VW Faces $17B Fine for Emissions Scam

Well apparently we know where the 'conspiracy' exists . . . Mercedes and VW. Talk about a suicide pact.

Bob Wilson

 

and whoever else turns up next. i'm starting to think this is common practice.

 

iirc, all the
Peugeot dealerships packed up and left the US in the 1990's due to our crash AND emission standards. They too are pumping out lots of diesel cars in Asia, middle east & Europe. Supposedly they advertise how clean & even recyclable their cars are. Maybe the cheat systems are recyclable too!

.

 

Also sounds like European regulations might have the loopholes to allow it. In which case, don't fall for the government scapegoating, and give the lawmakers some of your ire too.

 

if it's allowed, it shouldn't be secret.

no worries, i have enough ire to go around.

 

If it hadn't been for the "Meet The Volkswagens" YouTube and the Greenhuman "Portland-to-Portland" stunt, I probably wouldn't have cared so much. The other diesel-trolls had moved on so I was fairly calm (and forgotten) them. But in these two press-stunts, VW not only cheated and but then taunted us and the taunting keeps the fires burning.

Bob Wilson

 

It's been a while since I checked in here..

Has VW Posted any updates to the current issue? What's going on here? Can people buy the TDI's again or no?

 

Sales are still frozen. However, VW turned over their fix for the 3.0 L diesels on Tuesday. No answer by CARB/EPA.

The 2.0 L diesels are still hanging dirty with no USA fix. In the EU, they have a fix but it sounds like it only works by rolling back the EU-5 standards. In effect, VW has pissed off just about everyone.

Bob Wilson

 

Their vehicle reliability, or should I say lack of, pretty much pissed off all but the fewest of the dire hard TDI lovers in the US already. Seen the DPF failure rates and replacement costs lately on the 2.0's. I still see this as a "it's not a Prius" bashing thread though...because their TDIs were "at first" the only real competition for MPG. Well...PC is just another car forum.

 

If there had been a viable diesel option in affordable cars to VW for those fans may have left the fold long ago, and there'd be less cheating VWs on the road now.

 

it was the 'my car goes vroom, vroom, what does your car do?' ads that got me.

sorry if i've offended any vdub fan boys. not.

 

Being a Prius Forum...and all that infers...know that most people out there could care less about a few ppm if they get good mpg and reliability. VW just doesn't deliver on the later. I won't ever buy another VW, just not because of the cheat...they all do it some. As I posted before, you give someone the test questions and they will ace the test...as given.

 

there's a great post/blog on isachin.com, guys a product manager at twitter, or maybe just a twit, about the vroom vroom commercial. really whacks the prius hard, and the fanboys come out of the woodwork in the comment section to talk about how clean the tdi is. 58 mpg!
love it.

 

Car Forums...everyone bashes the other. Same here.

 

His postings come from 2009 and in his defense, he also put down a deposit on a Tesla model S. But you are right, he comes over as a proper, English, old-school, twit:

Bob Wilson

 

great stuff.

 

This may be a dodgy survey: Volkswagen Dieselgate Scandal Affecting General Perception

According to Autolist, German companies and the entire auto industry have been worrying about the potential impacts in wake of the diesel scandal, and this survey confirms their fears. The survey also asked vehicle owners to reflect on the severity of the scandal with 66 percent choosing the highest severity rating for a legal infraction evaluation. When comparing it to the BP oil spill, 25 percent rated that dieselgate is equal or more severe, while 62 percent chose the highest severity rating for environmental impact evaluation.​

Near as I can tell, Autolist is a car locator and referral site, sales-critters. When have they ever been held up as paragons of veracity?

Bob Wilson

 

Advanced biodiesel is essentially pure n-paraffins (small chain waxes) which is what you get when you fully hydrogenate veggie oils to take the oxygen out. That is what Neste is doing and importing to CA. Palm oil based veggie oil is advantageous for that due to lower carbon numbers in the palm oil carbon chains. Palm oil is lousy as conventional biodiesel so palm oil by nature lends itself well to the advanced process. They claim to be using more and more waste palm oil for the advanced biodiesel, so its green they say. Alternate process is Fischer Tropshe of nat gas/coal but wow with cheap oil right now we're talking hard to justify these things.

 

Merde! Scheisse! Merda! Sranje! Dritt! Lort! Stront! σκατά! Paska! Cac! Gówno! Skit! Cachu!

Source: EU lawmakers back diesel test loopholes despite VW scandal

EU lawmakers on Wednesday waved through plans to allow diesel car makers to exceed pollution limits, in a big victory for the auto industry after the Volkswagen scandal.
. . .
MEPs voted 323 in favour of leaving the loopholes—known as "conformity factors"—with 317 MEPS voting against them. There were 60 abstentions.​

. . .

Of course some customers are voting with their wallets: UK sales of VW cars fall 14% after emissions scandal | Business | The Guardian

Volkswagen sales fell sharply in the UK in January following a customer backlash over the diesel emissions scandal that has rocked the German carmaker.

Sales of new Volkswagen-branded cars fell by 14% year-on-year last month, reducing the company’s market share in the UK, which has previously been one of its most successful markets.

Other brands owned by VW were also hit. Seat sales fell 25%, while Skoda’s were down 2.4%. Audi sales, however, increased 1.4%.
. . .
VW sales fell despite the British car market enjoying its best January for 11 years.​

Even the German customers: VW's sales in Germany slip amid diesel scandal

FRANKFURT -- Volkswagen Group's mass-market brands VW, Skoda and Seat saw sales fall in Germany in January in a market where total registrations rose 3.3 percent from a year earlier.

Passenger car registrations in Germany increased to 218,365 vehicles, data from the KBA federal motor transport authority showed.

The VW brand sales fell 8.6 percent. Skoda's volume was down 7.3 percent while Seat's sales dropped by 2.2 percent. VW Group's luxury Audi unit had a sales gain of 23 percent.
Bob Wilson​

Excellent decision: We Bought a 2013 Volkswagen Jetta SportWagen TDI

Those unknowns are exactly why we bought one. We'll measure acceleration, horsepower, torque and fuel economy as the car exists now in pre-recall mode, and we'll repeat the same tests when Volkswagen releases an approved remedy. As with most TDIs, our Sportwagen now is registering fuel economy higher than its EPA rating.


Making the decision to buy easier was the fact that VW TDI prices are dropping like a lead balloon. The 2013 Jetta SportWagen TDI leads the way with pricing down 12.9 percent in Cars.com's national used car inventory from Sept. 15 to Dec 31. Aside from price, we sought a SportWagen TDI for its wagon usability as well as its EA189 diesel engine and first-generation exhaust-treatment filters — these components are in the bulk of VW's scandal-affected vehicles in the U.S.


TDI SportWagens aren't exactly plentiful in the used-car market, so we were lucky to find a fully loaded 2013 SportWagen TDI with a sunroof, navigation and six-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission with 47,000 miles in the Chicago area. Or maybe it wasn't luck and just the huge diesel scandal because right away we knew the emission-cheatin' wagon had been sitting on the lot for months. Greenery in the Cars.com advertisement's photos screamed of summer, while we were shopping in gray mid-January.
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Read more at We Bought a 2013 Volkswagen Jetta SportWagen TDI

Bob Wilson

 

The manufacturers aren't the sole perpetrator for the high emissions of diesels in Europe.