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VW Officials Knew Since Last Year of Misleading Fuel Economy Claims (reuters.com)
It's not just CO2 levels that Volkswagen manipulated; according to a wire story, Volkswagen officials knew at least a year ago that some of the company's officially-reported fuel-efficiency claims were overstated. From the linked article:
Volkswagen's top executives knew a year ago that some of the company's cars were markedly less fuel efficient than had been officially stated, Sunday paper Bild am Sonntag reported, without specifying its sources. ... Months after becoming aware of excessive fuel consumption, former Chief Executive Martin Winterkorn decided this spring to pull one model off the market where the discrepancy was particularly pronounced, the Polo TDI BlueMotion, the paper cited sources close to Winterkorn as saying.
News flash: companies are trying to sell you things, and most companies will lie as much as they can without losing face or legal reprisal to get you to buy their things.
I'm still glad the story is posted, but it's not even remotely surprising.
It's good to see VW representatives surfing Slashdot to try and repair VW's shattered reputation. :)
In the United States, it is illegal for a car manufacturer to advertise any fuel efficiency number other than the one determined by the EPA.
Even running an ad campaign to the effect of "Hey, the EPA says that this car gets 45 MPG, but our testing says it's more like 42. Just thought you should know." would be a crime.
Actually, this has been written about before. When the cars are in test mode, with reduced NOX emissions, the fuel economy is also worse. So real world economy (and CO2 emissions) are better than under test.
[not associated with VW in any way. Heck, I haven't ever owned a VW]
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
It's that miles vs kilometers thing, along with gallons and liters. I tell you, it's a honest mistake. Honest!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
GM got caught out doing something similar:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
They were fined $11 million but probably saved a vast amount more than that by conducting that fraud.
If you look at things in terms of unfettered entirely amoral capitalism Volkswagen had a duty to their shareholders to carry out the same sort of fraud since the financial benefits looked as if they would vastly exceed the penalty for getting caught.
As for reputation - who remembers GM doing this? In a few years time will we still remember this current fraud and jokingly call them FalseVagen?
These frauds are going to keep on occurring unless there is some sort of incentive to convince the people involved to stop. We've seen in China how far these things can go with poison in milk to pass a regulatory test.
I had an 05 VW Golf TDI, and I averaged 42 MPG with it. When I bought it between work and school I was driving 500 miles a week and kept very good records. I saw as high as 44 and as low as 38 MPG. To this day I still say it was the best overall car I've ever owned, though I was thrilled to trade it on a new 2010 Camaro and be one of the first people to drive a 5th gen.
-- Slashdot, making the Left look conservative since 1997.
Except it's true, and if you had any understanding of diesel engines, you'd know this intuitively. The vw execs are saving face here. The idea the cars use more fuel than as tested is utter bullshit. What the cars fail at is producing too much NOx from running leaner in real world conditions. Leaner = less fuel = hotter combustion = less particulates and more efficient Otto cycle... at the cost of making a tiny bit more of a transient, almost insignifucant pollutant. Oh buddy.
However, was it wring to cheat the tests? Yes. Violation of the law? Certainly.
My 10 year old TDI routinely beats EPA rated mileage, even when I speed. What it does poorly at is during stop and go city driving (about 35 mpg with my lead foot), but it excells at highway driving. 42 MPG while averaging 85 MPH? All day long--and that's the one time it'll actually sink to EPA levels in non-combined use.
We need a better way to really make the execs accountable. I'd suggest locking the CEO in an airtight warehouse with their new, running auto for 1 hour, with the initial oxygen/air-quality conditions set such that if the auto meets the advertised spec then there's just barely enough fresh air to survive.
I mean, execs keep track of everything that goes on under their umbrella (so they'd never step into a failing test), right?
I am not a sig.
Except that they can only advertise the numbers the government gets - which would mean it's from that test.
Unless they have a different test for MPG. Then it's the numbers from that test. Either way, it's not the numbers from outside the lab.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
too expensive for most people to purchase
They'll just grow the average finance term to 9 years (it's over 6 now) and the sheeple will eat it. They won't stop eating it until their shivering in the dark, hungry.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
No point having a defeat device if if it makes you advertise worse numbers.
The choice was pass the test with good numbers, or fail the test with better numbers. They chose to pass the test, as it doesn't matter what your numbers are if you can't pass the test.
Learn to love Alaska
There is a witty "Uranus" reply due now, but I'm not feeling too well today. Any takers?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
everyone I know who has a VW, or has had one in the past 10 years (around 8 or so) has all gotten BETTER than advertized MPGs.
Its funny, maybe it is a US vs Europe thing but I've never known anyone get anything near the official MPG. There is an interesting paper from the European Federation for Transport and Environment which shows that the average difference is now 36%, and that despite real world MPG scarecly improving since 2012 the manufacturers claims continued to reduce. Strangely VW is far from the worst, being bang on average with a difference of 36% from real world figures, whereas Daimler manages a 48% difference.
My 4 last cars include 2 Audi, one Ford and one Mazda
We can forgive a company that makes a mistake, even one that in hindsight is really dumb and obvious. Harder to forgive a company that intentionally and with malice aforethought tried to defraud customers and regulators.
Ah, that's exactly what GM did. They hid a problem they knew was killing people.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
While I can completely understand why you might think parent is an astroturf, I do own a VW (a 2014 Jetta 1.8T), and do indeed get better than the advertised millage. It was advertised at 25/36m/(us)g, I typically get 28 in a city, and 37 on a freeway.
I'm sure there are other VWs that do not meet the advertised specs, but certainly this car has given me the most believable estimate of any I've ever had (every other vehicle I've ever had has not got close to its fuel efficiency stats).
And then you would demonstrate you don't know the law around those numbers.
Car makers have ZERO option except to publish the EPA approved numbers. They MUST publish the EPA numbers. The problem is the official EPA numbers are meaningless, derived from a fairly old process, and not indicative at all of actual mileage figures.
So, using those EPA numbers, hybrid owners have been really annoyed to find they're not getting anywhere NEAR the mpg they've been told -- because the hybrids were measured using the old and not-very-useful formula. Similarly, 15+ years ago, I knew people with diesel VWs. Those cars regularly got more mpg than they could advertise, because for those cars the formula was fairly useless in the real world as well.
The important thing here is that, right or wrong, high or low ... car makers can only legally give their mpg numbers based on an EPA formula which is, effectively, an estimate based on a calculation. If they tried to use other numbers they would get into trouble.
VW would advertise based on the only number they're allowed to. They can't cherry pick the ones they like; which means you could get significantly worse or better than the EPA figure. Even if the EPA figure is pretty much known to be meaningless and out of date.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.