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Opel Dealers Accused of Modyfing the Software of Polluting Cars (deredactie.be)
An anonymous reader writes: Belgian public broadcasting station VRT has discovered that GM Opel dealerships in Belgium seem to be updating engine management code when Zafira cars equipped with the 1.6 litre CDTI diesel engine are brought in for service. After the software change, the nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions drop sharply, at the cost of reduced power output. Bern University of Applied Sciences and environmental lobby club DUH previously found this model to pass European emissions standards only when the rear wheels are not rotating. When the rear wheels are made to spin along, NOx emissions increase to several times the limit set by European regulations. General Motors denied using defeat devices as well as the update program that seems to be taking place. However, an anonymous mechanic at an Opel dealership states that GM started pushing updates shortly after the Dieselgate scandal broke.
I suspect that the majority of brands do the same thing more or less, so I'm not surprised.
It's back to the drawing board for those that sets up the conditions for tests and the emissions limits to get figures that better reflects reality. And this is not only diesels that are circumventing the regulations, I expect everyone of doing similar regardless of fuel type.
There's no surprise to customers that the fuel consumption figures provided by car manufacturers are almost impossible to achieve in reality, no matter what the gauges in the cars says.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
In other news...
Funtime Candy Wow! - my plan for eventually conquering Japan.
In the 1970s I had an Opel 1500 coupe. It looked a lot like a BMW 2001. That car was so sweet. It handled like a dream. It had an electronic fuel injection system--an analog electronic FI system. Fuel injection in those days was so rare. 99% of the vehicles on the road had carbs.
That car would start it any kind of weather and go like the wind. Loved that car. Wish I still had it.
Funky software on new Opels? Not my problem. Much ado over nothing.
So if pretty much every manufacturer is doing this, how is this not equal to a kind of mass civic protest?
If in reality car emissions are higher than overly ambitious standards, but still low enough that air quality is OK - should the cars be "fixed" (as in the pet related term, neutered) or instead should the regulations be brought to realistic levels based on what cars are actually emitting today?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"as well as well"
One says the cars were modified outside the factory before to increase power. The other implies they have always been this way and now are being modified to be lower emissions.
So which is it?
I hope there is further investigation but this seems like more than coincidence.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
The chip mod industry is booming so that big rig wannabe monster truck diesels can pollute with impunity. Step across the border into Arizona or Nevada and bingo it is fine to pollute the air. What really pisses me off is that the industry is a farce, here we are complaining about "euroweany' diesels that get stellar fuel economy and the same time brag about monster hunks of shit that rip up the environment and send a shit load of carbon in the form of soot and CO2 into the atmosphere. Americans are becoming so stupid that they are blind to the truth here! It is blatantly obvious that we are being duped by the auto/oil industry. What fucking joke!
"Dieselgate scandal " Can we please stop calling every controversy *gate. emailgate. Celebgate, Donutgate Climategate, Intelgate, Bridgegate. etc
My Volvo V40 D4 used 4.7l/100km for 30.000km strait. At the very first service interval, the ECU software was updated. Immediately the car started to use 5.3l/100km and no longers seems to deliver the same power. My driving habbits and usual routes have not changed. My shoes didn't get any heavier. How do you explain 15% more fuel usage other than trying to cover up software 'flaws'?
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
Opel has been gone for 40 years. Cute little GT. Maxed out at 105.
80 yers ago it was the opel motor company, but for decades now it
is general motors!
When the VW scandal broke, it was pointed out that if this software were opened up (open source), it could be independently audited, and this kind of fuckery would not be possible.
Now we've got Volvo, Renault, and Opel (GM) doing it. This simply underscores that transparency is needed to prevent fraud. You can't take the auto manufacturers' word for it. And you can't trust the EPA to test for it.
Cars do pollute, despite governments pretending they don't!
It is impressive and depressing how badly spell-checked slashdot articles are.
> pass European emissions standards only when the rear wheels are not rotating. When the rear wheels are made to spin along...
This kindergarten-level text essentially means the particular Opel Zafira car is a 4x4 version. Obviously, the 4x4 is only used during truly adverse weather condition or maybe if a stupid owner tries to pull a 5-ton pleasure boat trailer with it, instead of a 6x6 truck. In normal weather and use modes everbody drives with the selector disc in 4x2 mode and nobody uses 4x4 mode, because:
1. the extra drive-train to the rear wheels has heavy friction in the Haldex coupling, which markedly increases fuel consumption. (Please consider that fuel is VERY expensive in Europe due to high taxation.)
2. The Opel Zafira is not an all-terrain vehicle, not even a SUV, it's more like a family minibus wannabe that accidentally got shrunk in the photocopier to 75%. The 4x4 mode is not provided for dirt roads and fording, but for heavy rain, snow and moderate ice on properly laid asphalt. She is not a Land Rover Defender.
They're new engine line up consists of ONE engine - a 2.0L 4 cyl in various stages of tune and turbocharging (presumably to save development costs). Good luck to them getting decent NOx figures out of that in the high power versions, not to mention longevity. There does seem to be an obsession with shriking engines below what is reasonable (3 cyl 1.0L in a Mondeo?? Hello Ford!) simply to meet CO2 emissions targets. Thats all well and good but you don't get something for nothing and high pressure small engines just don't last so you will probably find the car scrapped years earlier than otherwise and so completely negating any CO2 benefit accrued by the engine. Short term thinking at its finest.
You know what's strange? I've a 2003 BMW 320D. I regularly get consumption under 6 litres of diesel per 100KM . The car is officially rated at 175g of C02 per km. Now I sometimes drive a friends new 320D ED (Efficient Dynamics) which is meant to officially emit 101 - 113 grams of C02 per km. It gets more or less the same fuel economy. Maybe it is a little better though nowhere as near as what the official figures would suggest. Then there was a colleague who had a new 318D and was consuming more than my old car. Basically he always had the foot to the floor when driving if he wanted to accelerate quickly.
Anyway these days I use an electric bike or a normal bike as much as possible and only use the car when I have to. That's the best way to reduce emissions.
The entire green movement to clean up motor vehicles by politicians was a farce and capitalist corps will do whatever they please no matter what.
The customers satisfaction is always going to be important. I am not surprised by any of this. People have been hacking their vehicle engines to make them perform better for a long time. I'm sure a lot of people forgot about the catalytic converter test tube. A pipe that could be installed in place of a converter so it could be tested (wink,wink). Or people using plates to bypass EGR valves, or using golf tee's to plug up vacuum lines to emission devices. Only today all that stuff is not necessary with the advent of software tweaks. All you have to do is tweak the engine management software and you now have a better running engine. VW simply knew that this could be done so covertly that even certification could be tricked. If you ask any engine maker they will tell you that a engine will average out better with less crap bolted on then with more. Especially with diesel, the EPA's of the world have basically managed to strangle engines to a point they do not work well.
No, it's just a front wheel drive car. But for some strange reason its fuel consumption is lower if the unpowered rear wheels are spinning along (which is normally not the case during an emissions test, but will always be the case during actual driving). It's kind of hard to find a logical reason for this other than plain cheating.
When you want the kingpins, go after the dealers.
Anyone pretending that all car companies have done this and are on the shirttails of getting busted are in denial.
Hell even Chevy had the Diesel Cruze last year, surprisingly, just after Dieselgate broke, it was announced that the Diesel version of the cruze would not return for 2016, and that was chevy's only diesel passenger car (in the US).
Have you ever fallen asleep at the keybhanusdiog?
Looking through the documents the problem is when in 4WD mode,
it is OK in 2WD mode.
So the problem is much smaller than in VW.
The Zafira is front wheel drive I doubt that turning the rear wheels has much to do with increasing pollution levels...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opel_Zafira
It was in the financial times and reuters and many others last october. not news.
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0...
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
If it's not one fing, it's another.
"Overly ambitious" standards? In whose opinion,
It's not opinion, it's fact.
If the standards were even close to reasonable, then most manufacturers would meet them without cheating.
Since it appears perhaps ALL companies are cheating the tests, then obviously the standards are unreasonable in terms of allowing the manufacture of cars that people will actually buy.
If the standards are so unrealistic that both consumers and car companies ignore them, they simply need to be re-thought to be realistic rather than some imagined figure by people who know nothing about cars.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
We need to get an unmolested ECU (Junkyard from totaled car?) and an ECU from a car that went in for this supposed update, then find a way to dump the firmware.
I bet the folks over at ECUproject.com could help out with this.
It would be pretty interesting to compare the two.
Even just getting a 'scope and see how the injector pulses compare at idle and different engine loads, assuming it doesn't use mechanical "jerkbox" injection.