VW in trouble

[Canadian Turbo]

Re: VW in trouble

Volkswagen could be fined millions of dollars in Australia if it turns out a “defeat device” was used on cars sold on the continent.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) released an update on its investigation into Volkswagen Group for possible use of “defeat devices” in Australia, following “significant public interest.”

“First, using defeat devices is specifically prohibited under the Australian Design Rules, which are picked up as Australian Consumer Law (ACL) mandatory safety standards,” ACCC Chairman Rod Sims commented.

“Secondly, cars are a big purchasing decision and claims that relate to environmental benefits or fuel efficiency can influence consumer choice,” he also added.

Volkswagen Australia is still unable to provide accurate information to the government on whether its cars sold locally are part of the dieselgate.

“At this stage, we are unable to comment on the local situation as we are still awaiting details with regards to our market,” spokesman for the company told Sydney Morning Herald.

[Canadian Turbo]

Re: VW in trouble

A summary of Clarkson's views, you need a subscription to read his full column.

Jeremy Clarkson has taken time out from working on his new Amazon motoring show to come to the defence of Volkswagen, the German car company currently embroiled in a scandal over its diesel-engine emissions tests.

According to Clarkson, the company's senior management should "stop wringing their hands and sweating in press conferences and go on the attack."

The whole issue has come about, Clarkson said in his column for The Sunday Times yesterday, due to "eco-mentalists" telling people first that diesel engines were less polluting than other engines before changing their minds and drawing attention to the damaging properties of the blend of nitrogen and oxygen – or NOX – the engines produced.

Various "soft-in-the-head governments" listened to those critiques and introduced new regulations on how much NOX a car could produce, Clarkson notes.

The new rules left VW with no choice but to redesign its engines, but the company went further and "fitted its engines with a clever bit of software that exaggerated their economy and cleanliness when they were being tested."

According to Clarkson, the trick is no different to everyday deceptions like lying on a CV or parking on double yellow lines.

As he sees it though, the risks to car makers and indeed Europe as a whole are huge if VW is "driven into the wilderness" by lawsuits, fines and damage to the company's reputation and sales. Because if VW goes out of business "the fallout would be immense because it owns Audi, Bugatti, Bentley, Lamborghini, Porsche, Seat and Skoda as well. So they'd also go to the wall.

"And without the profits from these engineering powerhouses Germany would no longer be in a position to bail out the Greeks or house half of Syria. Which would cause global economic collapse, a humanitarian catastrophe and many plagues."

Clarkson says that in his view what the company has done simply isn't that bad, so the punishment does not fit the crime.

"Put simply, then, Volkswagen looked at a set of arbitrary figures that had been dreamt up by a bunch of ill-informed, woolly-headed government officials and chose to ignore them. We are not talking about thalidomide here. Or Bhopal. It’s just a bit of good-natured rule-bending, and we all do that."

The 55-year-old presenter says that the whole issue is "rubbish" because "about 60 per cent of man-made NOX emissions do not come from road transport, and of the 40 per cent that do, the vast majority are from lorries and buses. So in the big scheme of things, your neighbour's Golf diesel makes no discernible difference."

Clarkson's claims on issues relating to pollution and the environment have been repudiated frequently by scientists and campaigners.

Bill McGuire, professor of geophysical and climate hazards at UCL described the presenter's Sunday Times columns as "barely coherent products of Clarkson's own fevered imagination".

Clarkson's view that VW has merely engaged in "well-intentioned and harmless cheating" sits in contrast with the official position of the governments of the US, Germany, UK, Switzerland, Italy, France, South Korea, Canada, Norway and India where investigations and legal proceedings are now underway.

[Shax]

Re: VW in trouble

Volkswagen sales dive in Canada, rise in U.S. after emissions scandal

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/volk...mber-1.3252767


I don't know how much I believe this one just yet. We were 2/3rds through the month before everything came to light.

[Canadian Turbo]

Re: VW in trouble

Interesting, but I think September can be a bit of an issue with inventory as new model years come available but there is also the fact that Canada is pretty doom and gloom on the economy at the moment too.

[Canadian Turbo]

Re: VW in trouble

In a rather surprising announcement, Volkswagen has admitted they don't know if the Euro-spec cars equipped with the EA189 engine had the special software turned on during official emission testing.

VW recently informed concerned owners the models featuring gasoline engines and the V6 TDI and V8 TDIs don't have the Bosch-developed software which is probably the only good news in this diesel mess. Now, representatives of VAG are saying they don't know whether the EA189-powered TDI cars sold in Europe had the illegal software activated when the cars were tested for emissions.

It's a tricky matter taking into account there are actually three engines (1.2 TDI, 1.6 TDI and 2.0 TDI) which were offered on various VW, Skoda, Audi and SEAT models in different states of tune and with three manual gearboxes and three DSGs. In addition, most of the vehicles were updated with each model year, so the situation is actually very complex and it will be very hard for VAG to sort out this major issue.

In total, there are almost 11 million cars from all over the world with the special software and Volkswagen has promised to fix all of them. They have already allocated €6.5 billion for the "dieselgate" and are now looking for ways to cut costs in order to have access to more money which they will spend not only on fixing these cars, but also to pay the upcoming fines.

[Shax]

Re: VW in trouble

Hmm. I don't know how accurate this is but interesting nonetheless.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=124&v=GhvI2oeBPtY

[witchcraftz]

Re: VW in trouble

I am wondering, since the car went into an almost "limp" mode there for a bit, the ECU may have throttled response to prevent potential damage.

We'll have to wait for a better test to see what the change in HP/TQ will be for TDI owners.

Maybe the answer isn't to undertune, but to increase power! Ships are now using biturbos to cool the air into their diesel engines and reduce NOx emissions by 80%, I like this solution!

http://www.marineinsight.com/shippin...harger-by-abb/

[BaggedGLI]

Re: VW in trouble

That video is a load of crap, the two wheel drive he had to ease it in to power so that it wouldn't downshift, the AWD he pinned it. That is the difference in power right there different amounts of load.

[bobkatkat]

Re: VW in trouble

I agree that is kind of a crappy test...but I did read that one of the ways the software cheat is automatically triggered was monitoring the traction control among a whole bunch of other trigger situations. They did a crappy job of explaining that in the video but I imagine that is the reason they ran the rear wheel dyno so they actually could get some numbers without triggering the cheat.

Better test will come.

[Canadian Turbo]

Re: VW in trouble

According to Credit Suisse's estimations, the entire EA189 diesel engine software debacle could cost the Volkswagen Group as much as €78 billion.

This is obviously a worst case scenario and would represent a massive blow for the German automotive conglomerate that has set aside for now "just" €6.5 billion to deal with the issue which involves recalling almost 11 million cars equipped with the EA189 1.2 TDI, 1.6 TDI and 2.0 TDI engines. In Volkswagen's vision, the amount of money should also be enough to pay the upcoming fines although it's very possible they will have to gain access to additional funds to face the penalties.

In reality, the problem is actually much bigger than this as there are thousands of remaining Euro 5 cars blocked at dealers and also this huge scandal will certainly have a negative impact on Volkswagen's image and many people will decide to go for another marque out of the VAG empire.

Credit Suisse's most conservative estimate of the cost stands at around €23 billion which still is about 3.5 times more than Volkswagen's allocated funds for the dieselgate. Hypothetically speaking, if the worst case scenario will actually happen, €78 billion would represent about seven times VAG's last year net profit.

There's also the issue of Volkswagen Financial Services which according to Credit Suisse is already having problems because they have to borrow more money than before in order to lend it to customers. CS says the VW's financial arm might need a cash injection from the group in the near future to maintain the business in good shape.




Now I am not absolving VW of guilt but I have to think that if governments and organizations require this amount of money to resolve this I really would like to see what they plan on doing with that money because this kind of shift of wealth could have some very serious consequences to the global economy and I think we might need to be careful about damaging this company for the long term too.

[bart]

Re: VW in trouble

think i'm gonna go buy a passat this weekend http://driving.ca/volkswagen/auto-ne...-diesel-models

[bobkatkat]

Re: VW in trouble

......Now I am not absolving VW of guilt but I have to think that if governments and organizations require this amount of money to resolve this I really would like to see what they plan on doing with that money because this kind of shift of wealth could have some very serious consequences to the global economy and I think we might need to be careful about damaging this company for the long term too.

They should look for loose change in Apple's employee lounge couch. Bet they could scrape up 90 billion USD just between the cushions.

[snipa_mini85]

Re: VW in trouble

They should look for loose change in Apple's employee lounge couch. Bet they could scrape up 90 billion USD just between the cushions.

This is assuming they have regular couches and not some over-engineered, fully moulded, seamless, wi-fi enabled piece of furniture.

[cam_wmh]

Re: VW in trouble

so many whiners on the internet, i am glad they did it, too bad they got caught haha, actually picking up a new tdi winter beater in a couple of weeks... biturbo, dsg, awd

Yep. And biturbo? wut is it?

[Canadian Turbo]

Re: VW in trouble

They should look for loose change in Apple's employee lounge couch. Bet they could scrape up 90 billion USD just between the cushions.

You are probably fired for bringing cash to work at Apple ####ApplePay#Saves#The#World####