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Volkswagen's Deisel scandal


Phos

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Recently Diesel has been making inroads in the traditionally gasoline focused US, and hang on a second...

British English refers to gasoline as "petrol", in contrast to Deisel, even though both are derived from petroleum. 

Ok, so VW has been pushing their "clean deisel" cars, and I'm hearing that a lot of automotive engineers have been saying off the record that they don't think there's any way for VW to doing what their doing, and it turns out, they can't!  Before being run on a  dynamometer, any modern car needs to be set to a test mode that disables traction/stability control, and  VW simply programmed their cars to run in a cleaner mode than they do on the road. No details have yet emerged about what that mode precisely changes, but without it the cars are emmeting between 10 and 40 times the legal NOx emissions. Considering that these cars frequently beat their EPA numbers on the road, it seems that the cleaner test mode runs more fuel rich, possibly to raise the exhaust temperatures. Consumer Reports has a great episode of their talking cars show on the subject:

Edited by Phos
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Kind of a shame that they weren't able to get away with it; especially now that there are rumblings that all of the Germans might be guilty of similar practices.

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Kind of a shame that they weren't able to get away with it; especially now that there are rumblings that all of the Germans might be guilty of similar practices.

Even if other German auto makers are guilty of this, it's still not the worst thing Germans have done. ;)

Actually, what I've been hearing is that this practice may be endemic across all of Europe, not just the German auto industry. We'll have to see if that's true, but if it is, it's a real shot in the foot for the industry, and for consumer trust.

Edited by Patticus
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I'm hearing that a lot of European environmental tests are a bit of a joke, it's not too uncommon for carmakers to remove side mirrors and tape up panel gaps to cut down on emmisions be reducing fuel consumption. 

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Shit like this just makes me wish electric cars were more commonplace - once they sort the relatively short battery life out nobody will have an excuse anymore.

Even if other German auto makers are guilty of this, it's still not the worst thing Germans have done. ;)

Zero to Godwin in three posts. That must be a personal best for this forum.

 

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A friend of mine had a 2011 BMW 535d GT (3.0 turbodiesel), said that he got 12.6 km/l, (35 MPG) on his fuel consumption meter. I talked to him about VW's diesel scam, and he was shocked about this. I even tried smelling the car's exhaust fumes and it did not smell like 'typical' diesel fumes from a van, I have a feeling that it is inconsistent. But for now, my dad is driving an E200 Kompressor

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Shit like this just makes me wish electric cars were more commonplace - once they sort the relatively short battery life out nobody will have an excuse anymore.

Zero to Godwin in three posts. That must be a personal best for this forum.

 

It is still the start of the electric car age. Let's wait for more electric car charging points.

 

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Something interesting to add to this which the non motorist may not know.

One other reason why this is a big deal is that in some countries, due to regulations regarding air pollution and emissions. Not only would it be illegal to sell these cars, but if you own one and drive it, it might fail it's MOT test next time it's due. 

 

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