Via The GWPF:
The European car industry was shaken on Monday as Volkswagen’s share price fell almost 20 per cent over its admission that it cheated on US emissions tests, triggering calls for a broader inquiry into the sector. More than €13bn was wiped off VW’s market capitalisation, spurring a wider fall in carmakers’ shares, after Martin Winterkorn, the group’s chief executive, apologised and ordered an external investigation into the affair. he news prompted a fall in carmakers’ shares with Daimler, BMW, Renault and PSA Peugeot Citroën each being sold off amid investor concerns over the potential scale of the cost to VW and the broader industry. VW faces billions of dollars in fines and warranty costs, possible criminal charges for executives and class-action lawsuits from US drivers. –Andy Sharman and Jeevan Vasagar, Financial Times, 22 September 2015
The federal government paid out as much as $51 million in green car subsidies for Volkswagen diesel vehicles based on falsified pollution test results, according to a Times analysis of the federal incentives. Such green car incentives have also gone to buyers of hybrid, electric and hydrogen fuel cell cars. But the EPA does not track aggregate figures for incentives paid out to buyers of specific models or brands. –Jerry Hirsch, Los Angeles Times, 22 September 2015
Carmakers bombard consumers with marketing about how “clean” and “eco” their products are, but incidents like VW’s software cheating are a reminder that the auto industry has no abiding love for the green ideals it’s peddling. Volkswagen will pay dearly for its transgression, but you can be sure there are many more companies out there—both inside and out of the auto industry—that are taking advantage of the average consumer’s enjoyment of feeling environmentally friendly, without actually delivering the benefits promised. —The American Interest, 22 September 2015
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I love this. A huge multinational corporation flying the green flag and beloved of treehuggers worldwide once again found out to be nothing more than stinking hypocrites lusting after filthy lucre. See you in Paris, VW…
Lots of Eco-terrorists just lost all of their investments !!!!
Who gives a rats?
This all happened during the ‘pause.’ What difference? Actually, we probably need more CO2, not less!
Time to buy VW stock.
Yeah, my brother said the same thing. Buy opportunity, especially if you look at the long term. After all, Volkswagen also owns Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Porsche, Lamborghini, and Ducati, among others.
Many parts manufactured for VW cars are also used in Audi, Seat and Škoda car models including engines, so in the end this might affect these brands too.
Wait for year end tax selling………
The car was programmed to know when it was on a testing treadmill and change its tuning accordingly. Probably one set of tires spinning and the second set not spinning was the “test detector”. VW got caught when a private testing company put the test gear in the trunk and tested on the road. There will be no way for VW to claim any purpose for such detectors and enabling software other than “deliberately cheating the test” That’s a criminal offense and powerful evidence of “conspiracy”. Somewhere, somehow, corporate heads must roll on this one. It’s a BIG deal that goes far beyond “taking advantage of loopholes in the rules”. Problem for U,S, car owners is going to be a significant loss in mileage and power when the cars are “un-tricked”. In addition to its other problems, a class action suit against VW representing owners who bought one thing and wound up with another after it was “fixed” is almost certainly waiting in the wings.
Last time I saw anything close to the seriousness of this one, where so many people had to have known, was the Enron debacle.
Could you please tell me where this information comes from? I am trying to find out just what it is that VW did – both in terms of reducing NOx and detecting when the car was being tested and your post is the first one I have seen with some details.
EPA’s reference to a “switch” is misleading as they themselves say it was based on detecting certain driving conditions. Also, the headline technology for reducing NOx in tailpipe emissions is through injection of urea into the exhaust gases upstream from the catalytic converter, which would not be affected by engine tuning.
Rob, urea injection is used for high displacement diesels (Daimler Blutec is an example). These VW engines are all 4 cyl 2.0 liter turbo direct injection (TDI). No reference to urea injection.
NOX increases markedly with lean burn, but so does MPG. Fairly certain that on test dynos, the software controlled the TDI to min NOX, then under road conditions to max MPG. Just stoichiometry control. Easy with electronic TDI. Just illegal.
It appears there’s no cheating involved. They gamed the definitions under the law to get the result they needed. They used a loophole. It may contravene the spirit of the regulation, but met the letter of the regulation. EPA needs to have smarter people writing their regulations.
DJ Precisely. EPA also need less lazy testers and start driving the test cars. Although the entire EPA charade is based on junk science of straight line projection of figures just like climate ‘science’. Asthma is caused by homes being too sterile and clean for babies and toddlers. But you cannot tax people based on lack of dust and dirt so EPA do not want to cure/help asthma, they want money and/or to close less green favored industries.
I first thought of the GM ignition switch, which is even more apropos.
First they were caught rigging LIbor bank rates and the main man got 14 years in jail.
Now they’ve been caught rigging emissions data which will result in $billions in fines and almost certainly jail for senior execs.
Would anyone fancy being in the shoes of the worlds climate data-fixers?
Did the cars have two operating modes, normal and test? Was that against any law? I mean specifically, did a law get broken? If you had to pass a breathalyzer test, would you attempt to hyperventilate before the test?
Conspiracy to pervert the law and false advertising for sure.
Leveraging green tax regimes on false grounds would bring down Capone. VW also.
If deaths from NOx air pollution can be proven then they may have even more problems.
Yes. Under normal driving conditions with ‘ defeat device’ ‘off’ the diesels emitted up to 40x max permitted NOX. They could not have been legally sold.
I am skeptical of the 10-40X claims in isolation of reality. Under normal operation, like when you step on the accelerator hard, (the fuel injectors dump fuel hard) A controlled test scenario is one thing. Dealing with a tailgater or wacky real-world situations is another. Starting a car is yet another, The injector/air and ignition settings at start are not “EPA ideal”
So when the EPA test wonk claims 10- 40X, what is he comparing it to? Which situation.
Starting a car cold yields 10-40X emission excursions. …..EPA hyperbole. again.
Just you wait.
VW is still more competent than the UN.
“The chief of
the United Nations nuclear
agency acknowledged Monday
that samples used to determine
whether Iran tried to develop
a nuclear weapon were collected
by the Iranians instead of
agency experts, but insisted the
probe stands up to strict agency
standards.”
Listen to this ad:
“miraculously fuel efficient” at time stamp 1:04.
I’ll say! GERMAN ENGINEERING
https://youtu.be/9-Ue7QyrqIE
It is interesting that VW immediately admitted fault when called out for their transgression. Especially since, as stated above, there were no laws of regulations broken. It is highly likely that as Erik Idle said on Monty Python: “Wink wink nudge nudge. Say no more, say no more.” With both the EPA and the auto industry under immense pressure from the greens, collusion appears to be their only way out. Congress could have a field day with this if they chose to actually investigate.
According to news reports, VW’s admission of fault wasn’t immediate. They stonewalled until cornered.
There were several laws broken. Submitting non-representative data is falsificaiton of official records. Presenting knowingly false information to an agency is fraud. Signing these statements is perjury.
I’m in environmental compliance. This is going down the list of the few ways you can actually get arrested by the EPA.
So if I tune a vehicle to get a certain result “while under test” as required by the law which doesn’t mention “while on the road”, how have I broken the law? And don’t jabber about “intent”. The law is what is written, not how you’d like it to be.
No. You are wrong. The car did not report false data. It’s data was true and accurate. What was not representative of the test requirements, was the secondary tests wherein the EPA loaded a bunch of ad-hoc equipment into the VW and drove it around, NOT in a test environment. I am sure any other vehicle will also fail, and they have. BTW.
It seems to me that VW was astute to optimize the test scenario and the EPA was sinister in its departure from the calibrated test bed.
The data was no falsified. The car was run optimally in a test environment when it was required to do so.
If you don’t like the result then change the test to one where the test runs 24-7 all the time connect to the EPA overlords via satelite. I am sure the psychopaths in the EPA would have a w3t dream over that potentiality.
DJ, I’ll be frank, my experience is with stationary sources, not mobile. In my incinerators, when I do a stack test, we have to maximize rates and minimize temperatures and oxygen. In short, we are required to test on ABSOLUTE MAXIMUM emissions, and straying past the test points on those parameters is a finable deviation. This is obviously not the case on cars, but there are other rules that must be followed.
Paul, there are blanket rules at play that all samples must be representative. If, for instance, you have to take a weekly sample of cooling tower water, and you shut off your heat exhangers for three hours before the test in order to clear the system, then you are getting an artificially low sample. That’s particularly eggregious, but pre-filtering or selecting samples is specifically banned. Presenting such data as representative of normal operations is considered fraud.
The phrase of importance is “artificial circumvention”. This is a broad strokes requirement that you cannot use any “artificial” means to meet limits without actually reducing emissions. The fact that the car’s emissions were so different between test and driving (not a bit higher, but multiple times that of the test) falls into this category. The engine during testing was not representative of the engine during driving. This rule was written specifically to address people making such juvenile claims as yours.
Paul, I think you are right. It appears to me this dust up is just the EPA trying to make up for it’s own stupidity in rule making. They got caught with their pants down so they’re trying top place the blame on VW for not following the ‘intent of the rules’ rather than the actual wording of the rules..
A couple of things.
Joe Crawford…yup!
The EPA jumped in with a cockamamie kludged apparatus and made all sorts of claims of VW and the EPA did not disclose that the hostile test driver was doing brake stands up a hill and engine baking down the hill after jack rabbit stop-starts. The technician, like they accused VW, gamed their EPA test to super-fail the VW. That is fraud.
I have an aftermarket computer on my car.
I tested my car as per the “EPA requirements” for the inspection sticker, then I pulled the computer completely out and installed an aftermarket computer. It took 45 minutes to swap it out.
I predict that OBDII devices will appear that will enable the user to customize their car regardless of what the EPA psychopath overlords want.
Here is how to REFLASH your ECU.
Thanks Paul. I was wondering how long it would take the enthusiasts to crack the engine computers. Years ago, until it got too expensive and my job requiring way too much time, I enjoyed rallying, autocrossing and a bit SCCA racing. Back then it was all mechanical tuning, both engine and suspension. And, there were always few (more) nuts around that would spare no expense for a 1/10 second edge. Combine that with an enjoyment for hacking and today’s cars don’t stand much of a chance. I wonder how much it would hurt sales if the manufactures tried to shut it down?
@benofhouston September 23, 2015 at 5:26 am
I’m guessing, and I have nothing to support my guess, that any number of people reviewed this protocol before implementing the “switch” and that they were intimately familiar with the nuts and bolts of the standards. I will suggest that when the dust settles that there will have been much heat and little fire. I’m thinking that a lot of what is true regarding stationary sources doesn’t fly for mobile sources for a number of reasons. Rangeability for one. What’s the turndown ratio for most stationary sources, 10 to 1 at most, more like 3 to 1 typical? A motor vehicle while cruising is possibly, 80 to 1? And when passing maybe 500 to 1? No engine can be economically designed to hit the “sweet spot” under all possible conditions. And if Paul Westhaver is correct regarding the ad hoc testing that generated the 10X to 40X readings, we still don’t know what the “real” emission levels are. I have doubts that the EPA wrote a mobile emissions standard that is a tight as you think. Time will tell.
It appears that the epa and vw have been batting this thing around since 2014 and has only come to a head due to the epa refusing to approve the 2016 range of vw`s
more media hype/info to follow in the coming days before a `nearer the truth` story emergesthe
I think there are a few misunderstandings being presented in these comments. The technology for clean diesel certainly does exist, but its expensive. VW is/was the only German manufacturer selling diesels in the US without the complicated (expensive) urea exhaust treatment systems. And now we know why. This is nothing more than VW trying to gain a competitive advantage. And now they’ll (rightfully so) get nailed to the cross for it.
Thanks Patrick. This answers my question about whether it was the urea exhaust treatment, but it doesn’t answer what the change was that resulted in reduced NOx and why it was important to only apply this during the emissions test.
Rob, explained above. Lean burn maxes both MPG and NOx. The defeat device software was manupulation the TDI stoichiometry.
Ristvan
Lean burn on a diesel is called part throttle.
Perhaps this will also raise awareness that hybrids and electric cars use electricity which is (statistically) mostly produced from coal. Until the buyer can specify what source he buys electricity from, there is nothing “green about these cars, particularly when it comes to battery life expectancy and disposal issues.
Even then, the electricity running into someone’s home can come from multiple different sources regardless of what they’re paying for. Electricity is electricity. Unless your source of electricity and the delivery grid it’s connected to are isolated from other sources then there’s no way to really discern which electron is from wind/solar and which electron is from coal. Paying more money for wind/solar sources is nothing but a feel-good exercise.
Well, VW owns Audi, Lamborghini and Porsche too so anyone who thought they were ‘greenies’ were sadly mistaken anyway. I guess this is how the 720hp, 6.5l, V12 Lambo Aventador gets 18MPG!
To be fair to them, that is not hard to believe when a vehicle is that small and lightweight and is operated prudently. For some perspective, I own a 2008 F-250 crew cab powered by a 6.4 V8, 650 ft./lb. diesel which regularly gives me 17 mpg on the interstate. However,in city driving it is around 13 mpg, and towing a 3-horse trailer with living quarters on a vacation outing, my best has been 9 mpg. It’s mostly about the weight and aerodynamics, but my truck weighs as much as about 3 Priuses, so it roughly gets the same fuel economy for it’s mass. You just can’t cheat the laws of physics.
chilemike! You forgot, VW also owns Bentley and Bugatti. IIRC, the Bugatti gets the worst mileage of all cars.
It’s all in the software engineering.
On a HP/MPG basis it could be the most fuel efficient car in the world!
The more efficient an engine is, the greater its CO2 and water vapor emissions are in comparison to the remaining compounds in its exhaust, or so I was led to believe in the 70’s, when “clean burning” meant only producing these (harmless) byproducts.
Has this been falsified by recent advances in physics? (Inquiring mind wants to know.)
Let’s have a show of hands.
How many people think that those crafty German engineers were the only ones who thought this up, and are the sole company to implement this feature in their Engine Control Module software?
Hmmm,,, now did VW create the software or was it contracted and if so was it, or a variation of it, sold to other manufactures.
Hmm, RICO anyone? LOL
michael
What has actually been ‘discovered’ here? If it’s the case that the engine management system does something like lean the air fuel ratio when the engine is idling then interpreting that as a deliberate attempt to fix the emissions test is plain wrong – I actually hope it is the case because this could backfire in a very big way on the EPA. In the UK a vehicles emissions are tested by running the engine until normal operating temperature is reached and then the exhaust gasses are tested. There is no switch that is used to enable a testing mode in the EMU; the EMU simply regulates the air fuel mix to achieve best combustion at that particular engine operating point. Interestingly VW’s director has called for an external investigation?
The EPA runs the car on a treadmill called a “Dynometer” to have the same effect. The car can sense that the back wheels aren’t turning, and it apparently adjusted it’s engine to greatly lower the NOx below requirements. However on the road, it emitted 40 times the limit.
I believe the EU uses the same method.
Time to get a really good deal on a lightly used VW Diesel.
Really high risk in the face of a government that passed “cash for clunkers” and really wants to get us all out of cars and into mass transit & rabbit warrens.
But it won’t pass emissions testing, so you won’t be able to drive it for long.
News Update: The Papal blessing of the VW bug has been cancelled.
Volkswagen, soon to be dubbed ‘Smokeswagen’.
Too late, my 72 superbeetle had that nickname when we’d skip class and go tokin’…
LOL I remember the days when upon driving up virtually any hill in Northern California one was bound to see a VW (especially the vans) stuck on the side of the road.
If the fan belt breaks you can use a rubber band!
My baad.
Maybe VW should just offer to blow some smoky air through a large filter in LA to make amends. Or pump some CO2 into a hole in the ground or something. Somebody at the EPA would fall for that kind of trick.
Anyway, I hope they still go ahead and buy the Red Bull Formula1 Racing team.
What difference does it make now?
Green is a feeling. If people feel good is that a bad thing?
Feelings for cheaters is never a good or stable plan.
Goes back to the old rule, money is truly the root of all evil. For the EPA, getting and keeping a job, money, requires falsifying data and analysis, same for political positions, green and corporate donations equal getting elected. Why think corporations are immune from this? For the socialists, it works just the same, getting to the higher echelons of the party gets one more benefits, pay ……..money. No profession, political philosophy or even religion is immune. Morality and truth are corrupted and always, in the end, it is money.
Let’s see the Audi software too.
The Audio A3 diesel is on the list.
This reminds me of an experience I had working with a company trying to make a new wood stove that meets the new draconian EPA particulate requirements. In order to pass the testing and certify the stove they had to create a specific method to stack the wood, pre burn a nice warm coal bed, etc so that they could get a clean burn for the test. The test is also done with 4×4’s and 2×4’s, not irregular pieces of wood. They passed by ensuring that there was no chance that a piece of wood could shift to the front of the stove instead of straight down. Any wood shifting to the front would result in over 1000% increase in particulate. Impossible to actually meet the requirements under any real world condition.
As with anything the EPA touches, one-size-must-fit-all. Especially frustrating when you can’t dampen down your new woodstove because of EPA mandates. The woodstove burned seasoned pine at the correct rate, but when burning dry oak the stove burned way too hot and too fast. Don’t the genius scientist working for the EPA realize that homeowners out in the middle of nowhere burn different types of wood? And that are nearest downwind neighbor a mile a way isn’t concerned about “particulate” and could not care less. Solution? Plug 1/2 the draft vents built into the stove. Will I now be prosecuted for illegal woodstove modification?
Here are somw quotes from an article on how VW did it, and why it is illegal.
“Volkswagen “manufactured and installed” sophisticated software, known under federal law as “defeat devices,” which can be programmed to detect when vehicles are being tested to meet emission requirements, officials said.”
“[The device] senses whether the vehicle is being tested or not based on various inputs including the position of the steering wheel, vehicle speed, the duration of the engine’s operation and barometric pressure,” the violation notice reads. “These inputs precisely track the parameters of the federal test procedure” used for EPA certification, it reads.”
Volkswagen Uses Software to Fool EPA Pollution Tests
EPA charges that the German automaker installed emissions-control software designed to work only during tests
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/volkswagen-uses-software-to-fool-epa-pollution-tests/
Thanks Cam,
My worry is that i am not sure I trust anything coming out of SciAm anymore…..
It is a reprint from Climatewire, so that may be even less trustworthy.
How can a piece of software be a ‘device’?
Was VW cheating? Sure. Was the program clever? Sure. Was it illegal? Not sure…
They will need access to the source code for the emu to prove that that was the intent. Do they have that already, or are they just guessing ?. I feel that VW may have dug themselves into a deep hole by playing mea culpa here.
Engine control is always a devils compromise between performance, drivability, polution and economy and you can’t optimise all 4 that under all driving conditions. It’s a well known fact that manufacturers have been gaming the system over emissions control for decades to provide cars that are actually usable vs overarching state regulation which has no relevance to real world conditions…