There are a couple of questions that I haven't seen addressed on this issue: why, if this is a feature of the software, is this expected to cost so much for VW to fix?; and how do they expect to get people to bring their cars in for the fix when the fix can be expected to make their cars get worse fuel economy and a decrease in power?
> and how do they expect to get people to bring their cars in for the fix when the fix can be expected to make their cars get worse fuel economy and a decrease in power
Slip it into their vehicle next time they're in for some other routine issue.
But MOT does not require going to a dealer, just to a garage. For sure dealers do this too but it's not a requirement MOT be done by the dealer of the brand.
My assumption is that this is a software issue because it's the engine management system switching to a mode like "sport" or "economy" by changing things like timing, fuel /air mix etc
As a consumer, surely you have a fairly legitimate comeback with "the fuel economy & power is now rubbish, I'd have never bought the car in the first place if it was like that"? Pretty hard for VW to prove otherwise, and I don't know whether the outcome would look like a refund, replacement, or something else... (the first two would cost billions)
Several years back, Hyundai got in trouble for having worse fuel efficiency than their EPA numbers claimed. They had to pay off all owners of that car (I don't recall whether that was due to class action lawsuit, or an agreement with the gov't).
So it seems to me that if VW has to detune their engine performance, they'll similarly have to compensate owners of the affected cars.
Determine the average sales price of vehicles with the power your car now has after correcting its ECU fuel maps, subtract that from the average sales price of vehicles with the power you advertised. That number you arrive at is the compensation you owe each person who purchased your vehicle.
toomuchtodo 4 minutes ago
Determine the average sales price of vehicles with the power your car now has after correcting its ECU fuel maps, subtract that from the average sales price of vehicles with the power you advertised. That number you arrive at is the compensation you owe each person who purchased your vehicle.
I don't think that would quite work because the new sales would also factor in distrust and changes in consumer perception and taste which further reduces the amount of sales VW might have. You'd essentially have to do this in a vacuum where the updated vehicles' sales were subtracted from the non-updated vehicles and the numbers crunched on the premise that nobody ever found out about this and it was just fixed and swept under the rug.
Either way, I like your idea and I hope these owners get adequately compensated for this.
Exactly. I just ordered a Passat Wagon 2Liter diesel 191hp (Last week, what are the odds?) because among the options under the pretty strict CO2 emission restrictions I needed to follow (120g/km) it seemed like the best choice.
If the CO2 emissions had happened to be ever so slightly higher than 120g/km then I couldn't have bought it, and would have picked the V70 D4 instead.
Obviously, if VW had been fair, maybe they couldn't have squeezed 191hp and 5L/100km consumption out of it. Suppose it would have been 170hp and 5L/100km instead to reach the required emissions targets. Now instead of better perforomance than the competition (such as the Volvo) it would have be worse! It's entirely possible I wouldn't have picked it.
So as a customer I'm not really suffering from VW's wrongdoing here. At least not yet (until I get a message saying my not-yet-received car will be delayed 2 months and is already less powerful than when I ordered it). Volvo on the other hand may well have already lost a sale of a new car. Makes you wonder how many sales they lost, and makes you realize how important accurate tests are.
It would seem that this is just one of the ways that this issue is going to get very ugly for VW. To the degree a required fix "just" affects the fuel economy, they can presumably make a payment that would mollify most (but not all) owners. If the performance profile is materially affected though, I can absolutely see a lot of owners demanding a refund.
Given the cars that are affected are on the lowest end of VW's and Audi's lineups, you can safely assume these owners don't have/won't spend significant amounts of personal wealth to sue VW. They'll likely accept a voucher for $500-1000 and a "sorry" and be on their way. They really don't have much legal pull even in a class action lawsuit which will likely be less $ than VW made in profits on the overestimated power and mileage numbers.
Furthermore, the owner of the 2009 Jetta TDI will have less bargaining room than the owner of the 2014 Audi A3 taking into consideration the price, age, mileage and status of the vehicle. I wouldn't be surprised if VW argue the older vehicles (say 2009-2012) benefited from the software more than the 2013+ vehicles and thus are entitled to even LESS compensation.
"That's a bold strategy. Let's see how it plays out."
For something of a litmus test, the most recent Ford Fiesta model advertised better-than-actual gas mileage numbers. To mitigate the issue, Ford sent checks for the assumed loss of money to owners for the lifetime of the vehicle (which amounted to a couple hundred dollars). I imagine VW will only be required to make up the assumed loss of value of the vehicles unless the states intervene (California and NY are notorious for this).
> how do they expect to get people to bring their cars in for the fix when the fix can be expected to make their cars get worse fuel economy and a decrease in power?
One option would be to make it an automatic fail of the emissions tests for any car where this has not been fixed. This obviously won't work universally but for locations where emissions testing is required periodically this could help move the process along.
As I understand it, these cars were designed with a simplified system for maintaining low emissions that used fewer parts. Evidently, software can allow the system to pass the emission test but at a significant loss of power.
I've seen a whole bunch of theories about what the practical effect of turning on test mode all the time will do. From the engine is powerful enough that the net effect will just be lower mileage up to power, mileage and reliability will get worse and everything in between. I'm surprised the chip has not already been hacked, put into permanent test mode and the performance reported. Maybe soon.
Part of the cost may be the anticipation of lawsuits since the car isnt as advertised anymore. How much less would the car have been worth to people? $1000? Thats 4% of a golf TDI's MSRP. Seems reasonable.
> Why, if this is a feature of the software, is this expected to cost so much for VW to fix?
Aside from the costs of a recall and class-action lawsuits, VW will also be looking down the barrel of some pretty ugly EPA fines. I've seen numbers as high as $32,000 per affected sold vehicle. Of course the actual fines will be a lot less, but still probably pretty substantial.
> how do they expect to get people to bring their cars in for the fix when the fix can be expected to make their cars get worse fuel economy and a decrease in power?
It will depend on the state. In California, owners won't have a choice; if there is an emissions-related recall you have to provide proof that you've had your vehicle repaired as part of the inspection / licensing process.
Which then means that vehicles from other states won't sell well to Californians, and other states may well have some kind of similar requirements (though I think California's is the most strict, as usual).
> how do they expect to get people to bring their cars in for the fix
As long as the car is under warranty (the first 3 years, for VW in UK for example) the owner is required to service it following the manufacturers recommendation. This pretty much guarantees that at least for 3 years, new cars will be brought to service regularly.
If I was a manufacturer of modern cars, I'd include the requirement to always install the latest software at every service, in the terms of the warranty.
Given that they did this, then denied it for a year when challenged, surely the big question is: what else are they lying about?
Normally you'd assume that basic self-interest would stop a large company from lying too much, but that theory has gone right out the window after these revelations.
like always - it wasn't one person doing it, it was large number of people involved ... Reminds me like at some previous employer some years ago a critical security bug was explicitly and openly waived by the product team under leadership of the same PM who had just been foaming that "security is our top priority".
One more reason for publishing the source code to drive-line software in cars. And don't give me nonsense about 'millions of lines of code' (I've heard that before in another context too), an ECU is not 'millions of lines of code'.
And as far as VW is concerned this is only the beginning: how many customers are going to sue VW for a sudden decrease in market value / resale value of their vehicle?
The damage to the VW brand is enormous, if not fatal. But the damage to 'Made in Germany' and the rest of the German brands is collosal as well. This will surely be reflected in the GDP of Germany for many years to come.
> One more reason for publishing the source code to drive-line software in cars. And don't give me nonsense about 'millions of lines of code' (I've heard that before in another context too), an ECU is not 'millions of lines of code'.
In that case we could have aftermarket parts and/or interoperability. These are bad things that could cut into corporate profits.
Well, it's not just one model, it's all the small TDI's. According to what I've read, that's a pretty big segment of their American market. How important is America to an auto manufacturer?
It's like 15% of their US market. But the 11 million figure in this article (vs the old 450k figure) includes vehicles worldwide. 450k was US diesels from VW.
VW has a ton of brands besides just the main one and this affects a very large number of vehicles and an equally large number of customers. I've been a pretty loyal VW customer for the last 8 years and my next car will definitely not be a VW, this is unacceptable at just about every level and I'm fairly sure I'm not the only person thinking like this.
If you think VW will be just fine now would be a good time to buy some stock.
I'd wait for the other shoe to drop. The other shoe being the fantastic unlikelihood that VW is the only automaker pulling crap like this, or even one of a minority of manufacturers.
This story isn't over yet, I'm pretty sure of that.
My suspicion is that the first other shoe to drop is that VW's gag affected European emissions testing, as well. Diesel cars are a pretty small minority in the US; in Europe, they're much more popular and a much larger chunk of VW's sales.
On the other hand, I can almost hear the other manufacturer's executives scrambling around asking, "Are we being this blatant?" and I'm quite a few miles from any segment of the automotive industry.
(Disclosure: I have a 2002 Corvette with the CAGS disabled.)
One of the reasons diesels are more popular in Europe than the US is that US emissions standards are a lot harder to pass for diesels than they are for petrol cars and always have been.
Since this is clearly malicious intent on the part of VW that the customers if and when presented with a bill from Her Majesty's collection agency will be in an excellent position to pass the buck to VW. After all it's in every advertisement they've ever made about these vehicles.
VW is in a world of trouble. This saddens me because our fleet has both a VW caravelle and a VW up, neither of which are affected but VW has been an excellent supplier for me to date and I'm seriously disappointed that they would stoop this low. Even if this order did not come from the top (which one would hope) it screams lack of oversight and lack of independent in-house verification.
They're taxed according to CO2 emissions rather than NOx (which is measured for European and Californian emissions requirements, and the subject of this dishonesty).
There's no reason the same method couldn't be used to falsify CO2 emissions (and therefore VED band) too though!
> One more reason for publishing the source code to drive-line software in cars.
How does this prevent VW from publishing inaccurate source code?
Let's say we manage to force them to not only disclose full source code but also how to make binary reproducible builds and we also (somehow) can verify the integrity of every single microcontroller in the car, how do we prevent underhanded programming tactics?
We're always going to need to trust auto makers so why put massive burdens on them that don't remove our need to trust them?
Well, I'd assume that someone will take that sourcecode, compile it and run it and spot the differences which will lead to speedy publication of evidence of foul play.
Open hardware designs would resolve this issue. If you were so inclined, you could re-implement your computers electronics based on the specification. Unfortunately I don’t see this ever happening.
They should be required to come up with a build system that produces reproducible output, then people can dump the code in their car and compare it to what was published.
If you can dump the code in your car, then you can boost your own car's performance by circumventing the laws yourself. That's one of the reasons this software is locked up, (as I understand it, anyway)
You can swap out your tires for known good ones just before the MOT too and swap them back afterwards. Laws can always be circumvented, but that does not make such circumvention any less illegal and when caught the penalties tend to be quite serious.
Considering what we've heard about not-so-airgaps in Chrysler's hacked ECU + onboard entertainment systems, would it be so far-fetched that other systems would be used to game testing, if only ECUs were mandatory to be open? ;)
The damage to the VW brand is enormous, if not fatal.
GM recently admitted that a defective product of theirs was responsible for over 120 deaths:
General Motors agreed to pay $900 million as
part of a Justice Department investigation
into its failure to fix a deadly ignition
switch defect blamed for more than 120 deaths.[1]
Nobody seems to care, except for a few lawyers and the victims' families. GM is still in business, current market cap $47 billion.
It would be a tragedy if the cost to VW of their negligence is more than the cost to GM of theirs.
And in response to those who say that increased pollution could kill a lot more, I acknowledge the hypothetical. But in my mind, the death of 120 identified people with names, children, friends, aspirations, etc, is far worse than the increased NOx from VW's cars.
The GM issue was enormous for literally years. Further the GM issue -- where key assembly had less torsion than expected, leading to the possibility of heavy keychains or unintended hits turning off the vehicle -- was never shown to be anything more than an isolated engineering mistake by a few engineers, who then actively covered up their own mistake. GM wasn't profiteering by having less tension than expected -- it didn't sell them cars, and it didn't save them money. The malice was not profiteering or circumventing. And for that they paid a $900 million dollar fine, and will pay out billions in lawsuits in virtually any case where the key turned off, even if it was actually operator error.
GM is in no universe blameless, but considerations that hold it like murder are irrational.
VW actively and intentionally misled consumers and regulators to sell cars promising mileage and power levels they don't actually achieve without actually cheating the system. They sold hundreds of thousands of cars -- at the cost of significant air pollution (some 200,000 Americans, and millions worldwide, are estimated to die from air pollution yearly) -- based upon these essentially lies. They actively promoted their eco-friendliness, and their great fuel economy, neither of which are actually true in concert.
You're missing some important context. GM is long-established in America. (So is Toyota.) VW's current market penetration in America is pretty minimal. And all Volkswagens are sold with a premium sales pitch, if not premium price points.
Now all VW diesel cars sold during a certain period will have their resale value greatly reduced. Non-diesel VW resale values will be tainted at least slightly by association. Even if VW recalls the cars and replaces them with a completely overhauled diesel drivetrain -- very unlikely -- there will still be a massive class action lawsuit, because the car will not be working as advertised in some way. This will keep potential buyers away from showrooms.
VW's current market penetration in America is pretty minimal.
That's true, but it's not because they aren't "long established". E.g. I personally owned the 1966 version of this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagon_beetle
so that's 50 years right there.
I'm sure it goes back quite a way further than that, but, after a quick scan of that Wiki, I couldn't find the original date that imports started.
When Hyundai got caught exaggerating the mileage of their 2011 - 2013 model year vehicles, as a settlement they are paying a reimbursement equal to the cost of the gas to cover the difference plus a 15% premium for the lifetime of the vehicles [1]. If, as is widely speculated, the only way to make the VWs as clean as necessary reduces mileage, VW will probably be on the hook for similar reimbursements.
> One more reason for publishing the source code to drive-line software in cars.
There is no reason for anyone to publish their trade-secrets. Compliance can be assured through better testing, which is how this came to light.
All the arguments for open source in this market are wonky. They sum up to things like "I want to tamper with my engine controls because I somehow know more than the team of degreed engineers who designed it and got it type-approved" and "I want a generic ECU for all engines because it will be great if everyone had to pay for logic, drivers and other hardware that only a small subset of engines require. Oh and because it would be easier for me to tamper with."
I'm glad this situation came out into the press because it will discourage other carmakers from cheating.
Or: My life is on the line and I'd like to know what it is exactly that I'm driving. Or: my car does not seem to perform as advertised, is the ECU capable of switching modes in order to pass certain tests?
There are many reasons to want to inspect/build the code to the hardware that you already own.
You (probably) and I are part of a small minority in the entire universe qualified to do such examination. A lot of bosch source codes got leaked, but if you have or want to write analysis tools for the TriCore ISA to inspect your VW's firmware, you can get the firmware from [1].
It's pretty normal for any expertise to be limited to a 'small minority'. All it takes to expose trickery like this is for that small minority to do their thing and then write lay-man comprehensible press releases. This is how a lot of stuff gets exposed and for the most part that does not seem to require in-depth understanding of the nitty gritty details by the un-informed, even though they may be directly affected. (In this case: by higher fuel bills to date, reduced re-sale value and possibly a forced significant drop in performance).
It will be interesting to observe the regulators of PIGS and Eastern Europe - will they try and punish the German government over this. They have an axe to grind with Merkel.
I'm curious what the reasoning was behind approving a measure which had such a high risk of backfiring very badly for vw. Is it something which was approved higher up or something an engineering team quietly hacked into place to meet an emissions target.
All it takes is for a team and their direct managers to collude if oversight and review are lacking. As little as 5 people could have known about this, or possibly it went all the way to the top but given the risks I very much doubt that. It's one thing to have errors or bugs, quite another to deliberately mislead the authorities on a major benchmark for vehicle approval. That's way beyond the gray zone.
I reasoned that it would have to be 2 people or else any sensible person would know it would eventually get out. Including the executive who had to achieve some engine performance goal (but couldn't handle the software manipulation), and the software engineer (who wouldn't directly have to answer for engine performance goals)
"Two may keep counsel when the third's away." --Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus
I see the initial code of this hack as just a begining. Then someone needs to test it with actual cars, maybe tweak it a bit and then make sure it gets deployed on the selected car models while assuring it works without breaking anything else. Moreover this hack was in place for few years ... On the other hand I'm not from the industry, so maybe it would be actually much easier.
I apologize in advance, but this feels rather un-German...
What was the motivating factor in this? This blowout is going to affect so many of VW's lines, and their reputation.
I think money oddly. I had a 98 Jetta TDI (Diesel). The trade off for 45 mpg was pokey performance, even with the turbo.
The new ones really drive with pep, like normal cars, so I think they thought they'd sell more with better performance. There is a not insignificant price premium for diesel vehicles.
Diesel owners are really really passionate about their cars (no time to redesign their web forums) and "Diesel Gate" is going to hit that loyalty hard.
It felt un-German up to about a week ago, now it is German and that's a very large problem for Germany. This will affect many more companies than just VW, 'made in Germany' used to stand for something and they just wrecked that (or at a minimum put a serious scratch and a dent in it).
I don't think VW has hurt their customers in any way. They gave their customers fuel economy and power that was not possible under EPA regulations. I think if anything the current VW Diesels will be more valuable in future as subsequent model years will be crippled by default to satisfy the EPA, and the government has no way to determine if a vehicle has firmware that lies to their equipment without drastically altering their testing procedures.
Sure VW has hurt their customers. They sold them illegal cars. Those cars can only have the performance they promised if they pollute the environment and break environmental laws.
All VW customers should demand full refunds. They were defrauded.
Did you ask how much NOx your last vehicle emitted when you bought it? Did you see any advertising about NOx emissions? Do you know if/why NOx is considered a pollutant? Did you know that NOx is a substantial constituent of whipped cream? Did you know the other name for NOx is laughing gas?
Saying that someone broke the law doesn't mean they did anything ethically wrong. I think it would be an uphill battle to demonstrate if/how VW harmed their customers.
You're confused. N2O (nitrous oxide) is laughing gas, charges some whipped creams, and a severe greenhouse gas. NO2 (nitrogen dioxide) is the automotive combustion product being regulated because it's toxic when inhaled. They're different.
"NOx" is the label for a group of chemicals that includes NO2 (the combustion prouduct) but not N2O (laughing gas).
You must be thick... ok here we go again... the nazis had laws against the jews would hiding a jew have been an ethical act even though it was illegal?
I don't particularly focus on these questions, but emissions are indeed a factor for me and many other buyers. The reason you don't have to earnestly ask is that there are standards, which we expect companies to adhere to and not cheat.
Because NOx decomposes (with sunlight) into O3, and O3 is a major urban pollutant, the harm is very real.
If news reports are to be believed, there were 30-40x violations of expected emissions.
I don't have to know the specifics of all the laws to expect that they're followed. When I buy a car, I expect that car to be legal to sell.
The harm done to customers will be really obvious in those jurisdictions where customers have to get this fixed to maintain their registration, since power and fuel efficiency will be affected.
"NOx should not be confused with nitrous oxide (N2O), which is a greenhouse gas and has many uses as an oxidizer, an anesthetic, and a food additive." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOx
Trickery like this has been long used in the automobile industry. VW is just the first to exaggerate it and getting caught.
Not a big deal, imho. There are far bigger threats to the environment than all cars combined - just look at all those freight ships burning bunker fuel, coal power plants emitting more radioactivity than a decades old nuclear plant...
The problem is the fuel itself, as long as you're in international waters you can use as sulphur-rich fuel as you like. Sulphur rich fuel is the cheapest of the lot and because it has no other uses beside international water fuel for freighters, this shit accounts for huge percentages of sulphur emissions.
edit: Reason for this is that burning sulphur in fuel produces sulphur dioxide, which when combined with rain or natural humidity, makes acid rain.
The engines are really efficient. Unfortunately, the cheapest fuel has a lot of sulphur in it, so there's a lot of sulphur dioxide that comes out of the engine. Low sulphur fuel is 4x the cost.
So, yeah. I don't think the cargo ships are villains or anything, but one of them is worth 50 million cars, for that specific type of emission. (cars would be higher, but they're regulated.). Generally it's turning around, different countries are requiring low sulphur fuel, in spite of the cost. The us was January, i think.
Unfortunately that's incorrect. VW is the only automobile manufacturer which deliberately (and delicately) cheated the diesel emissions test. For example, BMW's diesel engines emit lower emissions than what they specify (which is awesome!).
If not now, I'd expect we can state it with certainty after a few months. Every car model on the market will probably be getting a test similar to the one that caught VW shortly.
... like the gas used for farm equipment? Or the fossil fuels used in some fertilizers? Sure. It's a common talking point to mention "cow farts" and "cow burps" because they emit greenhouse gasses. But generally the greenhouse gasses emitted by cows are from the organic matter that they were fed.
Excluding the farm equipment and fossil-fuel-based fertilizer, cow burps form a natural closed loop. Meaning, grow corn or grass and it takes in greenhouse gasses from the soil and the air. Feed it to a cow and it releases those same greenhouse gasses.
Cows and plants by themselves are not actually contributing greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere in a manner that contributes to global warming. Meaning, if you're worried about cow burps or humans breathing... stop worrying about it. And if you're pointing out that animals emit greenhouse gasses... cool, but that is irrelevant to a rational discussion of emissions that lead to climate change.
For agriculture, the system becomes imbalanced when you add in the emissions of the industrial farm equipment and the shipping infrastructure to getting food from the farm to the the table. But that imbalance is what we're trying to address when we talk about transitioning to more fuel efficient vehicles or more sustainable farming practices (like not using fossil fuels in fertilizer).
So, mentioning agriculture as a polluter is typically a red herring. At first blush it seems reasonable because there are a lot of farm animals that emit greenhouse gasses. However, including agriculture in a discussion of emissions is usually disingenuous or misinformed.
> But generally the greenhouse gasses emitted by cows are from the organic matter that they were fed.
> Excluding the farm equipment and fossil-fuel-based fertilizer, cow burps form a natural closed loop. Meaning, grow corn or grass and it takes in greenhouse gasses from the soil and the air. Feed it to a cow and it releases those same greenhouse gasses.
Plants take in CO2. Cows fart out methane. Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.
> Methane breaks down in the atmosphere to form carbon dioxide, ozone, and water, all of which absorb heat.
Almost every current article about cow burps cites a 2006 U.N. study saying that livestock accounted for 18% of methane pollution. That study was later called into question as being slightly exaggerated because it included pollution from farming infrastructure itself, not just the animals.
> The meat figure had been reached by adding all greenhouse-gas emissions associated with meat production, including fertiliser production, land clearance, methane emissions and vehicle use on farms, whereas the transport figure had only included the burning of fossil fuels.
Rigging cars to pass emissions tests has been a game for a long time. For a long time all you had to do was pass a tailpipe sniff test on a dyno and the car would be held at two slow speeds for the duration of the test, so you'd get results for those kinds of cruising situations but not for acceleration or highway operation. So, cars were adapted to pass these tests. Later when fuel economy rules came about, the same thing happened: the test cycles for fuel economy were examined and cars were changed to achieve better results just for these tests.
On the flip side, the new line of Honda Accord Hybrids are amazing. Fantastically simple drivetrain, it's basically an electric car where the "batteries" consist of a Li-On buffer bank and a gas-to-electricity 4-cylinder generator that's recruited via a clutch for high-torque/high-horsepower assist to the electric motor. Being driven by an electric motor, torque is instant and constant, there's no transmission to speak of. I've driven one, it's pretty peppy, 0-30 in 2.9 and 0-60 in ~7 seconds (it's a family sedan so I know it's not blowing the doors off of a Tesla, but it's about a full second faster than a Passat TDI)
Uses cheap low-octane gasoline and can get 45-50 mpg (like a Prius), and 700 miles on a tank of gas. Emissions are 188 grams/mile (vs. VW's 298 for a Passat TDI). Trickled down Acura active suspension, wider tires than a stock Accord.
Priced about the same as a Passat TDI, but with almost Tesla level engine tech and probably more reliable than either on average.
Can someone track down the devs that wrote the code to dupe the system and do a documentary? I think it would be fascinating, given the ethical decisions that had to be made. Also, what the reaction was inside the company?
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[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 200 ms ] threadSlip it into their vehicle next time they're in for some other routine issue.
https://www.gov.uk/getting-an-mot/the-mot-test
I guess most of Europe has something similar.
So it seems to me that if VW has to detune their engine performance, they'll similarly have to compensate owners of the affected cars.
I don't think that would quite work because the new sales would also factor in distrust and changes in consumer perception and taste which further reduces the amount of sales VW might have. You'd essentially have to do this in a vacuum where the updated vehicles' sales were subtracted from the non-updated vehicles and the numbers crunched on the premise that nobody ever found out about this and it was just fixed and swept under the rug.
Either way, I like your idea and I hope these owners get adequately compensated for this.
But that would be appropriate, because these factors would negatively affect the potential resale value for the defrauded owner.
If the CO2 emissions had happened to be ever so slightly higher than 120g/km then I couldn't have bought it, and would have picked the V70 D4 instead.
Obviously, if VW had been fair, maybe they couldn't have squeezed 191hp and 5L/100km consumption out of it. Suppose it would have been 170hp and 5L/100km instead to reach the required emissions targets. Now instead of better perforomance than the competition (such as the Volvo) it would have be worse! It's entirely possible I wouldn't have picked it.
So as a customer I'm not really suffering from VW's wrongdoing here. At least not yet (until I get a message saying my not-yet-received car will be delayed 2 months and is already less powerful than when I ordered it). Volvo on the other hand may well have already lost a sale of a new car. Makes you wonder how many sales they lost, and makes you realize how important accurate tests are.
So this scandal is all your fault, then? :-)
"*MPG figures are obtained from laboratory testing and intended for comparisons between vehicles and may not reflect real driving results."
=/
[1] http://www.honestjohn.co.uk/realmpg/volkswagen/golf-vii-2013...
Furthermore, the owner of the 2009 Jetta TDI will have less bargaining room than the owner of the 2014 Audi A3 taking into consideration the price, age, mileage and status of the vehicle. I wouldn't be surprised if VW argue the older vehicles (say 2009-2012) benefited from the software more than the 2013+ vehicles and thus are entitled to even LESS compensation.
"That's a bold strategy. Let's see how it plays out."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ru8DMW-grY
One option would be to make it an automatic fail of the emissions tests for any car where this has not been fixed. This obviously won't work universally but for locations where emissions testing is required periodically this could help move the process along.
11m cars times $1000 and you're at $11b!
Aside from the costs of a recall and class-action lawsuits, VW will also be looking down the barrel of some pretty ugly EPA fines. I've seen numbers as high as $32,000 per affected sold vehicle. Of course the actual fines will be a lot less, but still probably pretty substantial.
> how do they expect to get people to bring their cars in for the fix when the fix can be expected to make their cars get worse fuel economy and a decrease in power?
It will depend on the state. In California, owners won't have a choice; if there is an emissions-related recall you have to provide proof that you've had your vehicle repaired as part of the inspection / licensing process.
Which then means that vehicles from other states won't sell well to Californians, and other states may well have some kind of similar requirements (though I think California's is the most strict, as usual).
As long as the car is under warranty (the first 3 years, for VW in UK for example) the owner is required to service it following the manufacturers recommendation. This pretty much guarantees that at least for 3 years, new cars will be brought to service regularly.
If I was a manufacturer of modern cars, I'd include the requirement to always install the latest software at every service, in the terms of the warranty.
Normally you'd assume that basic self-interest would stop a large company from lying too much, but that theory has gone right out the window after these revelations.
"It affects 2009-14 Jettas, Beetles, Audi A3s and Golfs and 2014-15 Passats."
Audi and VW share "platforms" which comprise of the core parts. Current-gen Passat, Golf, and A3, among a few others, all use the MQB platform.
And as far as VW is concerned this is only the beginning: how many customers are going to sue VW for a sudden decrease in market value / resale value of their vehicle?
The damage to the VW brand is enormous, if not fatal. But the damage to 'Made in Germany' and the rest of the German brands is collosal as well. This will surely be reflected in the GDP of Germany for many years to come.
In that case we could have aftermarket parts and/or interoperability. These are bad things that could cut into corporate profits.
VW and BP spill are outliers.
Evidence?
If you think VW will be just fine now would be a good time to buy some stock.
This story isn't over yet, I'm pretty sure of that.
On the other hand, I can almost hear the other manufacturer's executives scrambling around asking, "Are we being this blatant?" and I'm quite a few miles from any segment of the automotive industry.
(Disclosure: I have a 2002 Corvette with the CAGS disabled.)
VW is in a world of trouble. This saddens me because our fleet has both a VW caravelle and a VW up, neither of which are affected but VW has been an excellent supplier for me to date and I'm seriously disappointed that they would stoop this low. Even if this order did not come from the top (which one would hope) it screams lack of oversight and lack of independent in-house verification.
There's no reason the same method couldn't be used to falsify CO2 emissions (and therefore VED band) too though!
How does this prevent VW from publishing inaccurate source code?
Let's say we manage to force them to not only disclose full source code but also how to make binary reproducible builds and we also (somehow) can verify the integrity of every single microcontroller in the car, how do we prevent underhanded programming tactics?
We're always going to need to trust auto makers so why put massive burdens on them that don't remove our need to trust them?
http://www.chipexpress.com/
So researchers magically know in what bit of code the next scandal will be?
Next time it might be the simulation software that's not even in the car. Lets release that to.
Or should we ask them to only release the exact bit of code with the issue?
Besides which, do we even get the EFF is not crazy enough to ask for them to publish their source code and destroy their IP?
They just don't want the anti-circumvention measures in the the DCMA to apply. The right to access what's in our hardware.
Not the right to force people and companies to do things they don't want to. This is not government run voting hardware.
Emissions, performance and service related scandals will almost certainly not originate in the entertainment system or the navigation system.
Security issues might originate there if the other side is not properly designed.
So ECU, ABS, ODBII and such should be fair game and 'inspectable'.
GM recently admitted that a defective product of theirs was responsible for over 120 deaths:
Nobody seems to care, except for a few lawyers and the victims' families. GM is still in business, current market cap $47 billion.It would be a tragedy if the cost to VW of their negligence is more than the cost to GM of theirs.
And in response to those who say that increased pollution could kill a lot more, I acknowledge the hypothetical. But in my mind, the death of 120 identified people with names, children, friends, aspirations, etc, is far worse than the increased NOx from VW's cars.
[1] http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2015/09/17/gm-justi...
GM is in no universe blameless, but considerations that hold it like murder are irrational.
VW actively and intentionally misled consumers and regulators to sell cars promising mileage and power levels they don't actually achieve without actually cheating the system. They sold hundreds of thousands of cars -- at the cost of significant air pollution (some 200,000 Americans, and millions worldwide, are estimated to die from air pollution yearly) -- based upon these essentially lies. They actively promoted their eco-friendliness, and their great fuel economy, neither of which are actually true in concert.
Now all VW diesel cars sold during a certain period will have their resale value greatly reduced. Non-diesel VW resale values will be tainted at least slightly by association. Even if VW recalls the cars and replaces them with a completely overhauled diesel drivetrain -- very unlikely -- there will still be a massive class action lawsuit, because the car will not be working as advertised in some way. This will keep potential buyers away from showrooms.
It's really not hyperbole.
That's true, but it's not because they aren't "long established". E.g. I personally owned the 1966 version of this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagon_beetle so that's 50 years right there.
I'm sure it goes back quite a way further than that, but, after a quick scan of that Wiki, I couldn't find the original date that imports started.
[1] https://hyundaimpginfo.com/customerinfo/compensation-informa...
edits: grammar. apparently I can't write coherently today.
There is no reason for anyone to publish their trade-secrets. Compliance can be assured through better testing, which is how this came to light.
All the arguments for open source in this market are wonky. They sum up to things like "I want to tamper with my engine controls because I somehow know more than the team of degreed engineers who designed it and got it type-approved" and "I want a generic ECU for all engines because it will be great if everyone had to pay for logic, drivers and other hardware that only a small subset of engines require. Oh and because it would be easier for me to tamper with."
I'm glad this situation came out into the press because it will discourage other carmakers from cheating.
There are many reasons to want to inspect/build the code to the hardware that you already own.
[1] http://rutracker.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4996779
It will be interesting to observe the regulators of PIGS and Eastern Europe - will they try and punish the German government over this. They have an axe to grind with Merkel.
The DOJ said they'd start seeking it. (Yes, I know it's a German company...)
The new ones really drive with pep, like normal cars, so I think they thought they'd sell more with better performance. There is a not insignificant price premium for diesel vehicles.
Diesel owners are really really passionate about their cars (no time to redesign their web forums) and "Diesel Gate" is going to hit that loyalty hard.
Summary page with graphs:
http://forums.tdiclub.com/showthread.php?t=448336
All VW customers should demand full refunds. They were defrauded.
Saying that someone broke the law doesn't mean they did anything ethically wrong. I think it would be an uphill battle to demonstrate if/how VW harmed their customers.
"NOx" is the label for a group of chemicals that includes NO2 (the combustion prouduct) but not N2O (laughing gas).
It doesn't?
Because NOx decomposes (with sunlight) into O3, and O3 is a major urban pollutant, the harm is very real.
If news reports are to be believed, there were 30-40x violations of expected emissions.
The harm done to customers will be really obvious in those jurisdictions where customers have to get this fixed to maintain their registration, since power and fuel efficiency will be affected.
"NOx should not be confused with nitrous oxide (N2O), which is a greenhouse gas and has many uses as an oxidizer, an anesthetic, and a food additive." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOx
Not a big deal, imho. There are far bigger threats to the environment than all cars combined - just look at all those freight ships burning bunker fuel, coal power plants emitting more radioactivity than a decades old nuclear plant...
edit: Reason for this is that burning sulphur in fuel produces sulphur dioxide, which when combined with rain or natural humidity, makes acid rain.
So, yeah. I don't think the cargo ships are villains or anything, but one of them is worth 50 million cars, for that specific type of emission. (cars would be higher, but they're regulated.). Generally it's turning around, different countries are requiring low sulphur fuel, in spite of the cost. The us was January, i think.
It's more like double the cost. Your point stands, though.
http://www.bunkerworld.com/prices/port/nl/rtm/
That may be true for local waters (iirc 12 nautical miles from the land). International waters, not so much.
How can you state that with certainty?
Cows eat grass, not fossil fuels. Measuring the impact of agriculture vs. transportation should take the source of the pollutants into account.
Excluding the farm equipment and fossil-fuel-based fertilizer, cow burps form a natural closed loop. Meaning, grow corn or grass and it takes in greenhouse gasses from the soil and the air. Feed it to a cow and it releases those same greenhouse gasses.
Cows and plants by themselves are not actually contributing greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere in a manner that contributes to global warming. Meaning, if you're worried about cow burps or humans breathing... stop worrying about it. And if you're pointing out that animals emit greenhouse gasses... cool, but that is irrelevant to a rational discussion of emissions that lead to climate change.
For agriculture, the system becomes imbalanced when you add in the emissions of the industrial farm equipment and the shipping infrastructure to getting food from the farm to the the table. But that imbalance is what we're trying to address when we talk about transitioning to more fuel efficient vehicles or more sustainable farming practices (like not using fossil fuels in fertilizer).
So, mentioning agriculture as a polluter is typically a red herring. At first blush it seems reasonable because there are a lot of farm animals that emit greenhouse gasses. However, including agriculture in a discussion of emissions is usually disingenuous or misinformed.
> Excluding the farm equipment and fossil-fuel-based fertilizer, cow burps form a natural closed loop. Meaning, grow corn or grass and it takes in greenhouse gasses from the soil and the air. Feed it to a cow and it releases those same greenhouse gasses.
Plants take in CO2. Cows fart out methane. Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.
http://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases/ch4.htm...
> Pound for pound, the comparative impact of CH4 on climate change is 25 times greater than CO2 over a 100-year period.
> Methane breaks down in the atmosphere to form carbon dioxide, ozone, and water, all of which absorb heat.
Almost every current article about cow burps cites a 2006 U.N. study saying that livestock accounted for 18% of methane pollution. That study was later called into question as being slightly exaggerated because it included pollution from farming infrastructure itself, not just the animals.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/climatecha...
> The meat figure had been reached by adding all greenhouse-gas emissions associated with meat production, including fertiliser production, land clearance, methane emissions and vehicle use on farms, whereas the transport figure had only included the burning of fossil fuels.
Here's an example from the 70's
Uses cheap low-octane gasoline and can get 45-50 mpg (like a Prius), and 700 miles on a tank of gas. Emissions are 188 grams/mile (vs. VW's 298 for a Passat TDI). Trickled down Acura active suspension, wider tires than a stock Accord.
Priced about the same as a Passat TDI, but with almost Tesla level engine tech and probably more reliable than either on average.
http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2014/02/review-2014-honda-a...