Volkswagen under investigation over illegal software that masks pollution

[gldgti]

Surprisingly the regulators in Australia are comparatively quiet. In light of no information from VAG Australia, they should as a minimum ban sales of all new VAG Diesel cars.

Why?
It doesn't make any sense to apply a blanket ban. All that does is reinforce the overreaction in the media. There are plenty of VAG diesels you could buy which are apparently not affected.


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[brad]

$20bn fine and company shares down by 1/3.
Someone's head might roll?
Or like the company I work for the person gets a promotion.
Interesting to see what the Aus regulators do about this.

Fine hasn't been imposed yet

Share price was already down 20% before all this started. (peaked at 250 Euro on the 16th March) so they are down 53% at the current 116Euro price.

Winterkorns gone. That's 1 head

If they are like where I work, all those non-compliant diesel engines will win an award to be proudly displayed in the entrance foyer.

Surprisingly the regulators in Australia are comparatively quiet. In light of no information from VAG Australia, they should as a minimum ban sales of all new VAG Diesel cars.

Australia doesn't have the same emissions standards as the EU or USA / California. You don't even know if the on-road emissions don't comply.

I'd guarantee you that the Australian Regulator has sent enquiries to VW Australia - that doesn't mean they have to advertise it on the front page of The Australian.

Of course, VW AU won't have the answers & will have to refer the enquiry back to Germany. Answers might take a little longer than you'd hope as Australia is a relatively small buyer of diesels compared to the Euros & Americans.

[Ryeman]

THE monster question is, irrespective of whether 'our' cars are involved,
what is going to happen to used car values?.....surely not at all good
and
what compensation?.

[Ryeman]

Hopefully, as VW management have indicated, we shall get clarity on with a definitive list early this week, hopefully late Monday.

[bluey]

Don't know that clarity will come on Monday. All I think we can expect is a list of which models of car have EA189 engines with the same ECU code and that further testing will need to be done to determine the impact of the code on emissions in combination with local fuel quality.

Assume global engines have the same ECU code. Emissions regulations are different. Assume that the ECU has code which works hard to minimise NOX emissions under the testing load scenarios. At other times, the engine has to manage CO2, particulates and performance. As we have seen in the ICCT Sept 2105 white paper, almost all small diesels on the market have problems blowing more NOX in real world tests. Not sure this is "cheating" more than any organisation puts its best foot forward for accreditation or certification and does things differently in the "real world".

If the engines to euro5 standard manage to pass our euro4 based legislation, there is not an issue with compliance. There is a media driven perception problem if the code is more specifically to "turn off" emissions control when not in test, but I think this is really rather an unlikely scenario. More likely that emissions are optimised in test scenarios and less optimal in real world and all small diesels are guilty. (Does the BMWX5 do better because it is bigger??) The corporate embarrassment problem is that emissions were 35x higher in "real world", but that test might have been biased to hills.

Maybe the problem started when the pre-EA189 engines with LNT changed to oxidising catalyst+DPF unit and then the code gets tweaked to maintain emissions performance without having to re-engineer????

[kamold]

The X5 does better because it uses Adblue exhaust injection treatment to catalytically reduce NOx to C02 and water. So it's NOx emissions on road were more in line with lab scenario.

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[bluey]

I find it curious that around the time the cheating is said to have started the OBD port was blocked preventing access to add a tune.

The US regulations state something like the ECU has to be tamper proof in order to maintain the engineered emissions.

Our regulations specify that vehicle OBD must collect in-use emissions performance data, which can be interrogated by regulators. (But vehicles don't have NOX sensors.)

[bluey]

The X5 does better because it uses Adblue exhaust injection treatment to catalytically reduce NOx to C02 and water. So it's NOx emissions on road were more in line with lab scenario.

Since at least 2012, US Passats have had Adblue and Passat was one of the three tested vehicles. The BMWX5 exceeded the NOX limit by up to 10x in the rural up/downhill test. I don't think the media said this.
In-use emissions testing of light-duty diesel vehicles in the U.S. | International Council on Clean Transportation

Not sure that the test rig didn't screw up the results either, with extra exhaust back pressure. A right angle T junction is as about as bad as you can get for gas flow through a join.

[kamold]

Would be surprised if an adblue equipped system would need to cheat the NOx emissions test.

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[bluey]

X5 pipework is more flow-friendly in design with additional chimney effects.