Volkswagen Ordered To Recall 500,000 cars, Faces $18 Billion Fine Over Emissions Defeating Software

[ThePointblank]

i am insanely pissed off by this. I have been a VW fan for years. I even considered buying one of these diesel cars.

 

The 2 options they have are software update that would reduce performance and/or milage or adding those urea things that the luxury brands have.

 

They will most likely go the cheaper software route since it's cheaper than the urea tank. I personally believe they should go with the urea, they promised 35mpg, they better keep that around!

 

 

This BS is making me reconsider VW for my next car, but nobody else does nice diesel wagons that I know of so I'm kinda torn over this crap.

If it was that simple as a software fix, they wouldn't have gone to the trouble of engineering a cheat. My guess is that without the software fix, in order to get emissions down to a level that was acceptable, there was a significant penalty to performance and fuel economy. For the vehicles equipped with the urea injection system, the update may cause slightly more urea to be consumed which isn't really a big deal. On the vehicles that don't have the system, there will be a significant performance and fuel economy penalty; there's no way VW will be able to retrofit those vehicles due to a lack of space.

[emille26]

Yea..cause they're shit.

I understand the need, but they were gutless, inefficient and more costly to maintain with all the iterative changes to the fuel, exhaust and intake systems over the years while the oil boys slowly made the changes to their game.

Lots of truckers lost their shirts being caught in the middle having to pay everyone more and getting less mpg and less $/mile at the same time.

 

Yeah you are definitly right. I have heard a lot of stories of people getting raked over the coals because of the move to cleaner diesal fuel and how poorly it works in engines. It one of those things where both outcomes hurt someone. high sulfur diesal is better for engines, cheaper to make etc. but it has pretty nasty health affects.

[Misanthrope]

Looks like enough to put em straight out of business.

[Misanthrope]

I am amazed at how they thought they wpuld get away from this. It is like the remote car hacking all over again and just shows how out of the loop car companies are.

Regarding climate change, it is my field of work and I would really appreciate if people stoped talking out of their asses about stuff they know nothing about.

So they should go back to largely ignoring the issue? One would think if it was your field of work you'd be doing more educating instead of pointless condemning .

[pit5000]

On the vehicles that don't have the system, there will be a significant performance and fuel economy penalty; there's no way VW will be able to retrofit those vehicles due to a lack of space.

Mercedes fits the urea tanks in by removing the spare tire and fitting the entire compartment with the equipment

[Stefan1024]

Soooo they where just unlucky to get caught. But most industries uses tricks like this. I mean the motor can actually run on the low emission rating, but it loses some performance so it get's "boosted" after the test was passed but before shipping.

 

Hell, even my MoBo has on option to use moderate signal rising / falling times to pass the EMI test. But every overclokcer will disable it at the beginning to achive more performance.

[ThomasD]

Ants find the sugar.

 

If you took any of those VW cars and drove it on an open road in a manner designed to immitate the emissions testing procedure then the car would meet those emission standards.

 

So yes, while VW certainly gamed the system, the government(s) also royally screwed up by creating a testing system that does not correspond to real world type driving patterns.

 

That is actually the bigger problem.  Had the standards better approximated actual driving VW, nor anyone else, would have been able to get away with this.

[pit5000]

 

If you took any of those VW cars and drove it on an open road in a manner designed to immitate the emissions testing procedure then the car would meet those emission standards.

 

 

in this case you'll have to somehow fool the car to believe it's not actually moving while driving....

 

would be fun to see how this could be turned on it's head to game the gaming of the system

[ThomasD]

in this case you'll have to somehow fool the car to believe it's not actually moving while driving....

 

would be fun to see how this could be turned on it's head to game the gaming of the system

Still doesn't change the fact that a system that allows gaming will be gamed.

 

It's the same as governments that establish particular sorts of tax breaks then whine when people take advantage of those "loopholes."

[patrickjp93]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! YES!!! This is payback for German snubbing after we built their whole damn infrastructure for them after WWII and made it far better than anything else in the world at the time. That, and VW's cars have electrical problems out the yin-yang. I refuse to buy one for the next 6 years after some of the crap that happened to my Dad's Jetta.

[emille26]

Ants find the sugar.

 

If you took any of those VW cars and drove it on an open road in a manner designed to immitate the emissions testing procedure then the car would meet those emission standards.

 

So yes, while VW certainly gamed the system, the government(s) also royally screwed up by creating a testing system that does not correspond to real world type driving patterns.

 

That is actually the bigger problem.  Had the standards better approximated actual driving VW, nor anyone else, would have been able to get away with this.

 

While the testing standards do not recreate real world driving, my understanding is this: most manufactures creat a "test mode" so that the traction control does not freak out when they test them (apprently they are not standard dynos) and when the VWs knew they were in testmode, the would change how fuel was delivered to cheat the system. So they activly tried to get around it 

[ThePointblank]

Original post edited, to include timeline of events so far.

[Miguel Batista]

So they should go back to largely ignoring the issue? One would think if it was your field of work you'd be doing more educating instead of pointless condemning .

Yes and I would write this huge wall of tezt rebuting what everyobe had said point by point and it would be pointless. Want some education on the issue: man made global warming is real and it is happening. There.

[ThomasD]

... So they activly tried to get around it

Yes, and - in other words- the testing system does not correspond to real world type driving patterns.

 

Which means it can be gamed.

 

Volkswagen cheated because it was possible to cheat.  They can be punished after the fact, but the damage has been done (and largely it has been done to anyone who bought one of those vehicles.)  Unless the testing system is changed to prevent this sort of gaming it will continue to be an ongoing problem.

 

You do know that there are companies who sell aftermarket devices that will do pretty much the same thing to many other vehicles? 

[Nineshadow]

[dalekphalm]

what is even the point if the emission control systems are there  :blink: I doubt most VW customers care much about slightly higher performance

As a current VW Customer with a 2014 Jetta, I highly disagree. Any performance I can squeeze out of it, I appreciate Granted, I have a gasoline engine, not the TDI Diesel.

 

Looks like enough to put em straight out of business.

Not necessarily:

http://markets.ft.com/research/Markets/Tearsheets/Financials?s=VOW3:GER

 

According to this, VAG had about $40Bn USD in Cash Reserves, as of end of 2014. It is DEFINITELY a sizeable chunk of money, and it WILL hurt them though, since they only made about $12Bn USD (give or take a bit) of Net Profit in 2014.

 

VAG also has excellent cash flow. Last year they cleared $200Bn USD in Revenue.

Gross margin 18.84% Net profit margin 5.19% Operating margin 6.28%

 

They can and will survive this. But it'll hurt. Expect HEAVY discounts (Multiple thousand dollar cashback incentives, more 0% financing, "employee" pricing, etc) in the next 6 months from VW, as they try and clear stock and regain customer loyalty and trust.

 

Yes and I would write this huge wall of tezt rebuting what everyobe had said point by point and it would be pointless. Want some education on the issue: man made global warming is real and it is happening. There.

While I agree with you, I believe Climate Change is real, and humanity is accelerating it at a dangerous speed, your post is just as useless as those spouting Climate Change bullshit.

 

If you're gonna call someone out for posting bullshit, don't post bullshit in return. Respond with facts, proof, evidence, sources. Otherwise you're just as bad as the Climate Change deniers.

[Castdeath97]

If a car would be so inefficient as to produce 40 times the pollution that is deemed acceptable in other cars, no one would have bought it in the first place due to outlandishly bad fuel efficiency.

 

Yeah VW did something wrong, but was there a need to exaggerate that much?

It's not the way it works really

 

 

(sorry for sharing a video from the verge, their video was the only one I found)

[Castdeath97]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! YES!!! This is payback for German snubbing after we built their whole damn infrastructure for them after WWII and made it far better than anything else in the world at the time. That, and VW's cars have electrical problems out the yin-yang. I refuse to buy one for the next 6 years after some of the crap that happened to my Dad's Jetta.

Generalise much? 

[dalekphalm]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! YES!!! This is payback for German snubbing after we built their whole damn infrastructure for them after WWII and made it far better than anything else in the world at the time. That, and VW's cars have electrical problems out the yin-yang. I refuse to buy one for the next 6 years after some of the crap that happened to my Dad's Jetta.

 

 

Generalise much? 

Agreed. @patrickjp93 c'mon, you're smarter then that. You're really going to generalize an entire Country, as well as a Company, based off the experience of one car? That's like someone saying Intel is utter shit because some dude's Haswell CPU ran too hot because of the shitty TIM under the spreader. You and I both know that Intel is not shit, despite the fact that occasionally, some people do have isolated problems with Intel products.

 

I have a VW Jetta, and I've experienced no electrical issues at all. My old Buick Regal had way more electrical issues. One time, it got to a point where if I turned on the left or right signal indicators, the car would stall itself.

 

Does that mean every VW Jetta is great and every Buick Regal is shit? No, of course not. It means that you need to look at the bigger picture, and I haven't heard too many issues about VW having poor electrics.

[patrickjp93]

Agreed. @patrickjp93 c'mon, you're smarter then that. You're really going to generalize an entire Country, as well as a Company, based off the experience of one car? That's like someone saying Intel is utter shit because some dude's Haswell CPU ran too hot because of the shitty TIM under the spreader. You and I both know that Intel is not shit, despite the fact that occasionally, some people do have isolated problems with Intel products.

I have a VW Jetta, and I've experienced no electrical issues at all. My old Buick Regal had way more electrical issues. One time, it got to a point where if I turned on the left or right signal indicators, the car would stall itself.

Does that mean every VW Jetta is great and every Buick Regal is shit? No, of course not. It means that you need to look at the bigger picture, and I haven't heard too many issues about VW having poor electrics.

I didn't generalize the country. Germany itself is a big hub of industry and innovation. It was still a pretty thankless country after the U.S. left having rebuilt everything far better than it had been before WWII.

My dad works for a German company that says to avoid buying audi and VW specifically because of prolific electrical issues and that it's common for both the European and German sales. That was 5 years ago mind you, but I look at the long trend. VW deserves every cent of this fine.

[jagdtigger]

Oh man, stop throwing all the shit at VW, save some for the others as well. At the present state of diesel tech no manufacturer can comply with the insane US regulations for diesel emissions... Or even if its comply it will be weak and pretty much useless.

[Arty]

 

 

 pollute less

#Tesla Everywhere

[Mikjul]

Oh sheeeit

 

Hitler would be proud.

[Sauron]

As a current VW Customer with a 2014 Jetta, I highly disagree. Any performance I can squeeze out of it, I appreciate Granted, I have a gasoline engine, not the TDI Diesel.

 

Fair enough, but that's a sedan, most of vw's sales come from golfs and polos. And those seeking performance will go with gasoline of course.

[Kamina]

Now walk the aisle of shame.