VW Shares tumble after US accuses them of falsifying emissions data

dan_b

A2OC Donor
Dear oh dear oh dear. The mother of all cover-ups. The VW Group has admitted it has installed "cheat software" in its diesel car ECUs in order to artificially change the car's emissions in order to pass emissions tests.

In the US, the Environmental Protection Agency has forced VAG to recall over 400,000 TDi powered cars to have the software removed and the engines re-tuned, and the EU could fine them for every vehicle produced.

This is shameful behaviour. The classic arrogance of a big company which sees itself as too big to fail... This might just hasten my move away from diesels, and VAG group cars in general!

http://www.theguardian.com/business...plunge-claims-falsified-emissions-data-us-epa

http://www.theguardian.com/business...al-chief-apologises-for-breaking-public-trust
 
This is unbelievable. How could any company of that size think that they could get away with this?
Mot is very significant too. The recall is nothing major (albeit costly cash and reputation wise) but that pales into insignificance when you read the bit that states that the US government can fine them £20,000 A CAR!!!!
fir every car that then fails the test after the cheat software has been removed.

Scary!!!!!!

steve B
 
It's the arrogance of large corporations - remember the banks that were too big to fail who got bailed out by all us taxpayers when they got caught with their noses in the trough gaming the system but got away scott free...
 
It's the arrogance of large corporations - remember the banks that were too big to fail who got bailed out by all us taxpayers when they got caught with their noses in the trough gaming the system but got away scott free...
Indeed.
Mid you are thinking of buying a VAG car in the near future I bet the cost of this mess will be coming your way.
So best stick with your A2 !!!!! (Said he hoping that the cheat isn't on our cars!!)

We need to keep an eye out for the dates of the cars affected but I am guessing (hoping) that it is a recent "cheat".

I must admit that as much as I can't believe they would do this, a bit of me is thinking "10out of 10" for cheek !!!

Steve B
 
I think i read it was cars between 2009-2014?

Very dodgy goings on. As above reminds me of the corrupt bankers and gov...
 
I think i read it was cars between 2009-2014?

Very dodgy goings on. As above reminds me of the corrupt bankers and gov...
So yet again our little A2s remain a great car to own.

I wonder if the cheat could be retrofitted, come MOT testing day??? (Only kidding of course)

Steve B
 
The software was discovered on the following TDi Engines made between 2009-2014
VW’s Beetle, Golf, Jetta, Passat, and the Audi A3.

That engine is of course also found in the various Seat and Skoda model equivalents - but they're not sold in the US. That engine also appears in the A4 and A6, but those models weren't called out, so again maybe not in the US?

That's over 400,000 vehicles sold into the US in that period. I'm sure that the equivalent models in Europe would account for a much larger number, given that diesel car sales are almost 50:50 to petrol in most of Europe.
 
there is no proof whatsoever that this isn't a us-specific software program. Extrapolating - especially due to Euro regs which are very different - is a minefield.

There's also nothing to say this was signed off at a Wolfsburg level; If VW USA said "we need this", and someone somewhere high enough up went "yeah, OK", to a change made by a software engineer which he didn't understand... but which gave them much better numbers when they needed them, then I'm not surprised.

Compliance is non-existent in this case, but I'd be very interested to hear what *exactly* happened. At the moment, this is 90% foam and "up to 40x regs" smells like "in one case under certain circumstances, it was 36x the minimum" because only foam makes for incendiary headlines.

- Bret
 
It wasn't uncommon for sportsbikes to have flat spots in power delivery at exactly the same revs where UK emissions tests were done. I recall this being common knowledge back in the 90s. This sounds like a more sophisticated version of the same thing. I can't imagine this is restricted to just VAG.
 
It's funny, the other day I was comparing VW Group to the British Leyland concern... BL also had major Commercial Vehicle brands, luxury brands, budget brands... Then this news came up!
 
Will governments start to ask for compensation as the cars VED / road tax rating may be different to that quoted by the manufacturers?
 
There's so much behind this story, I reckon.

It's an uphill struggle selling diesels in the US for many obvious reasons but specifically because more economical motors are not good for the oil companies! And we all know the level of influence they have over there. As I recall, the first Adblue equipped cars were Mercs sold in the USA way ahead of Europe to try and show that diesel can be clean. The pressure to get through the tests was huge! Hence what has now been revealed here....no excuse, but I can see why it was more likely to happen in USA rather than here as we're much more pro-diesel and more economy minded.

I wonder if VW are alone or just the first to be discovered.

I also wonder whether this might be happening over here. Just about every car review in every magazine comments on how far away the true mpg is from the published mpg. Some also compare official CO2 emissions with their own real-world CO2 omissions. One newspaper this morning said that the Euro tests are done by firms/agencies paid for by the car companies....:roll eyes:

Conversely, over on the VW Audi Forum, the latest A6 Ultra drivers (Adblue equipped) are often commenting how often they have to top up the Adblue tank which would actually tend to suggest that it is operating a full tilt all the time.

Just my rambling thoughts.....
 
Well in the US, diesel is very much seen as "heavy truck fuel" and not remotely suitable as a fuel for passenger cars, so there's a big perception issue there. Also, the US regulations for Nox emissions from diesel is significantly lower than it is in Europe - they are more concerned with emissions percentages in the States than they are by overall MPG (which is more closely tied to CO2, the main focus of EU emissions regulations, at least until recently). So I guess for VAG Group to have become successful in selling the idea of a diesel-powered passenger car to the US at all is quite a trick. But now we know that trickery was involved in doing so. Idiots.

The blog link I posted above discusses that other (US) car companies have also been caught attempting to fiddle the tests in the past, but not to this extent, or at least were discovered during the testing process, rather than several years after, and after 500,000 cars had subsequently been sold into the market.
 
And it seems VW knew about this since case from the EPA at least May 2014, but VAG Management have been trying to bluff their way out of the situation since saying there were exceptional circumstances with those test vehicles. Only when faced with a threat to not approve any 2016 VAG models for use in the US did VAG Management admit this code existed.

http://www3.epa.gov/otaq/cert/documents/vw-nov-caa-09-18-15.pdf

Read pages 3 and 4 specifically - the ECU was designed to sense for the exact conditions that would be experienced during the EPA test and when those were being met, it would switch away from "highway mode" and enable the "dyno mode" and emissions would plummet accordingly, by a factor of between 10-40x.

I reckon this'll be the end of VAG Group selling diesel in the US at a stroke, and as a minimum.
 
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I think it's going to mean the end of tests as we know them for both CO2 and emissions. MPG tests will be far less relevant, too, it's going to be about real-world numbers. I do find the reporting on this to be remarkably frothy, with not just a little schadenfreude.

I suspect strongly that someone made a decision to adapt the software back in 20xx ("it's a software fix? Cool, implement it!") and it went into the main software tree. That's why the massive number of "affected" cars is so big, but reality says it's half a million or so and not all of those are ever going to be tested again for emissions.

I'm wondering how much of this is a plot to get rid of Winterkorn. Yes, really.

- Bret
 
I am amazed that so many people are surprised this has happened, given the constant interference from politicians dictating not just the outcomes but also the solutions to engine design is adding huge costs and complexity. However I will be even more surprised if VW are the only company doing this too...... And I also suspect Winkerhorn's days are numbered.
 
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