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Volkswagen Emissions Issues Spread To Gasoline Cars (bloomberg.com)

Posted by Soulskill on from the no-publicity-is-bad-publicity-right? dept.

schwit1 writes: Just a day after news broke that Volkswagen's emissions scandal had expanded to its Porsche unit and Audi SUVs, the company has disclosed yet another problem, this time affecting carbon dioxide levels emitted by their cars. "Volkswagen said an internal probe showed 800,000 cars had "unexplained inconsistencies" concerning their carbon-dioxide output. Previously, the automaker estimated it would need to recall 11 million vehicles worldwide — more than Volkswagen sold last year." This batch of cars includes a small number of gasoline engines. Until now, only diesel engines were part of the problem.

3 of 208 comments (clear)

  1. CO2 == MPG by Xenna · · Score: 4, Insightful

    AFAIK the amount of CO2 produced is directly related to the amount of gasoline used. Car manufacturers - all car manufacturers - lie about mileage the same way all laptop and phone manufacturers lie about battery usage.

    We all know this, we've all known this for a long time. How is this suddenly news?

    1. Re:CO2 == MPG by gstoddart · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The difference here is the way car manufacturers in North America lie about mileage is the fault of the EPA.

      See, they don't drive the car, and measure the mileage you get. As I understand it, they hook it up to a test rig, do some tests, and then calculate the mileage.

      Car companies can only use the output of that formula, using anything else would be illegal -- and, unfortunately, people have known that the method calculating mileage is pretty flawed. Which is why all those people who had hybrids found out they weren't getting anywhere near the mileage they were promised.

      So, no the car makers don't lie about mileage, they can only report it one way. Any other way would be illegal, even if the test is known to be wrong.

      Apparently they do lie about emissions, however.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    2. Re:CO2 == MPG by cdrudge · · Score: 4, Insightful

      See, they don't drive the car, and measure the mileage you get. As I understand it, they hook it up to a test rig, do some tests, and then calculate the mileage.

      The problem is that just jumping in the car and driving it has too many variables. Was the real terrain uphill? downhill? Was their a headwind or a tailwind? If it was a city test were the lights timed exactly the same? What was the temperature? humidity? road conditions?

      Testing in a lab on a machine is suppose to control all those variables as much as possible so that different vehicles at different times all have the same base test conditions for comparison. It's no different than anything else that is performance/energy tested or benchmarked like appliances, HVAC, computers...

      No the tests may not exactly match what you'll get with your usage, but hopefully it's a accurate baseline for comparison. And THAT's where Volkswagon screwed up.