I think Americans think new TDI = 1985 Mercedes Diesel/1995 Cummins
TDI’s are pretty common where I live, I’d say 30% of all VW’s I see are TDI. The smell is no different. I was behind one for miles on the way to work this morning.
Honestly, even the newer trucks have very clean exhausts. The only modern diesel trucks that stink are the modded ones.
Text of VWUSA CEO’s statement to congressional committee tomorrow.
Shouldn’t people be thanking VW/Audi for the better mpg. Not calling a lawyer!
Oh yeah the class action suit commercials are already starting. It’s interesting how they’re pitching it though; that your car’s value might be worth significantly less. I’d think it would be worth MORE.
I hate class action lawsuits so much. 99% of the time the only people who get rich are the lawyers.
Honestly, that’s kid of the point of a class action suit. It’s for a situation where there is a large number of people suffering a minimal loss, that wouldn’t justify filing individual lawsuits. The attorney just takes their 30% of the eventual award (and won’t get paid if they lose).
No, PG&E was the point of class actions and how it’s supposed to work. People getting $5 checks while law firms get millions over frivolous nonsense is the mockery that it’s turned into.
Can’t wait to see how cheap the lease programs are going to get on new VWs. Toyota had killer deals in the months immediately following the unintended acceleration mess.
Jalopnik has an update on the hearing today.
a couple of questions that have been coming up on here:
- 430,000 cars can’t be fixed by a software-only solution. A urea-based system, or a catylzer system, will need to be installed. It will be a “major fix.”
- Cars are anticipated to have a “one or two mile per hour top speed” performance loss. There’s no word on what that would do to power or acceleration specifically, but fuel consumption is expected to be the same
- The company will not buy back dealer inventory, but “the plan is to fix the cars.”
Sounds like they’re doing everything possible to avoid a class action suit on performance changes.
The top speed thing seems like such an odd choice of stats to bring up. I’m sure a bunch of diesel VW owners care about top speed. I just can’t believe someone who was clearly coached and prepared for this would walk in tossing around that stat.
Based on the 430k cars figure and the original number of half a million cars in the US I’d say 100% of their cars are going to need the urea injection system. The 70k difference is almost certainly the most recent cars that were already coming with urea injection systems and will simply need a tweak to how often the system is used.
I’ll be curious to how the roll out of 430k urea kits goes. No clue how they are going to design and manufacture them, do crash testing or whatever else is needed for a major modification like that, then install for people.
Then, questions like how does that affect the DPF, will they need to change that out for customers, how will this affect other systems on the car. Oy vey!
I don’t want to be the tinfoil hat guy (and take the crown away from B.E.D.) but does anyone find it a little suspicious that while VW is testifying in the US that the cheat devices were because of a few rogue engineers and that corporate had no idea it was happening the German police are raiding VAG corporate headquarters to prove “who knew what and when”? Auto exports are 1/5th of all German exports, and VAG makes up a huge part of that so it’s in their best interest if any evidence pointing above those few engineers being thrown under the bus were to disappear.
That is a pretty big assumption given the very few pieces of information we have on the topic. And I don’t think that the German police agencies care too much about their counties exports.
I blame this all on the Oil companies.
Yeah, the top speed thing is such an odd thing to point out, unless that was intended to indicate that they could fix it without really having an impact on any of the performance numbers people actually care about?
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I don’t think they’d need to crash test the cars again, they aren’t altering the safety structure at all. Aside from the tank, I think everything else is just plumbing under the vehicle.
The DPF is a really good question. I imagine they’ll have to extend the warranty beyond the 80K miles? IIRC adblue is injected downstream of the adblue, but they’re going to be tweeking the software as well.
It would seems they’ve known they were caught for at least 18 months, so they likely have been working on the fix since then.
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Here’s a video on how the system works in the large diesel engines.
I assume the larger catalyzer Horn mentioned is the NOx catalyzer?
and a diagram of the 2.0 exhaust system.
fuck 3 cats and they STILL put a muffler on their cars. I pulled the suitcase off my V10 touareg and I didn’t notice it was any louder at all and it only had 1 cat per bank to quiet things down.
. The Guardian revealed last week that diesel cars from Renault, Nissan, Hyundai, Citroen, Fiat, Volvo and Jeep all pumped out significantly more NOx in more realistic driving conditions.
carmakers designed vehicles that perform better in the lab than on the road. There is no evidence of illegal activity, such as the “defeat devices” used by Volkswagen.
I have to tilt my head when reading the second quote. If car makers design vehicles to perform better in the lab is that not the exactly what VW did?
So there are some pretty awesome lease deals right now… I wonder how well the TDI is going to be incentive driven after this fix.