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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.
...when ignorant politicians and regulators set emission goals that are apparently impossible to reach with current technology or far too expensive to include in a consumer vehicle.
If it is any other country/company we could blame it on "low level team cheating" or "midlevel managers were scared to tell the higher level managers the truth" or "simple incompetence and cowboy attitude towards laws".
But in Germany, in VW, these stories do not add up. Given the documentation they do and the way they follow the orders, the cheating was done with full knowledge and compliance of everyone all the way to the top. VW buys our software. I see their acceptance testing reports and how much they test, document and demand explanations. Not only they document, they refer to the docs and use them all the time.
No way the VW diesel cheating was the work of some rogue team in some isolated division. It went all the way up the company, now it appears, it went all the way up the entire damned industry.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
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.
everyone knows western Europe is a peace and earth loving heaven on earth while the evil USA spews carbon into the air
Also, this smug comic has always assured us that there are no possible downsides to any Green initiatives and proposals:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CV...
I remember posting about it back when VW diesel cheating was making rounds.
The article is mixing up two different things, and pretending that they are connected. Der Spiegel says that the automakers met in secret to discuss “the technology, costs, suppliers, and even the exhaust gas purification of its diesel vehicles." Then, separately, VW implemented a cheating system to dodge the emissions testing, with other automakers doing similar things, although to lesser degrees.
But the article implies that these two things are connected. Documentation, however, pretty well shows that the original plan of VW was to buy a license for the Mercedes "blueTec" technology, but they abandoned this plan when the Chief Operating Officer changed, who favored using their own developed technology (TDI). TDI didn't work as well as expected, necessitating the cheat.
Der Spiegel attempts to imply that the collusions were to agree on how to cheat, but from the evidence, it looks like the "collusion" was exactly the opposite of what Der Spiegel implies: the "collusion" was to collaborate on technology to avoid producing emissions, but when that collaboration fell apart, they shifted to cheating.
New York Times article here: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/1...
Wall Street Journal article here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/v...
"The meetings were disclosed to German competition officials in letters from VW and Daimler"
So, not really a secret cartel meeting then? More a cooperation between industry leaders trying to find a solution.
Kind of like how many industries have a forum where competitors can exchange experiences and work on some things together?
Harald
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.
For a while here in Missouri they had the Gateway Clean Air program for car emissions testing. You didn't even have to go to some specific company/building to get tested they could actually set up on the side of a road, often an on-ramp to a major interstate, a camera at license plates and a set of sensors for recording actual emissions and viola, if you were up for renewal on registration you'd get a certificate of passing (or failing) in the mail not too long after. Whether this is an accurate or cost effective method of testing I have no idea. I also don't know how effective any particular testing procedure can be, but someone seemed to think it was worthwhile to do it this way.
I rented a car in the UK and got exceedingly lucky when they sold out of automatics and were forced to give me a Mercedes GLA diesel. Aside from the annoying stall-out feature at every light that needs to be disabled every time you start the car, it was not a bad driver. Indeed it did not put out a typical diesel smell, but to say that it does not produce any odors is not quite right. If you were idling in one place long enough with the windows down, you definitely could smell the combustion products. I'm not sure it smells any worse than a gasoline engine, but the first time I smelled it I was a bit alarmed since I didn't recognize the smell and thought something was burning. It was very economical and had a good range, but I still prefer the gasoline version which is lighter and faster. And if you are buying such an expensive car, I'm not sure why you'd get hung up on a slight difference in fuel economy (though UK fuel prices were on the obscene side). Environmentally it's probably 10-15% better than the same car in gasoline, but not as good as an economy car and probably no better than a hybrid. The roughly $5k premium will buy you a lot of carbon credits...
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
That would be pretty dumb, but that's not what they do. VW programmed the engine to detect an emissions test and change to a lower-performance mode that would produce less emissions. On the road the vehicle would revert to its normal high-performance mode.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
Is this just the natural result of unrealistic or even impossible regulations devised by leftist bureaucrats being forced on companies?
Basically: no.
The regulations were neither unrealistic nor impossible. Gasoline powered cars, for example, met the regulations easily.
The companies involved, however, thought that they could meet the emissions standards using diesel engines. Old-fashioned diesel engines are classically dirty and polluting (although also simple and efficient)-- but new "clean diesel" technology was being developed.
VW, however, chose not to license the Mercedes technology and instead develop their own clean diesel approach... which turned out not to work as well as they had anticipated in stopping nitric oxide emissions. So they cheated.
It's easy for regulators to create policies demanding that unrealistic, if not outright impossible, goals be met.
It wasn't a case of regulations that couldn't be met-- it was a case of VW's "not invented here" syndrome.
You do have to pay attention to the fact that the "collusion" in the Spiegel article was not companies colluding on cheating: it was companies colluding on using each others technologies (which VW eventually decided not to do).
You are very confused. VW designed a "defeat device" that detected when the car was undergoing an emissions test and lowered the performance of the engine, also reducing the emissions.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
Except for the VW defeat device in question being the software sensing when the vehicle was in test conditions and de-tuning the engine in order to pass the test, you are absolutely correct.
No wait, you are wrong. And that's how VW got away with it for years until an independent research effort sought to confirm the emissions rates under actual road conditions, and couldn't. In fact, they found the emissions were many times worse when on a real road then when the same car was going the same speed on a dynomometer.
How do you think they got caught?
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
It does nothing for the latter. You still need some other method to get rid of the soot.
But engine companies are actually not able to meet the emission targets, certainly not by keeping their clients happy
Baloney. They can meet the emissions targets today and the technology is being sold as I type this in large numbers. It will mean that they will have to change the vehicle mix but to that I say so what? Same rules apply to every one and they have the technology to achieve it. If that means that you and I have to live with less horsepower so be it. But Tesla is showing that you can meet emissions targets and have a vehicle worth driving too. Even among gasoline powered vehicles there are plenty that are being sold right now that meet any reasonably near term emissions requirement and are perfectly fine vehicles to drive.
It is also true that most of emission targets are determined by political interests with low-to-no realistic technical knowledge.
The emissions targets have been reviewed plenty by interested parties with technical knowledge and there is no evidence that it is technically impossible to meet them as a general proposition. There are vehicles available TODAY that can meet the emissions targets. Yes they will have to sell a different mix of vehicles. The fact that car makers want to have their cake and eat it too is not my problem nor yours. They have the technology and they need to get busy applying it.
I worked on this field some years ago and the fact that the upcoming targets, the ones being applied now and in the near future, were almost impossible to be met was a quite common belief in the industry.
I work in the auto industry today and while I agree that some "believe" it impossible, that's only true if you assume no change to the product mix. Despite what they might tell you, very few people "need" a 500HP Corvette or a 400HP pickup truck.