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German Automakers Formed a Secret Cartel In the '90s To Collude On Diesel Emissions, Says Report (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Last week, Der Spiegel published an explosive report alleging that the major German automakers formed a secret cartel in the 1990s to collude on diesel emissions. These companies, including Volkswagen, Audi, BMW, Porsche, and Daimler, met in secret working groups to discuss "the technology, costs, suppliers, and even the exhaust gas purification of its diesel vehicles," the German weekly reported. The meetings were disclosed to German competition officials in letters from VW and Daimler and viewed by Der Spiegel. The secret meetings "laid the basis" for the 2015 diesel emission cheating scandal, in which VW was caught installing secret software in more than half a million vehicles sold in the US that it used to fool exhaust emissions tests. The admission of cheating ultimately cost the automaker tens of billions of dollars in fines and legal fees, making it one of the most expensive corporate scandals in history.
Years earlier, VW participated in dozens of secret meetings with its competitors, involving over 200 employees in up to 60 working groups, on how to meet increasingly tough emissions criteria in diesel vehicles. The automakers may have colluded to fix prices of a diesel emission treatment called AdBlue through these working groups, Der Spiegel says. Specifically, VW (which owns Porsche and Audi), Daimler (which owns Mercedes-Benz and Smart), and BMW allegedly agreed to use AdBlue tanks that were too small. AdBlue is a liquid solution used to counteract a vehicle's emissions.
Years earlier, VW participated in dozens of secret meetings with its competitors, involving over 200 employees in up to 60 working groups, on how to meet increasingly tough emissions criteria in diesel vehicles. The automakers may have colluded to fix prices of a diesel emission treatment called AdBlue through these working groups, Der Spiegel says. Specifically, VW (which owns Porsche and Audi), Daimler (which owns Mercedes-Benz and Smart), and BMW allegedly agreed to use AdBlue tanks that were too small. AdBlue is a liquid solution used to counteract a vehicle's emissions.
AdBlue is a liquid solution used to counteract a vehicle's emissions.
AdBlue is a solution of urea and water generically referred to as diesel exhaust fluid. It lowers NOx emissions in diesel vehicles.
There is a third option, which what was actually done. The conditions under which the tests are done (with a sensor) are known. They programmed the ECU so it would detect those conditions and modify the engine performance to pass the test.
There is even more to diesel than just the German car companies. The kind of crude that Europe gets is very high-quality and can be fed right into a fractional distillation facility. That's very economical, but also limits your choices in what comes out - you get whatever proportion of products happened to be in the crude. Usually this means quite a bit of diesel. As a result, diesel tends to be priced pretty well since there is plenty of supply. In North America, the crude is terrible - it needs to be "cracked" with catalysts into smaller chains to produce the desired product mix. This is expensive and complex, but the upshot is that once you've built these multi-billion-dollar facilities, you can tweak the mix quite a bit. If the market price for diesel is high, you can make more diesel. If it's gasoline you want, just change the recipe a bit. In North America, diesel tends to cost more, reflecting its higher energy (and carbon!) content per unit volume and therefore larger proportion of crude required to make it.
If Europe gives up on diesel, they will need to spend billions to build new or to retrofit refineries, or else take a hit and export the diesel. I'm sure the oil companies and governments would rather not. "Clean diesel" was very alluring to everyone - economical cars for consumers, high profits for car makers, lower capital costs for oil companies, and no fights over refinery construction for governments. Environmentalists were excited over the false claims as well.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
You bring up an excellent point which I did not address at all. Thank you.
Diesel lubricity regulations (HFRR spec) is much higher in Europe (and Canada) than it is in the USA. Combine that with the "occasional" mistake (oops, I put a bit of regular gas in my diesel), and the Common Rail engine design which requires a high-pressure fuel pump (HPFP) generating something above 10,000 psi to the injectors and which is lubricated and cooled by the diesel fuel itself, and you have a recipe for disaster.
The NHTSA investigated VW for this exact problem. When the HPFPs started going on their CR engines the cost to the consumer was $10,000 to fix it (because once the HPFP eats its own guts it contaminates the entire fuel system). Everything had to be replaced. VW just always claimed that the problem was that the consumer put gasoline in their car and would refuse to fix it. And the car may have in fact had gasoline in it, but it may have been contaminated at the fueling station, not the fault of anything that the consumer did.
What a mess. Hundreds of pages of analysis here.
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.