VW may not be Exxon but...

Just got back from vacation overseas, and saw the headlines- was pretty stunned.

I need to look into the specifics to get more details, but it's a pretty wide spread problem- to the point where I saw a bunch of EU folk on BBC questioning the rules bias towards diesel that they did back 20 years ago. Seemed like a good idea then, but sucks now. And more questions of how applicable the Euro test is vs. the US. Pretty interesting. Based on where I saw the EUROVI rules going, the shift away from diesel is what I fully expect- and have posted here a few times.

Some brief looks at some posts:

Most OEM's do self cert- so all the testing is done internally, with the knowledge that checks can randomly happen during the life cycle of a vehicle by anyone. If you go to the EPA website and see the number of certified cars per year, you can get an idea why they allow this. As far as I can tell, based on our competitive testing, other than this- cheating is pretty rare. But now we can answer why nobody could match VW's results at their price point- they were cheating.

Someone posted about being an SUV to avoid the rules- the rules for gas emissions don't change until the vehicle gets to 8500lb. And the change isn't a lot for gaseous emissions. On top of that, being that the rules are grams/mile- a diesel F150 would emit exactly the same as a proper VW Passat.

Any state can choose to use California's rules- and many do already. I'd be fine with that- at least we would have a much more limited number of fuels that would be available.

Ships are now regulated. And have to be either retrofitted or use clean fuel. Are they good- no- of course not. But they are regulated.

What else... Clean Diesel does exist. It IS possible to meet PZEV with diesel. Just really, really expensive.

I'll have to get through this when I get back to work tomorrow. Should be interesting to see where this goes.

But I will repeat my prediction- diesel will be too expensive for everyone but BMW and Mercedes in small cars, which makes them unlikely for larger cars. BMW and Mercedes can command the price premium for actual clean diesel.

alfadriver wrote: Ships are now regulated. And have to be either retrofitted or use clean fuel. Are they good- no- of course not. But they are regulated.

This, and it's all a relative scale. A diesel-powered container ship is hauling 50,000 TONS worth of stuff (so, the weight of 25,000 Passats) using (often) a 20,000-horsepower diesel (so, the power of 200 Passats). Plus ships have extensive exhaust scrubbing equipment aboard (since weight or size is not as much of an issue as it is on a car). It's rare to see a diesel ship emitting any black smoke from the funnel in recent decades - and usually a result of poor-quality fuel. There is a TON of regulation on merchant ships these days on things like that (and other environmental measures like waste water, etc).

Proportional to the bulk of what it's moving around, most diesel ships are probably emitting FAR less pollution-per-weight than most diesel cars, I'd guess. Same thing goes for freight trains.

alfadriver wrote: ...I'll have to get through this when I get back to work tomorrow. Should be interesting to see where this goes...

Since you seem to have good perspective on this, I would love to hear what you guess the possible "solutions" are for the current cars in circulation. How could they be made compliant and what will that do to them performance and economy wise?

My SWAG is that the cars aren't regening enough, since (I'm told) the ones with the main issue are the ones that don't use SCR. SCR retrofit would be hideously expensive, more likely a software fix would be entailed.

Further SWAG is that fuel economy with the software fix would drop to 35mpg or so. This is based on info I gleaned from a Ford guy who said that the Diesel Focus would not be brought to the US because by the ime they made it clean enough, it would have been less fuel-efficient than the existing gasoline models with then-current technology. (Whether that meant technology "in existence" or technology "inexpensive enough for a Focus" was unsaid, but they effectively mean the same thing since you have to sell what you make)

iceracer wrote: I have often wondered. People buy diesel for better mileage and the forget the diesel penalty when buying. How long does it take to recoup the roughly 3k difference. In the case of the Jetta. Trucks are even more. An then you have the special fluids.

It varies and really depends on how much you drive the vehicle in question. I put over 30K miles a year on a car and do most of my own repairs and maintenance. My TDI paid for itself very quickly, but mainly due to Katrina in 2005 when gas prices spiked like crazy, but diesel prices didn't.

Most modern European cars require a full synthetic oil, so the cost difference there isn't really all that much. My 2003 doesn't need 507 oil (I use M1 0-40 Euro which IIRC is 505 rated). We used the same oil in our new MINIs. I was just in Walmart on Friday and compared oil prices. ~$10/qt vs. $12/5 qts for the cheapo 5-20 I just put in my Caravan. TDI's also run a 10K oil change interval, which has been proven by the oil-nerds over at TDIclub to be perfectly adequate (changing more often is a waste of $). VW gas turbo cars require a 5K minimum OCI - using the same $$ oil. Beyond that, maintenance costs aren't much different than other Euro cars.

All that said, I agree sometimes diesel doesn't pay. My Cummins was great for MPG (18-22), but the premium I paid for that POS definitely didn't pay back in fuel savings for the limited amount I drove the truck. Add the multiple times the Cummins broke and I lost my shirt when I finally gave up and sold it. A cheaper gas-engine truck would have made much more sense in my case.

aircooled wrote:

alfadriver wrote: ...I'll have to get through this when I get back to work tomorrow. Should be interesting to see where this goes...

Since you seem to have good perspective on this, I would love to hear what you guess the possible "solutions" are for the current cars in circulation. How could they be made compliant and what will that do to them performance and economy wise?

and if you're out of warranty, and don't go to the dealership for anything … how do you enforce any recall ?

it would be nice to have the torque/hp of a large diesel when I'm towing my little racecar … but the cost of ownership for a newish Cummings …etc … v. the cost of ownership for my 17 yr old F150 … even though it only gets 13-15 mpg

wbjones wrote: it would be nice to have the torque/hp of a large diesel when I'm towing my little racecar … but the cost of ownership for a newish Cummings …etc … v. the cost of ownership for my 17 yr old F150 … even though it only gets 13-15 mpg

There's also the fact that a large diesel engine weighs almost as much as a little racecar

aircooled wrote:

alfadriver wrote: ...I'll have to get through this when I get back to work tomorrow. Should be interesting to see where this goes...

Since you seem to have good perspective on this, I would love to hear what you guess the possible "solutions" are for the current cars in circulation. How could they be made compliant and what will that do to them performance and economy wise?

Again, I've not had a lot of time to look into it- but I do know that VW did a lean NOx trap for their diesel, vs. everyone else that used much more expensive technology.

There are two major issues with whatever the fix will be- one is that VW cheated, and installed a defeat device. That one thing is a major no-no which will be the root of massive fines, and maybe even some criminal investigations. I know the latter may happen, as it has been threatened to us (for much lesser of offenses, FWIW). So the cars, as they were sold, were all illegal to be sold in the US and maybe Europe.

So that one fix means that whatever they did to meet the letter of the law has to be running exactly like that all of the time. As others have pointed out, I do expect that to have a big impact on fuel economy and driveability. Interestingly enough- not peak power, if the fix is software. There are special rules when running peak power- both for power and for component protection- which I'm sure both can be used to keep the peak performance equal.

The second issue- how good does one have to be for off cycle emissions? That's an interesting question, which should have been discovered when the car ran the US06 and SC03 tests. While those are cycle, they are enough like real driving that things should have been found. Again, if they were really cheating, well...

I have to read a lot into this instance, but I do understand that the University of West Virginia was the first to discover the problem using a portable emissions device (probably purchase from SEMTEC in Ann Arbor). It was not some green group trying to find the problem, or some witch hunt, but some graduate students doing research on diesel cars.

wbjones- how to enforce a recall? That's easy- don't let a car get re-registered until the work is done. The car is illegal in all 50 states, so it's a pretty easy process to tell every state to not let them be registered anymore via the VIN number. It will also force VW to do something, regardless of the warranty state of the vehicle. In this particular case, I don't see the age or mileage of a specific car being relevant- VW HAS to take care of it- they sold a non-legal car.

GameboyRMH wrote:

wbjones wrote: it would be nice to have the torque/hp of a large diesel when I'm towing my little racecar … but the cost of ownership for a newish Cummings …etc … v. the cost of ownership for my 17 yr old F150 … even though it only gets 13-15 mpg

There's also the fact that a large diesel engine weighs almost as much as a little racecar

yep … but the 13 mpg still sucks … but not enough to spend $40k on a new truck

From http://www.stuck-in-reverse.com/

I feel like its about to be a great time to be in the VW tuning business. Once this recall reflash kills everyone's economy, the aftermarket will have a great business selling pre-reflash stock maps at a premium.

TGMF wrote: I feel like its about to be a great time to be in the VW tuning business. Once this recall reflash kills everyone's economy, the aftermarket will have a great business selling pre-reflash stock maps at a premium.

The problem with that is that it's so incredibly obvious, that it would be easy to police.

One e-mail from Sam@epa.gov and you would stop making the tune.

alfadriver wrote:

TGMF wrote: I feel like its about to be a great time to be in the VW tuning business. Once this recall reflash kills everyone's economy, the aftermarket will have a great business selling pre-reflash stock maps at a premium.

The problem with that is that it's so incredibly obvious, that it would be easy to police. One e-mail from Sam@epa.gov and you would stop making the tune.

easily gotten around by labeling the tune "for off road use only" like all other aftermarket tunes and performance parts.

Time to buy em back and send em to scrap

TGMF wrote:

alfadriver wrote:

TGMF wrote: I feel like its about to be a great time to be in the VW tuning business. Once this recall reflash kills everyone's economy, the aftermarket will have a great business selling pre-reflash stock maps at a premium.

The problem with that is that it's so incredibly obvious, that it would be easy to police. One e-mail from Sam@epa.gov and you would stop making the tune.

easily gotten around by labeling the tune "for off road use only" like all other aftermarket tunes and performance parts.

Ok, so Tuner X sells 5,000 copies of a diesel tune that is for off road use only. Yet only 500 diesel cars are ever bring raced. So it seems really obvious that Tuner X is not making sure with certainty that their tune is not being used in the real world. Therefore- "stop selling the tune" email comes from Joe@epa.gov and Jack@arb.cal.gov

I don't see this one using that label as easily. Especially for CARB- they would totally go out of their way to prevent anyone from getting an "off road use only" tune.

When you have a car that is such an obvious problem, the obvious solutions become much harder to implement and get around the rules.

I don't think it's up to TunerX to prove how their product is being used. Just like the rest of the aftermarket. Though that could change, and it would be scary in many, many ways. /tinfoilhat

In reply to Paul_VR6:

It is, and always has been. Both CARB and the EPA have procedures to prove that a product is legal for sale.

Here's an overview of CARBs rules- http://www.arb.ca.gov/msprog/aftermkt/aftermkt.htm

Here's a settlement between CARB and an aftermarket motorcycle company which explains that it's illegal to sell a racing part with knowledge that it will be used on the road, ever- http://www.arb.ca.gov/enf/casesett/sa/samson_sa.pdf

And here's the code- https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/pubs/vctop/vc/d12/c1/24005

So it's very much up to the seller.

It's a good thing I removed the "for off-road use only" plaque that was riveted to my exhaust.

Trans_Maro wrote: It's a good thing I removed the "for off-road use only" plaque that was riveted to my exhaust.

Honestly, it's rarely enforced- there are tons of products out there that are "for racing use only" on public roads.

My point here is that that getting a non-legal flash for a diesel VW is pretty darned obvious, and therefore very easy to find and prevent those flashes. The car is so much in the headlines, that a simple google search for VW flashes in either Ann Arbor or Sacramento would lead to some quick e-mails stopping the sales of those flashes.

"You are criminally liable" are pretty powerful words to companies.

I wonder how long it will be before we hear of a "solution" to this for current owners?

It's in: VW is going to do a massive recall:

http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2015/09/volkswagen-will-recall-refit-11-million-cars-coming-days/

GameboyRMH wrote: It's in: VW is going to do a massive recall: http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2015/09/volkswagen-will-recall-refit-11-million-cars-coming-days/

Sorry, this is the first thing that came to mind.

From the above linked article said: Volkswagen faces an Oct. 7 deadline by the German federal transportation authority to present a plan to bring its cars up to compliance or be banned from German roads.

I would imagine lots of sleepless nights in Wolfsburg after hearing that.

http://www.vwdieselinfo.com/