN test that raises a bar closer to few years old EPA test. NOx is what matters for smog. Paris at times is no better than Chinese cities and now they try to prevent diesels entering downtown. Maybe they should not have allowed them on the roads in the first place.
European annual road tests are BS in most countries except Germany, Switzerland and few others that take them seriously. Especially anywhere to the East of Western Europe. First, you don't need to pass new test with old vehicles. You need to meet only some old BS test. Then, you can just quickly tune the system to produce better results before the test at the expense of efficiency, and tune back as soon as you leave testing facility. Many older cares on the road have catalytic converters removed - they cost money to replace, but you can actually sell them for small money for precious metals inside.
There is no practical way to control all old car emissions on roads EU wide.
Well, they're not actually going to fix the problem. They're just going to have their computers report that it's fixed.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
I did an obsessive amount of research on VW's clean diesel technology, and the engineering issues that motivated their decision to cheat. Going hybrid would solve all their problems. Well, the technical ones anyway.
The problem is that their patented "clean NOx trap" pollution control technology involves storing NOx pollution in a zeolite "molecular sponge". The sponge needs to be cleaned out periodically by changing the engine fuel-to-air ratio: when that happens (for a few seconds every minute or two), engine performance is drastically reduced. VW's engine computer tries to keep this from happening while the driver is accelerating, but apparently it wasn't good enough, so they programmed the computer to not bother with trap cleaning unless it's being tested in an EPA lab.
With a full hybrid system, the engine can run at optimum efficiency at all times, and can take a break to clean the NOx trap whenever it wants: the electric motor and batteries can take over.
Because the EPA requirements are zealous, and makes producing a diesel vehicle unviable.
No it does not. Diesels can easily meet the emissions rules and there are plenty of vehicles that do it without cheating. VW cheated because they didn't want to install the expensive equipment necessary to make this happen such as a urea injection system. It has nothing to do with diesel technology and everything to do with profit motive. VW cheated to pad their bottom line.
The funny thing is electric cars are the real unviable vehicles, hydrogen powered vehicles are the best idea, only waste they produce from the combustion of hydrogen is water.
Umm, what? Hydrogen powered cars are clearly a non-starter at this time. Basically zero fuel infrastructure unless you use derivatives of hydrocarbons which basically ends up with the same sort of emissions problems we currently face. They've got high emissions intensity because our primary source of hydrogen is from natural gas. They also have low performance (comparatively) and poor efficiency (comparatively) with PHEVs. While conceptually hydrogen power has some attractive features, in practice it isn't superior to existing alternatives and there is no evidence to suggest that will change in the near future.
Since you think (wrongly IMO) that electric cars are "unviable", I'm not going to waste time trying to convince you otherwise but so far the evidence does not appear to be agreeing with you. Electric and hybrid electric vehicles are pretty clearly the next evolution in automobiles and that only happens if they are a viable technology.
> Phaeton
Right. So what they're going to do is make yet another "Tesla killer" that sells to a few thousand rich people, and leave all the people that bought a Jetta in the cold. The net effect of this on overall emissions will be basically zero.
Perhaps they would be better off spending this on making a diesel hybrid PEH drivetrain that could equip 80% of the cars they sell? This is a move that takes far less development, would cost less in real dollar terms, and would *drastically* reduce overall real-world emissions.
I am talking about hydrogen powered combustion engines, they produce more power than a gasoline engine.
Did you actually read the article you linked to?
Power: Hydrogen 80kW vs Gasoline 154kW
Torque: Hydrogen 140Nm vs Gasoline 222Nm
Range: Hydrogen 100 km vs Gasoline 550km
When powered by hydrogen it is worse in each and every relevant measure. A LOT worse.