OT: VW cheating emissions on TDI vehicles

[ergott]

We already got a warranty extended on the HPFP (high pressure fuel pump) after VW finally admitted that it's prone to failure. It's a very expensive fix and initially they just told people they were using bad diesel. Turns out to be an issue so we got the letter in the mail. It's even transferrable.

[sjbraun]

When did you receive the letter? I haven't received anything from VW concerning the HPFP. I bought my 2014 JSW in March.

[ergott]

Originally Posted by sjbraun

When did you receive the letter? I haven't received anything from VW concerning the HPFP. I bought my 2014 JSW in March.

Some time early summer. Mine's a 2011. I'll have to dig it up.

[akelman]

Per this article, it sounds like we could be waiting awhile before there's any meaningful resolution to this tire fire. VW has up to a year to engineer a fix for the problem and then issue its recall. In the meantime, I hope they announce a buy-back program. I'm not especially optimistic on that front.

[akelman]

Originally Posted by binxnyrwarrsoul

The way this will end, and end quickly, VW admits very little to no wrong doing (spin). Catalyzer (or whatever it's called) will be warranted forever, warranty transferable and they'll settle for about half on the fines that would be possibly levied. Imho.

VW has already admitted culpability. The question now is who knew what and when and who's going to be punished and how severely: massive fines or prison time for executives.

[Rusty Luggs]

Old, but decent basic article describing how emissions regs. work in the US.
Note that regs. are fuel neutral. Light vehicle diesels and gas fueled engines comply with same standards but also note standards are a fleet-average standard, not individual vehicle standard.
http://www.edmunds.com/car-technolog...gulations.html

Info on TDI emissions controls, worth reading if you want to ponder and speculate on the potential complexity of any fix or ways emissions compliance cert. might have been gamed.
http://www.natef.org/NATEF/media/NAT...-0-TDI-SSP.pdf

[martl]

[christian]

Ooops, it turns out that all 11m of those cars sold all intentionally evaded emission controls.

So... Ducati gets shuttered, Bentley and Lamborghini get bought by the sovereign wealth fund of Dubai, Audi is Chinese within the year (Chinese bureaucrats love their A6s), and worst case Mercedes buys MAN (if Euro regulator allow it). And the Porsche family take their namesake brand private again. The stock of the remaining VW/Skoda won't be worth much.

Crime doesn't pay kids! Obligatorywhythefismartinwinterkornstillemployed? Oh yeah, because the board doesn't meet until Friday.

[druptight]

Link for the below:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/23/bu...r-scandal.html

They apparently are deciding to cut their losses and admit widespread cheating worldwide. Turns out this cheat wasn't only installed on US sold cleandiesel cars, but on a worldwide basis. Fun times for us TDI owners.

Originally Posted by christian

Ooops, it turns out that all 11m of those cars sold all intentionally evaded emission controls.

So... Ducati gets shuttered, Bentley and Lamborghini get bought by the sovereign wealth fund of Dubai, Audi is Chinese within the year (Chinese bureaucrats love their A6s), and worst case Mercedes buys MAN (if Euro regulator allow it). And the Porsche family take their namesake brand private again. The stock of the remaining VW/Skoda won't be worth much.

Crime doesn't pay kids! Obligatorywhythefismartinwinterkornstillemployed? Oh yeah, because the board doesn't meet until Friday.

[MattTuck]

If something is too good to be true....

From what I've read and been told, the combination of excellent fuel economy and low cost (compared to other TDI vehicles on the market) on the VW TDI was too good to be true. As I understand it, the engineering behind the Mercedes and BMW TDI system is pretty advanced, with a special fluid and collector that must be changed out of the car at certain intervals that collects the NO. The VW system found a way around that costly engineering challenge...

[druptight]

Originally Posted by MattTuck

If something is too good to be true....

From what I've read and been told, the combination of excellent fuel economy and low cost (compared to other TDI vehicles on the market) on the VW TDI was too good to be true. As I understand it, the engineering behind the Mercedes and BMW TDI system is pretty advanced, with a special fluid and collector that must be changed out of the car at certain intervals that collects the NO. The VW system found a way around that costly engineering challenge...

I'm not 100% sure that this is true. It seems to me that VW successfully mastered the engineering challenge, emission levels are reduced during testing. From what I understand they then turned that functionality off except during testing because the part that reduces the emissions had to be changed every 30K miles, and they didn't want to pay for that cost under an extended warranty.

[PQJ]

Originally Posted by christian

Crime doesn't pay kids!

Of course it does. It's the getting caught that's the problem.

[akelman]

Originally Posted by druptight

I'm not 100% sure that this is true. It seems to me that VW successfully mastered the engineering challenge, emission levels are reduced during testing. From what I understand they then turned that functionality off except during testing because the part that reduces the emissions had to be changed every 30K miles, and they didn't want to pay for that cost under an extended warranty.

A friend in the engineering school told me this morning, after I said something very much like the above, that we're wrong, that, in fact, meeting emissions standards is both a cost problem (as you said and as I thought) AND ALSO a significant engineering problem. The fix, my friend insists, will have an impact on performance and mileage, making these wonder cars that much less wondrous and desirable. How much of an impact? That's the part I still don't understand at all.

Meanwhile, it remains to be seen if VW will be a going concern. Perhaps there won't be any fix at all!

[benb]

Originally Posted by shovelhd

All internal combustion engines have the tradeoff between lean running and emissions. The issue is not lean running, it's that diesels are most efficient when they run hot. Hotter exhaust means higher NOx.

Not true, diesel exhaust temps ( are lower than petrol exhaust temps . The exhaust temp has less to do with NOx, it has to do with excess oxygen in the exhaust due to the way fuel is metered. Ranges are complex but it sounds like it's something like a 500F difference.

Petrol Engine - Throttle body/bodies - meters air and fuel
Diesel - no throttle body, air intake is open all the way all the time - intakes as much air as possible - meters only fuel (typically)

So at low throttle the petrol engine takes in a small amount of air and a small amount of fuel and burns them. At high throttle it takes in lots of air and lots of fuel and burns them.

The diesel always takes in as much air as it can and uses a little or a lot of fuel. When it's using just a little bit of fuel that's when NOx emissions go up relative to a petrol engine.

Lean running = hotter exhaust temps = lower emissions except for NOx

NOx emissions are produced if the fuel mixture is excessively lean and there is excess air left in the cylinder. The cylinder pressure causes the N + O2 to react under pressure/temp and for NOx.

VW was clever here as running lean increased MPG and reduces most of the other emissions except for NOx.. since you can't see NOx it made us all happy to be driving around on the road with VWs since they aren't emitting soot, etc..

[akelman]

Having said that, please do bear in mind, as I noted above, that my comment was based entirely on hearsay. I'm the guy who didn't realize his car had a sport mode (which, because of this thread, I used for the first time this morning, pouring even more particulates into the air).