We get high high 20s around town, and mid to high 30s (probably averaging 36) on the highway. I had thought the diesel was much higher, but the guy in the article mentioned 28 in town, 39 on the highway. So I was going by what he said. Maybe his was low.
Can’t wait to see clever graphic designers jump on this and come up with funny parody VW logos.
I remember the funny BP (“Beach Polluter”) bumper stickers I saw with the BP logo after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
VW did do a pretty great job with their little kid Darth Vader “The Force” commercial.
To correct? It’s a software update…
It’s not just a software update, is it? I think the cars will take a big performance hit if the emissions control system is turned on all the time–if that can’t be fixed, VW will have to compensate the owners, if not buy back the cars. This is going to be a huge, huge expense for them.
I’m probably not going to go to VW to negotiate for a car, but I suspect that the dealers may be pretty desperate to sell cars for a while.
I think I read that VW dealers cannot sell these diesel cars now. I don’t know what California will do. Maybe VW diesel owners will not be issued the smog certificate we need to get almost every year. Then the vehicles cannot be driven legally.
Once the software is reset it’s the same vehicle a consumer thought it was in the first place.
From an engineering standpoint would a Mercedes be a similar choice?
I don’t think so, because these cars were sold with claims that they had low emissions and were peppy to drive. It seems that they were only peppy to drive because they don’t actually have low emissions except when a test was being done.
I think there is a big fraud case that is going to slam VW.
When only the software is changed, the result will be lower horsepower and lower mileage. It will never be the same as before as far as performance goes, which was the raison d’etre for the purchase for most buyers in the first place.
@Hunt Yes, I now agree with you on that. It appears that even vehicles submitted for testing had the hacks implemented, so not only were the emissions understated, but, once on the road, they performed better as well.
What I read in the paper this morning was that the software could detect that an emissions test was being performed, and it turned on the control system only then.
As the editorial said, what were they thinking? How did they think they could get away with it?
Apparently, the “emissions testing” doesn’t replicate real world driving quite as well as it could.
I have yet to figure out why VW hasn’t put a lid on their reliability problems. It is the number one reason they fail to gain any real traction in the US market.
We drove a 2015 Jetta rental car a few months ago and I remember it having transmission, windshield wiper, and turn signal problems. It only had 3k miles on it too.
It’s an embarrassing problem for German engineering. Even they can’t do it, didn’t they invent Diesel engine?
In some areas of the country these vehicles will lose value significantly. They may not be able to be renewed for licensing in some states. The ripple effects on this will be staggering, and I think it will impact the entire VW line for the short to medium term at least. Remember how long it took Firestone to recover?
Regarding the brand as a whole, people will think if they are lying about this, what else are they lying about in their other lines? I can just imagine an SNL parody . . .
“The intentional extra pollution definitely killed people. The people responsible should be charged with murder or manslaughter as well as the other crimes. If the peanut exec who killed people with salmonella can go to jail for it, so should these people.”
The problem with that (and it isn’t that I don’t agree necessarily) is that it is a lot harder to trace the emissions from these cars to specific incidents. For example, kids getting Asthma, while NO2 pollution causes this and other issues, it also is hard to figure out what specifically caused something. For example, a kid has a bad asthma attack and dies, was it NO2 pollution, or was it particulates from other sources? Maybe it was caused by mold and mildew in the area, toxic emissions from industry, etc. It also gets harder, because given the number of commercial trucks that are diesel based, and how much pollution they put out, including NO2 emissions, how do you know if a diesel VW did it or the huge number of trucks out there? This is very different than an ignition key malfunction, or an exploding gas tank (the old Ford pinto special) that kills someone, there you can trace it. With the Salmonella guy, there is a direct trace from him to the dead people, he knew the PB was tainted, told them to send it out, and people ate it and died; with VW, besides that the cause of death this kind of thing is not easy to trace, there also is deniability, ie did the executives of VW know that this was done, or did those producing the car make the hack to meet the goals (ie a diesel that performed well)? With the PB guy, there was no deniability, they had him dead to rights ordering the PB to be shipped. With VW, they would need a direct line of evidence that someone died from the extra pollution (and statistical claims, like every X extra tons of NO2 a year produces Y deaths, and the VW hack would put Z tons in the year, which would create L deaths based on this formula, therefore over the life of these cars, M people would die, are bogus, because those are projections, not proof).
That doesn’t mean I don’t think this is a major issue, it is, this falls under a lot of not great things, it is fraud, it is an anti competitive practice (since by cheating, VW gave itself an advantage over its competitors, more on that in a bit), it violated all kinds of laws and yes, has an impact on environment and health (more so in Europe than the US, diesel cars have never been very popular here, note VW has 500k here over X model years, in Europe and elsewhere it is like at least 16 million).
As to why it is anti competitive, very simply the reason they put this hack in is with the pollution control program fully working, the car would likely not perform nearly as well. VW sells the clean TDI diesel in part on its performance, diesel engine vehicles usually are a lot more sluggish performing than a gasoline engine, it is a slow burning fuel with a lot of torque, but not acceleration, and if they didn’t do this, it likely would be like a lot of diesels were/are, not great performers. I am not an expert on diesel engines, but basically to get it to burn cleaner, you usually have to change the timing of the diesel fuel injection and the air mix, probably do it further away from top dead center (and I would also like to know how they handle NO2 emissions; on a gasoline car that is what the catalytic converter is for, turns nox into nitrogen and oxygen, won’t work on a diesel). So if a competitor offered a diesel that met the requirements, they likely would not match up in performance (not so sure about fuel mileage, though, they might actually see better MPG with the pollution control hack out of there, usually when you detune an engine it does better mileage, not worse).
I found it kind of funny when on a financial program on here in the office said “The German government is deciding whether to investigate VW”…when VW executives have admitted that this is true, and a ton of evidence exists that the hack was in place. Deciding to investigate? More like deciding when to bring charges, given the evidence.
I get 35-40 in city driving and 50-60 on the freeway.
The problem with just tweaking the software to make it EPA compliant is that this would cause the car to be a fundamentally different animal, as both fuel efficiency and performance would go down. The “real” solution is to install a urea injection system, which is what BMW and Mercedes do to beat the problem. This is costly; One article pegs it at $5-8k/car. http://www.wired.com/2015/09/vw-owners-arent-going-like-fixes-diesels/
I expect most Americans with these cars will be unwilling to accept the software update, but will insist on either a urea upgrade or a generous buyback. I may be living in fantasy land but, in the end, I think that’s what VW will do.
This is a very clever program! My first thought was that when a car is tested, a device is plugged into the car’s computer (like a code reader) under the dash and the software simply detected when a testing device was plugged into the car’s computer port. But no! I am reading that the software and the car’s computer detected when the car was in a test-like environment by measuring engine speed, car speed and steadiness of steering wheel. Who knows, the car could switch into “low emissions mode” while going through the car wash! LOL, either way, a more sophisticated (and diabolical) program than i initially thought.
well, the CEO of VW has just paid the price for this fraudulent deception, and hopefully his is only the first of many heads that will roll at VW.
the company deserves to go out of business. It may very well when the costs of all the fines and lawsuits that will be coming are added up.
That would send a message to other companies thinking of ways to break US laws .
here’s a new article in todays NYT’s regarding the issue of car companies cheating- this isnt the first time.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/24/business/international/volkswagen-test-rigging-follows-a-long-auto-industry-pattern.html
Nobody died in this crisis, so consumers will quickly forgive VW the same way they forgave GM for its ignition switches that killed 124 people. Sadly, if the cars are competitively priced and marketed well, that’s the way it goes.
I did get a chuckle from the now ex-CEO of VW and his letter of resignation. He was shocked, shocked, and he knew nothing! Sheesh. Pathetic.