More on VW Cheatware

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Bit like us supplying arms to the Middle east and asking that they aren't used to kill people. ;-)

[Roger Mills]

Depends on what you mean by "test purposes". VW could argue that they were doing precisely that!

[DJC]

Think the other way round: assume it is always a test until departure from the profile proves otherwise. It doesn't matter it occasionally the real world performance is degraded to test profile as it will not be sustained for long.

[Michael Chare]

Yes, (AIUI) they met the test requirements when being tested!

[dennis]

Other cars have passed the same test so maybe they cheated too or maybe they have better engineers.

[Dave Liquorice]

second

Disagree you could be pretty sure after the first three driving steps above, 10 seconds. ISTR that the tests take about half an hour, 10 seconds in "dirty" mode is going to be masked by the following 1790 in "clean" mode.

[Sam Thatch]

That wouldn?t be viable. Too many would experience that performance degradation in real life and it would be very variable, so they would be demanding it get fixed in the warranty period causing a big hike in warranty claims.

They couldn?t even have a note in the maintenance manuals saying that variable performance should be ignored because they couldn?t say why that happens and is nothing to worry about.

[Scion]

dennis@home put finger to keyboard:

There was speculation that VW cheating the tests allowed them to remove the AdBlue system from their 2-litre range hence reducing unit cost.

[John Rumm]

By looking at steering input, throttle position, and a barometric pressure sensor apparently... on a rolling road there are completely static inputs on the first two, and the pressure sensor does not record a change in pressure with increasing speed.

[DICEGEORGE]

People who bought a VW to drive around London with no tax may now be told its too polluty and therefore sue VW for the loss of the price of the car....

[Chris Bartram]

I could see that it might be possible to run in clean mode by default at idle and low throttle openings, and alter it when the pedal if pressed- after all, this is largely a modulation of the EGR valve, which happens all the time anyway as part of the normal map.

[Roland Perry]

In message , at 14:19:43 on Tue, 29 Sep

2015, Adrian remarked:

I think that's 40x one of the common US limits of 0.031, and perhaps the "cheat" is so good that it reduces the NOx to 1/40th while being tested.

[Adrian]

So the "real world" emissions are six or seven times what was permitted nearly 25 years ago...?

No, I don't buy it. I don't buy that VW's engineers are uniquely incompetent and disingenuous, either.

[sm_jamieson]

But why would VW basically admit to fraud if they did not believe themselve s to be guilty? They did not try to spin it in a PR way at all.

One article I read said that most diesels in the US use urea exhaust treatm ent, but VW did not include that on the 2.0 TDIs making out they have super ior engine tech that did not need it. Of source that engine tech (just more exhaust re-circulation during "test" mode ?) was not active in normal driv ing.

I also heard it reported that they did include Urea treatment, but it was s witched off during normal driving so it would not run out.

Not sure which is correct.

Simon.

[Scion]

Adrian put finger to keyboard:

"The VW cars under investigation emit up to 40x the national standard for nitrogen oxide, which is linked to asthma & lung illnesses." - a tweet from the EPA on Sep 18th. So yes, it seems that way, with a caveat for the "up to" phrase - perhaps that's an instantaneous reading vs. an average over a longer time for the test.

I don't doubt that other manufacturers have all sorts of tricks to reduce emissions during testing; I would be surprised if they all cheat as blatantly as VW has done. BMW for example have specifically said they don't use test-run detection software.

[John Rumm]

Could be both... IIUC some of the later model 2L engines do have the urea treatment system, while the earlier ones were claimed to not need it.

[Adrian]

The engines in question are Euro V in Europe, and were in production from

2009 on - they've been discontinued in Europe now.

AdBlue has basically only come in with Euro VI, legal requirement from last year.

[Roland Perry]

In message , at

17:15:02 on Tue, 29 Sep 2015, John Rumm remarked:

The ones with Urea treatment were 16-valve models fitted to Passats, rather than the non-urea 8-valve models fitted to smaller vehicles, and a few Passats.

[Sam Thatch]

But that approach would see it fail the emissions test on the machine.

[bert]

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