Welcome to Tesla Motors Club
Discuss Tesla's Model S, Model 3, Model X, Model Y, Cybertruck, Roadster and More.
Register

Volkswagen Is Ordered to Recall Nearly 500,000 Vehicles Over Emissions Software

This site may earn commission on affiliate links.
GM keeps silent about faults that kill people and gets off with a couple of hundred millions in fines. VW fudges emissions tests and is supposed to be fined billions. Funny how so many foreign companies get slapped with record fines by the US. That's just happens by accident, for sure. For any such shakedown US companies abroad should be slapped with comparable fines.
 
I can't wait to see how Lauren Fix is going to "fix" this, I remember her bashing Tesla clamoring for "Clean Diesel".


Wow... just wow. VW pulled a Samsung.

This isn't exaggeration or putting your product in the best light. This is blatant fraud. I would expect criminal prosecution for something like this.

Pulling a Samsung? What does that even mean?
 
idk - first you American sort out Fifa corruption, now you root out emission bs from VW ...why not Seat/Skoda/Audi?
(Guess this goes some way to explain why my 4.2L V8 RS5 never did achieve its claimed 40mpg highway)

anyone would think Europeans couldnt see a massive problem staring them right in the face

Still the EU will lamely get its own back by belatedly dealing with the abuse of market position by Msft and Google, but maybe not Amazon and Starbucks aggresive tax avoidance.
Apple's lawyers are far too expensive though, so we'll continue to let them get away with it.
 
GM keeps silent about faults that kill people and gets off with a couple of hundred millions in fines. VW fudges emissions tests and is supposed to be fined billions. Funny how so many foreign companies get slapped with record fines by the US. That's just happens by accident, for sure. For any such shakedown US companies abroad should be slapped with comparable fines.

In VW's case there was intentional fraud from the start. Pollution is tolerated for pragmatic reasons, and pollution standards advance pragmatically with technology. Circumventing the law, just as some scum do with dpf deletion, stops the advances in pollution reduction. VW didn't have a 2008 model year because they couldn't meet the tough new NOx targets, and now we see what they were doing to meet them for 2009.

Dieselheads probably won't care and will continue to whine at the mean old EPA for making a big deal about NOx emissions.

Two wrong don't make a right, especially when the second wrong was so totally wilful.

Also need to note that in GM's case the "new GM" isn't liable for all of "old GM's" problems, which is probably why the fines were low.
 
Samsung was caught cheating on benchmarks - the phone would detect that a benchmark was running and overclock and hold a higher clock frequency in order to show a better benchmark result.

Theyre (Almost) All Dirty: The State of Cheating in Android Benchmarks

But as your article states, pretty much everyone was doing it. So not sure how it is pulling a Samsung. Realistically speaking, benchmark cheating in the GPU world has been going on for ages, Nvidia, AMD/ATI, Apple, Microsoft and etc were all at one point caught cheating on benchmarks. So again, not sure why Samsung is being singled out.

Just seems like a low blow out of nowhere.

Especially considering that all these benchmarks are unofficial. In this case we are talking about cheating on an official test. And since they uses this as an advertising material on how they claimed "clean diesel". It also constitutes advertising fraud.
 
Doesn't this discovery mean Volkswagen will also need to pay a penalty for failing to meet the required fuel efficiency requirements?

Does this mean in addition to the damages they will be deemed to be responsible for, they also need to pay for each credit they failed to earn or acquire?


Maybe this is the beginning of what Jerry Brown meant when he said the following: (See below video)
It's a bit terrifying this video only has 159 views. The only thing more terrifying, is the comment section. :confused:

Every person who cares about Climate Change (which should include everyone on this forum) should watch this video!

Senate bill 350 shut down, Jerry Brown admits he will pursue his agenda through C.A.R.B. regulation - YouTube

Hopefully this is a really big mess for Volkswagen and a wake-up call for all auto manufacturers AND the EPA for their pathetic low-effort fuel-efficiency measuring system... where the government lets the manufacturers do the testing!!! It's like hiring a wolf for the night security position at a sheep farm.

That is a great video for showing politicians who are passionate about climate change action. I wonder what Jerry Brown thinks of the Florida governor who asked for "sea level rise" and other terms to be avoided :|

And now -

.@ConsumerReports pulls "recommended" rating for @VW Jetta diesel & Passat diesel following emissions allegations
 
Graphics card manufacturers are known to do it as well. But having a slightly slower graphics card isn't likely to cause smog.

Exactly. The difference in this analogy is that the Graphics Card could meet those benchmarks, just temporality until it overheated. In this case, the "clean diesel" cars can't achieve that benchmark, and VW wrote software to bypass it! Very different.

I for one, would be really pissed if BMW did the same. i had a BMW 335d and loved it for its performance AND it was less polluting. I specifically got out of a 335i into a 335d for this reason. And was a big evangelist for Clean Diesel. I'm sure other VW owners bought "Clean Diesel" for the same eco friendly reasons. This will turn into not only a fraud case, but loss of CAFE credits and most likely a class action from the people who bought the cars. This is just the beginning.

This should really piss everyone off.

21st century and we are still f'ing around with burning dirty fuels to the point of cheating ourselves that its ok.

This may open up into other manufacturers that did the same.
 
Last edited:
I wish, if they get fined 18 billion, that money would go directly and exclusively into renewable energy or help EVs. Just imagine how many free charging stations you could build across the country with 18 bn! That would be the equivalent of 120,000 Superchargers!
 
This is so sickening. I have a nephew who suffers from asthma and it just makes me furious to think that another German car manufacturer (my last, most hated, unreliable car) might have contributed to his suffering.
I hope they go further than financial penalties and throw certain selfish jerks in jail for reckless endangerment.

Oh yeah, back on topic. Go TSLA - thanks for your integrity :)
I am banking on it, literally :)
 
With the benefit of hindsight, web searches turn up some 'interesting' stuff:

Volkswagen Unveils its New EA288 TDI Engine - Automobile Magazine
...Technical development leader Thorsten Duesterdiek said it meant “putting a lot of money, a lot of effort in fulfilling the first forty, fifty seconds” of the emissions test...

http://patents.justia.com/patent/20080041041
...The conversion of the nitrogen oxides begins earlier, leading to an increase in the rate of nitrogen-oxide removal over the entire operating time (e.g., an MVEG test cycle). The carbamide necessary for the regeneration is injected into the exhaust branch upstream of the SCR catalytic converter...
(They appear to refer to the "Motor Vehicle Emissions Group" test cycle as "the entire operating time", in other words a lowered emissions state designed only for cases where the engine is being tested.)

New European Driving Cycle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
...
Cycle beating
For the emission standards to deliver real emission reductions it is crucial to use a test cycle that reflects real-world driving style. However the fixed speeds, gear shift points and accelerations of the NEDC offer possibilities for manufacturers to engage in what was called 'cycle beating' to optimise engine emission performance to the corresponding operating points of the test cycle, while emissions from typical driving conditions would be much higher than expected, undermining the standards and public health.[SUP][6][/SUP] In one particular instance, research from two German technology institutes found that for diesel cars no 'real' NOx reductions have been achieved after 13 years of stricter standards.[SUP][9]...[/SUP]

http://www.theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/ICCT_NOx-control-tech_09032015.pdf
nox1.png


https://www.iea.org/media/workshops/2013/gfeilabelling/09.IEAWorkshop_ADAC_greenscoring_EN.pdf

http://www.researchgate.net/publication/248319865_Comparison_of_on-road_emissions_with_emissions_measured_on_chassis_dynamometer_test_cycles._Transp_Res_Part_D_Transp_Environ

In practice real world emissions can be substantially higher. In this paper it turned out that a model year 2000 vehicle, which already complied with EURO 4 limits, may reach CO and NOx emissions that may be up to 10 times higher in real traffic com-pared to the NEDC cycle.

Along with the fines, I wonder if individuals will sue them based on contracting lung diseases and such.
 
Last edited:
GM keeps silent about faults that kill people and gets off with a couple of hundred millions in fines. VW fudges emissions tests and is supposed to be fined billions. Funny how so many foreign companies get slapped with record fines by the US. That's just happens by accident, for sure. For any such shakedown US companies abroad should be slapped with comparable fines.
In the GM case, the NHTSA (US government's safety organization) also was partly to blame. They failed to spot the issue even though they had the data to do so (there was a trend).

However, in this VW case, it is blatant fraud. I am actually in a bit of a disbelief that a company would do something so blatant. And the effects are staggering too (10-40x the NOx in real world conditions vs with the "cheat"). Hyundai and Ford at least had some excuses: Hyundai said they made mistakes on a part of the test procedure, Ford used a loophole and said engineers failed to recognize aero efficiency differences between their sedan and tall hatch. However in this case, this was completely deliberate (can't be explained away by a "mistake").

I should note however that the $18 billion is just an estimate. The actual fine has not been announced yet and may be much lower.
 
With the benefit of hindsight, web searches turn up some 'interesting' stuff:

Volkswagen Unveils its New EA288 TDI Engine - Automobile Magazine


http://patents.justia.com/patent/20080041041

(They appear to refer to the "Motor Vehicle Emissions Group" test cycle as "the entire operating time", in other words a lowered emissions state designed only for cases where the engine is being tested.)

New European Driving Cycle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


http://www.theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/ICCT_NOx-control-tech_09032015.pdf


https://www.iea.org/media/workshops/2013/gfeilabelling/09.IEAWorkshop_ADAC_greenscoring_EN.pdf

http://www.researchgate.net/publication/248319865_Comparison_of_on-road_emissions_with_emissions_measured_on_chassis_dynamometer_test_cycles._Transp_Res_Part_D_Transp_Environ



Along with the fines, I wonder if individuals will sue them based on contracting lung diseases and such.

Thanks for your links and findings!

It's a very American phenomenon, but it's an interesting thought if there were some class-action suits against VW in the US, as you say from groups of people for example non-smokers living in big cities who develop emphysema. It would put the search light on it in a painful way and VW would now be likened to the tobacco companies and oil companies - something they deserve as this has been highly deceitful and misleading.