Here's an interesting point. It seems CA has portable roadside emissions checkpoints that measure the emissions as you drive. I wonder why they haven't seen a major problem with VW vehicles as they pass these checkpoints?
Maybe it is a minimum difference between a properly working system and a VW in the fuel economy mode? Like someone else said - is the nominal emission near zero and 10 to 40 times worse is still an extremely small amount of NOx.
AFAIK, when they use the OBD method, all they are looking at is if the emission monitors are set and that there are no emission related engine codes set. None of that requires the car's emission system to be actually working, just that the OBD software in the car, which VW wrote, reports the above. The car could be spewing out anything and pass the test.
can you elaborate on this?
On scary battery plants or MBTE exposure, or long-term lead exposure rates?
--scott
both-
I imagined you visited some dirty smelting town where everybody was a mouth breather caked in filth. The battery plant must have been a pleasant place too.
Gary, IN had the permanent pollution cloud over it from heavy until maybe the early 2000s. The smell was awful.
The battery plant was in a town called Leeds, Alabama, and I have no idea what happened to it. I was born in Pittsburgh so I have a pretty high tolerance for industrial waste in the air, but lead is scary. The company there had sent recruiters to gatech and as a new grad I was trying to get as many plant tours as possible just to see what the industry was like.
I still do try to get plant tours whenever I can.
Here is some recent but pretty complete data on lead levels in children:
And here is a good overview on why any lead is bad:
I don't have a good online citation on how blood lead levels dropped when leaded gasoline was banned, but "Cities: An Environmental History" has an overview.
But if it was anything like Pittsburgh, the sunsets were beautiful. My aunt is still upset that they closed the mills down and now with no sulfur in the air she keeps getting mildew on her roses.
--scott
Yeah. Do a buyback and sell them where it's bloody hot
3rd world countries in africa and asia would rejoice (australians would too I'm sure)
The proper fix would be to buy the cars back from the (willing) owners at bluebook and sell them to the (3rd world) countries that do not participate in the smear campaign against VAG and could not care less about the emissions. An even more proper fix would be for VAG to withdraw from the american market altogether. There are lots of other markets where you do not have to make emissions claims at all and that would appreciate the 4 banger [turbo]diesels from VAG
According to NBC, the emission controls were altered when only the front wheels were turning, as on a dynometer.
I don't know about diesels, but newer gasoline powered cars in California don't use the dyno anymore. The levels are all read from the sensors via the OBD-II port, at least in California.
It's trivial to detect that the car is not being driven. No steering wheel motion, no compass variation, no accelerometer (if fitted), no... you name it, I'm sure there's a long list of candidates.
YOu're overthinking it. It's about driveability If the rear wheels ain't turning, you should turn on the emission controls. When the car is stopped in traffic, might as well make it clean. Performance isn't an issue when stopped. I'd have taken it a step further and made it clean whenever driveability isn't compromised...like when not accelerating at a rate faster than you could do with the emission controls functioning. Probably would never have been detected.
I'm not sure they even read levels. They do check to make sure the emission ready monitors have been set, which indicates that if the computer has been cleared, then the car has been driven long enough to reset them. Other than that, they are probably relying on the computer not having any emissions failure codes set. The cars don't have the instrumentation to measure all or maybe even any of the actual emission components directly. Whatever they measure, it's obviously even easier to cheat when only the OBD is used. The computer just says everything is OK all the time.
Actually, we're not sure what the real issues were. There is speculation that it's MPG and performance, which if true would make what you say true. It's also possible that some emission components are adversely effected, don't last as long, will fail if used continuously, etc. The last thing I saw, VW is saying that it was done because they could not meet both emissions and cost constraints. Which might play into the scenario that if the emissions controls are on continuously, or used enough, something bad happens.
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