E36 M3 just got real! Consumer Reports pulled VW's affected vehicles' "Recommendation"!
"An EPA official confirmed to Reuters that Volkswagen could face a penalty of up to $18 billion if it has to pay the maximum fine of $37,500 on each of the non-compliant vehicles."
MotoIQ has some technical details on how the cheat worked:
http://www.motoiq.com/MagazineArticles/ID/4001/IN-THE-NEWS-VW-Cheats-on-the-EPA-Test--Cool-or-No.aspx
MotoIQ said: Of course it’s totally bad for the Germans to be killing us all with poisonous gas,
Ohohohoho 
T.J. wrote: So, when the recalls start will people be forced into taking their car in and getting a software 'fix' that will clean up the emissions but at the expense of power and drivability? What if someone owns a VW and doesn't consent to making their car perform and drive worse? Will the cars be forcefully recalled? Is that a thing?
Mazda's been through one or two of those. Not a forced recall, but if you bring a non-updated car to the dealer I'll bet they'd mention a open recall and you'd get the reflash. That would be enough to get 99.9% of the cars, and the fringe element who refuses to have it done would be insignificant.
Based on what we're seeing on some emissions testing results, the NC Miata may not be fully compliant.
I'm not sure why Consumer Reports would pull the recommendation, that's totally a political grandstanding move. From a consumer viewpoint, it's not a big factor.
Keith Tanner wrote: I'm not sure why Consumer Reports would pull the recommendation, that's totally a political grandstanding move. From a consumer viewpoint, it's not a big factor unless you are the type of human who likes to breathe.
FTFY.
KyAllroad wrote: I just heard about this on the news. It has the potential of being the worst PR possible for the peoples' car company.
Besides, you know, the whole Hitler thing. 
Can't wait to see what President Trump will do about this or future violations when he gets into office.
If these cars are built to run great in "dirty mode" (I might program my wife to have one of those), how could it possibly run anywhere near "good" after its programmed to be 40x cleaner than its default setting?
The hippy types should boycott VAG till the end of time. But most people are fake as e36m3 so they'll let it go to maintain their image.
ebonyandivory wrote: Can't wait to see what President Trump will do about this or future violations when he gets into office. If these cars are built to run great in "dirty mode" (I might program my wife to have one of those), how could it possibly run anywhere near "good" after its programmed to be 40x cleaner than its default setting?
That's the real question. If they recall and adjust 500,000 cars to a spec that results in a poor running, short-lived, high maintenance car, won't VW incur even more liability beyond the EPA hammer?
If I had one of these cars I would do everything in my power to avoid the recall fix.
I also wonder how the dealerships are going to able to recover from what the Fatherland has done...
Is this is going to be a huge boon to the repair-side of the dealerships while sales hit rock-bottom and massive layoff follow?
mazdeuce wrote:ebonyandivory wrote: I wonder how poorly the things run in "test mode". I'd LOVE to see a side by side comparison with 1/4 mile times, torque and hp output as well.How much adjustment do you have in a modern diesel? I know you can throw a gas car WAY out of spec with timing and fuel changes. It may be as simple as "if we ran it in test mode permanently we would break something" either through excessive heat or carbon build up or something. So they built a piece of code that will pass emissions and a piece of code that will make the engine last. Which is illegal, but I see where the line of thought was.
Modern diesels have a massive amount of adjustment done strictly via software changes. Off the top of my head, EGR, altering boost and chanaging the timing/number of fuel injection events would probably be the biggest factors in both performance and emissions compliance.
Emissions can change significanly with very minor changes, so it would be interesting to see what the differences are between VW's "test mode" and "All other times mode". Flowing 1 or 2% less EGR back into the engine, or adding a fuel injection late in a stroke might be enough to push them well out of emissions compliance.
T.J. wrote:Keith Tanner wrote: I'm not sure why Consumer Reports would pull the recommendation, that's totally a political grandstanding move. From a consumer viewpoint, it's not a big factor unless you are the type of human who likes to breathe.FTFY.
I wonder how dirty the naughty VW diesels are compared to a 10-year-old Cummins in perfect, original working order. Everyone's latched on to the 40x NOx number, but that's going to be a peak value on a graph somewhere that hasn't been shared with anyone.
It might be a spike at startup, for example. Modern cars do run differently - quite differently - for the first 60 seconds in order to meet emissions regs. In fact, a 2016 Miata will sound like a diesel when you first start it cold and will actually blow black smoke if you blip it at when it's in that mode. This is to get the cat to light off fast. Very not clean at that point but it's part of meeting the regulations. Maybe VW had to do something different to ease cold start, never a strong point with diesels. Anyhow, the point is that it may not be as dire as the click-driven sensationalist news sites would have us think.
Meanwhile, I have people calling me up asking for a catless exhaust for said 2016 Miata...
My 2010 Cummins doesn't use DEF, and it's actually got quite a sweet smelling exhaust. Almost like E85. Very un-diesel.
NOx is created by hot combustion. It's literally the air itself burning. Running lean (in a gasoline application), running too much timing, running with insufficient EGR, running with excessive engine temp. I doubt NOx is a startup emissions issue.
However, NOx IS a problem if you're trying to squeak the last few MPG out, the last few horsepower out, by running the engine hotter and the ignition timing a little too early. (IN a diesel injection timing IS ignition timing...) And if you're cutting back on the EGR, which is a weird case because EGR actually improves fuel economy on gasoline engines, but the era of TDI in question actually has a throttle plate in the exhaust to encourage EGR flow, so maybe EGR in a TDI application actually hurts economy...
I'd love to know how much it differs and when. Yes, they willfully violated a standard, and there should be painful repercussions or it doesn't mean much to violate them.
But as someone on the cusp (like, my Leaf goes back at the end of its lease in 3 weeks) of buying a TDI Sportwagen, I want to know whether "non-test mode" pollutes all the time, a little bit at WOT, what? I've heard the "up to 40x" thrown around a lot, but seriously, any phrase that starts with "up to" is virtually meaningless... MotoIQ mentions 10-40x, and while I'm dubious that it's really a minimum of 10x anytime it's out of test mode, that would indeed be pretty dire, I think. I also, of course, want to know what this means for the latest generation, whether the emissions correction will have reliability repercussions (shudder), what the forthcoming probable fines mean for VW's future and how they approach service...
We almost bought a TDI Sportwagen when we got the '12 WRX. We almost bought a TDI Sportwagen when we decided to try out the Leaf. They were both fun experiments, but before this cropped up we felt like we were about to buy the car we should've bought in the first place...
I'm surprised this hasn't somehow sidetracked into a rant against coal rolling bro dozers...
On topic: And if I were in the market for a VW I don't think this whole thing would change my mind.
In reply to BlueInGreen44:
I'd give it a little while, the Hippies may decide to get rid of theirs in disgust and let them go real cheap just so they don't have to be seen in an evil VW 
Got this from a friend:
"It just so happens that Kim's ultra progressive, liberal ex-husband drives a diesel VW Sport Wagon that he boasts about all the time. And brags of all the research he did."
I don't want to pollute any more than anyone else but I'll admit the above scenario made me smile inside.
Nick (Not-Stig) Comstock wrote: In reply to BlueInGreen44: I'd give it a little while, the Hippies may decide to get rid of theirs in disgust and let the go real cheap just so they don't have to be seen in an evil VW
Yes, but only after they play up their victim status.
ebonyandivory wrote: Got this from a friend: "It just so happens that Kim's ultra progressive, liberal ex-husband drives a diesel VW Sport Wagon that he boasts about all the time. And brags of all the research he did." I don't want to pollute any more than anyone else but I'll admit the above scenario made me smile inside.
I laughed.
And I think Nick (Not-Stig) is on to something.
Mitchell wrote: Not sure how much I would be interested in hiring someone exposing the prior employer to billions in fines and potential lost revenue.
you think they were doing this on their own ? as opposed to directives from above ?
edit: hadn't read this from start to finish yet .. SlickDizzy beat me to it
I'd like to see actual numbers. While "10-40x" sounds really bad, the limits on emissions are so low these days that even 40x might still be far under what my '03 TDI spews out or even most (all?) 80's gasoline cars. I'm not saying that makes it right, but the real amount of pollution may be getting a bit blown out of proportion.
I will admit to being mostly knowledgeable about gasoline engines because I see Diesels as awful devices that do not belong in passenger cars due to how environmentally heinous they are. (So yes, there is a lot of schadenfreude here )
But thinking about how Diesel combustion works, the fuel burns relatively slowly. They are RPM limited not by the engine internals' weight (common misconception) but by the combustion speed. There is a "smoke limit" where faster speed just makes exhaust smoke because the fuel can't burn fast enough before the exhaust stroke starts. It's not like gasoline combustion where most of it happens early on. (And combustion speed limits were what were holding F1 engines back in the end of the V10/V8 era - FIA had minimum octane limits so that teams couldn't take advantage of controlled detonation as a way to get past 20k)
Backtracking from that, it's possible that erring toward high NOx under heavy load/high RPM is because VW erred towards earlier injection timing in order to keep exhaust opacity (soot) under control when injecting a lot of fuel (power). You can SEE soot, you can't see NOx. Well, not until you get enough of it that you get orangish-grey smog.
In reply to Knurled:
I can understand Mazda looking for something different. I don't know how similar auto requirements are to heavy duty engines but our newer buses that use DEF have all kinds of emission system failures that send the computer into limp mode and give you just enough power to get to the curb. It's especially entertaining when it happens in a tunnel during rush hour.
Are the failures related to the DEF or are the failures related to other factors?
I understand that the soot trap setups really don't like to be used in city driving since the engines never can get into a condition where the computer can initiate a DPF regen. I was told that one of the major delivery services (UPS?) was converting their trucks to gasoline for this reason.
Kind of like my rotaries, Diesel engines made sense before environmental realities set in. Diesels have the slight advantage of getting a little more miles per barrel of oil under some conditions, but they require an emissions control train the length of the truck in order to be compliant.
I don't understand the Hippie low-blows. VW TDIs appeal to lots of people. Let's set aside the old, stupid stereotypes for a moment, shall we?
In reply to Knurled:
I don't usually get to hear what the mech. finds, I generally just pick up the driver to get them a new bus. It seems there are one of three messages on the dash related to either the filter of the DEF system depending on the bus.
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