VW cheat emissions test with "defeat device"

[bhall II]

And this fact we know how, because EPA says so?

Fact is we don't know anything for certain, more than the US lawyers will have a field day with this.

Armed with this info [from CAFEE's ICCT-funded study], CARB and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency opened an investigation into Volkswagen in May 2014, which resulted in many attempts by VW to replicate the West Virginia University results. In December of 2014, VW said it had a fix and recalled nearly 500,000 diesels in the U.S. for a software patch. But while VW held its breath, CARB continued to test Volkswagen diesels on a regular basis and found that the cars were still exceeding the state’s nitrous-oxide-emissions limits. CARB made its finding known to both Volkswagen and the EPA on July 8.

Only when Volkswagen learned that the certification of some of its 2016 model-year cars was partially dependent on the maker fully responding to lingering questions over the older cars’ real-world tailpipe emissions did the maker begin to respond in earnest. After weeks of receiving unsatisfactory replies, the agencies in question let VW know that several of its diesel models would not be certified for 2016. Volkswagen did not respond to C/D inquiries for comment.

With the prospect of not being allowed to sell diesels in the U.S. (current estimates indicated diesels make up about 25 percent of Volkswagen’s U.S. sales), the maker finally retreated and admitted it had knowingly installed a “sophisticated software algorithm” that permitted the diesels to reduce the amount of NOx emissions while undergoing testing.

[Tommy Cookers]

is the California (NOx) standard tighter than the standard for the rest of the USA ?
is (say) the USA standard tighter than eg for Europe ?
anyone ?

the big campaign in Europe seems to be about particulates

[MadMatt]

is the California (NOx) standard tighter than the standard for the rest of the USA ?
is (say) the USA standard tighter than eg for Europe ?
anyone ?

the big campaign in Europe seems to be about particulates

European emissions standards: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_ ... _standards

US: http://www3.epa.gov/otaq/standards/ligh ... ld-cff.htm (check LDVs)

As we see, European Euro5 (because the VW story mainly touches Euro5 vehicles) is much tougher on emissions.

But fuel is different between Europe and US. At least gasoline. While we have a minimum of RON95 here, with option of RON98 and RON100, I believe in the US RON87 is pretty much standard while RON93 is "high-tech". Might be the same for diesel engines but I don't know this.

[turbof1]

And this fact we know how, because EPA says so?

Fact is we don't know anything for certain, more than the US lawyers will have a field day with this.

EPA has made the statement and VW confirmed it. The CEO even made a public apology. Whether you like it or not, but this is no longer a question if they broke the law, but a question how big the damage is and how much VW will have to pay in fines.

Bhall beat me to it, with much better and more specific information . Bhall for president, I'd say!

[Phil]

I disagree. Red Bull built a wing that passed the test but flexed excessively on track. VW apparently built an engine that passed the test and polluted excessively on the road. It is exactly the same. Either both cheated or neither did.

My view is that VW did nothing wrong. The engine passes the test. Just like hybrids get much better results on the tests because they're allowed to start with a full battery and end with an empty one.

How one can compare this to the RedBull flexi-wing is beyond me, but I'll try anyway:

RedBull's flexi-wing is a piece of material. No logic. Nothing. The FIA designed tests to see how much it flexes in order to 'simulate' certain conditions. The problem herein being; If you apply enough pressure to anything, it *will flex* eventually. During those tests, the wing did not flex, but on the track under higher load it did. Result; The wing passed the test and is therefore legal.

VW designed a device that is active and changes its behavior according to if it is being tested or not. That would be like if RedBull s'flexi-wing had Transformers-style attributes and could strengthen itself for the test only to go back to normal-mode when in an actual race.

One case is a passive entity - the other is active. That makes it a huge difference. The VW driving on the road with the device inactive has nothing in common with the same VW being tested for emissions in the test-case.

[ChrisM40]

NOx control on vehicles is a farce anyway. EGR systems work for about a week on a Diesel car before getting clogged. My car has a BMW engine and its EGR system was so clogged that the intake manifold was about 1/3 of its original volume. Cleaned it, blanked off the EGR and away you go, much faster, lower MPG, less smoke, more responsive. Thankfully in the UK we dont test NOx at the MOT.

How many cars actually have an EGR service schedule? I suspect very few. My parents Vauxhall was just as clogged and actually failed to start because of it.

[MadMatt]

NOx control on vehicles is a farce anyway. EGR systems work for about a week on a Diesel car before getting clogged. My car has a BMW engine and its EGR system was so clogged that the intake manifold was about 1/3 of its original volume. Cleaned it, blanked off the EGR and away you go, much faster, lower MPG, less smoke, more responsive. Thankfully in the UK we dont test NOx at the MOT.

How many cars actually have an EGR service schedule? I suspect very few. My parents Vauxhall was just as clogged and actually failed to start because of it.

This is WRONG. We are currently doing endurance tests on EGR valves for a well known German manufacturer, and after hundreds of hours the valve was clean as it was had just been fitted.

What car/engine/year have you got?

[ChrisM40]

NOx control on vehicles is a farce anyway. EGR systems work for about a week on a Diesel car before getting clogged. My car has a BMW engine and its EGR system was so clogged that the intake manifold was about 1/3 of its original volume. Cleaned it, blanked off the EGR and away you go, much faster, lower MPG, less smoke, more responsive. Thankfully in the UK we dont test NOx at the MOT.

How many cars actually have an EGR service schedule? I suspect very few. My parents Vauxhall was just as clogged and actually failed to start because of it.

This is WRONG. We are currently doing endurance tests on EGR valves for a well known German manufacturer, and after hundreds of hours the valve was clean as it was had just been fitted.

What car/engine/year have you got?

This is not wrong, its a well known problem on diesel engines. A mixture of oil vapour from the turbo plus soot from the EGR turns to sludge that clogs up everything.

I may have exaggerated 'a week', but it doesn't take that long, it can certainly happen within a year, and its gets worse as the car ages.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=block ... 04&bih=938

[MadMatt]

NOx control on vehicles is a farce anyway. EGR systems work for about a week on a Diesel car before getting clogged. My car has a BMW engine and its EGR system was so clogged that the intake manifold was about 1/3 of its original volume. Cleaned it, blanked off the EGR and away you go, much faster, lower MPG, less smoke, more responsive. Thankfully in the UK we dont test NOx at the MOT.

How many cars actually have an EGR service schedule? I suspect very few. My parents Vauxhall was just as clogged and actually failed to start because of it.

This is WRONG. We are currently doing endurance tests on EGR valves for a well known German manufacturer, and after hundreds of hours the valve was clean as it was had just been fitted.

What car/engine/year have you got?

This is not wrong, its a well known problem on diesel engines. A mixture of oil vapour from the turbo plus soot from the EGR turns to sludge that clogs up everything.

I may have exaggerated 'a week', but it doesn't take that long, it can certainly happen within a year, and its gets worse as the car ages.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=block ... 04&bih=938

It is a known problem, but not for all manufacturers. It was certainly true years ago that these valves didn't quite work well (hence why we are still testing some these days), but the situation has evolved a lot. It is a bit like saying all diesel smoke black like hell.

[ChrisM40]

It is a known problem, but not for all manufacturers. It was certainly true years ago that these valves didn't quite work well (hence why we are still testing some these days), but the situation has evolved a lot. It is a bit like saying all diesel smoke black like hell.

Well my brother runs a diesel specialist and he gets all sorts in with the same problem, BMW, VW, Ford, Peugeot, the lot, even right up to 2014 models.

Even if the valve itself doesn't clog, the inlet will get sludged up. He always cleans them up as part of a major service or if he's selling them on. Its a hideously messy job.

[Sixbarboost]

And this fact we know how, because EPA says so?

Fact is we don't know anything for certain, more than the US lawyers will have a field day with this.

EPA has made the statement and VW confirmed it. The CEO even made a public apology. Whether you like it or not, but this is no longer a question if they broke the law, but a question how big the damage is and how much VW will have to pay in fines.

Bhall beat me to it, with much better and more specific information . Bhall for president, I'd say!

[SiLo]

Got an email send around today stating that Ford hasn't broken any laws like VW (I work for Ford). But its pretty obvious the entire industry has been hit looking at the share prices of a few of them.

I thought the numbers being thrown around were that it was a quarter of their car sales in the US being diesel, which I worked out to be around 91,000 cars. Anyone able to confirm this?

[CBeck113]

I disagree. Red Bull built a wing that passed the test but flexed excessively on track. VW apparently built an engine that passed the test and polluted excessively on the road. It is exactly the same. Either both cheated or neither did.

My view is that VW did nothing wrong. The engine passes the test. Just like hybrids get much better results on the tests because they're allowed to start with a full battery and end with an empty one.

How one can compare this to the RedBull flexi-wing is beyond me, but I'll try anyway:

RedBull's flexi-wing is a piece of material. No logic. Nothing. The FIA designed tests to see how much it flexes in order to 'simulate' certain conditions. The problem herein being; If you apply enough pressure to anything, it *will flex* eventually. During those tests, the wing did not flex, but on the track under higher load it did. Result; The wing passed the test and is therefore legal.

VW designed a device that is active and changes its behavior according to if it is being tested or not. That would be like if RedBull s'flexi-wing had Transformers-style attributes and could strengthen itself for the test only to go back to normal-mode when in an actual race.

One case is a passive entity - the other is active. That makes it a huge difference. The VW driving on the road with the device inactive has nothing in common with the same VW being tested for emissions in the test-case.

I think that it is more important to see who is being directly affected by the two cases:
1) Flex Wing: RB broke the spirit of the rules by designing to beat the test. In this case the F1 fans that paid for tickets and the Sponsors of the series & teams, along with the teams themselves were "cheated" out of fair results from the races. This is a very expensive but otherwise meaningless sport, the fans didn't directly lose too money by purchasing tickets.
2) VW diesel: here VW broke the spirit of the rules by creating a software which recognizese when the engine is being tested and runs to pass the test. The major difference is that criminal law were broken here, as Bhall mentioned, and vehicles were sold to 11 million people under the presumption that they were not just passing the test but also emitting these emissions under normal circumstances - which has been proven not to be the case. Assuming that the average Price of each car is 20,000€, we are speaking about 220,000,000,000€ which was taken out of the pockets of the people (the civil cases coming from this will be ludicris). Add the simple fact that VW would have had to pay millions in fines for exceeding the limits, they also purposely screwed over all governments in those countries in which these cars were sold (or they may have not even been allowed to sell them). Here in Germany tax evasion is punished much worse than any other crime, including murder, sex crimes etc., so this could get interesting when the investigations start here.
Summary: both did not brake the written rules, but in the case of VW they didn't cheat to win a few races but willfully cheated the public to increase their profit.

[Phil]

I still don't see the correlation between written rule or not - and how this is or should be compared to F1 and RedBull. The FIA messed up with their rules. They said something shouldn't bend/flex, when it's simple physics that applying enough force will make pretty much anything bend. The wing didn't change itself when going to testing. It was still the same wing.

This is akin to what we have with noise emission laws. Most sports car manufacturers get around this by using "klappenauspüffe" (valve-controlled-exhausts). They know that the noise emission testing is done at a particular rev-range at a predefined distance/angle and requires not to exceed a certain dB value. So any sports car manufacturer who uses such an exhaust that uses valves that open electronically after a certain rev range is legal and entirely consistent with road use too (the car behaves absolutely identical on the road as it does in the test).

If the law makers don't like this, they need to change the tests and test at a higher rpm range (which they are doing btw, at least in EU).

This is still very different than VW who designed a piece of software that changes how the car behaves during testing in order to get through them only to get back to normal afterwards. That would be like designing an exhaust that has closes valves only during testing but open valves when it's out on the road. That would be illegal. How is this different then sending a car to test and then selling a different car under the same chassis number as the same car that went to testing? It's not, it's fraud.

BTW; Just so that we are clear; People who reprogram their car to have their exhausts always in "sport mode" with open valves are essentially breaking the law.

[Fede44]

In order to make this analysis fully technical, and therefore fair, we should look at the test procedure documentation (FIA F1 rules analogy).

From that point, make our own judgement on whether VW cheated or just played the game like probably most of their competitors do.

I am not saying VW is right, but if you read the test procedures you will probably find they have much more grey areas and loopholes than F1 regulations.