11 MILLION VW cars used Dieselgate cheatware – what the clutch, Volkswagen?

Re: Sorry but how is this at all funny or appropriate?

You have triggered a trap!

Re: Sorry but how is this at all funny or appropriate?

"If Volkswagen alters the engine management software to make the cars run cleaner, then fuel economy and the cars' speed will be affected, and owners aren't going to be happy about that."

So everyone will ignore the recall. Happy days for VW....

Re: Sorry but how is this at all funny or appropriate?

>So the thumbs down is from someone who thinks violence to kids is OK?

No, and the world is not a dichotomy either.

Re: It's nothing to do with children

I thought that a large part of the internet is about Shaking Hands with the Bishop

Re: Sorry but how is this at all funny or appropriate?

I'm 50 years old. Today actually.

It's kinda uncivil that nobody congratulated you on your birthday, so hereby. Many happy returns!

:).

Re: Imagine the software meeting....

I'm guessing that these cars will still pass the UK MoT test in their current state which, I believe, tests for CO/CO2 and HC in exhaust gas. As such, surely this then makes the "software feature" an after-market enhancement that someone will no doubt provide to boost what will be the future shitty performance of these vehicles post-recall?

Re: Surely their competitors knew about this?

"I got voted down into oblivion when I pointed out on the previous el-reg story that this has to be an EGR related stunt as the specific VW models affected are (or at least initially were) AdBlue-less. I guess at the end of the day, I was right :)"

You were voted down for stating that adblue wasn't used in cars.

". AdBlue is used only in trucks AFAIK"

Re: Surely their competitors knew about this?

As cliché's go it's quite common thought the correct usage is "Only the love you can give to a ginger stepchild." while lightly tapping the back of your hand and putting a stupid smile on your face.

I'm not going to get into the whole PC crap, it exists and you can choose to find it funny or not as I've never seen or heard anyone use it that would advocate the exact meaning. It's a bit like when someone says "I like black people, every house should have one" to a black person ,they find it hilarious as they know as does the person saying it that because it's so far away from their moral compass it's actually too shocking to be anything other than funny and a great way to use shock as an icebreaker, the reactions of everyone else are extremely funny as they don't know what to do.

Can't we have politically correct political incorrectness?

Re: Surely their competitors knew about this?

@Voland's right hand surely CO₂ testing was done using standardized tests, which have been established long time ago in cooperation between motor companies and interested national/international agencies. Same as NO_xtesting, actually. Or mpg figures, for that matter. And everyone knows that these figures are fiddled and bear no resemblance whatsoever to real driving conditions.

There is hoping that this scandal will be a wake up call to replace these car tests with something a bit closer to reality (but do not get your hopes too high). Unrealistic test conditions are not confined to car industry, it happens everywhere when vendors are allowed too much influence - reminds me of Dyson

Re: Surely their competitors knew about this?

was CO2 (as required by UK tax banding)

Not just UK, France has swingeing tax "malus" (opposite of bonus) values for cars above certain CO2 thresholds, which is why diesel cars are so popular despite their known other pollution problems.

More to the point, the whole scheme is a con. CO2 production is directly related to fuel consumption, and the more fuel a car uses the more tax the driver pays, so there is already a progressive tax scheme in place that corresponds exactly to real-world driving conditions. The whole CO2 banding crap is just politicians' greenwash, to raise taxes while seeming to be concerned about "the environment".

It may even make matters worse, since all manufacturers game the system to score the best results in the test even if the real-world figures are worse. That can be seen by the resuts from tuners who can remap a car to give better performance and better overall economy when they aren't constrained by meeting artificial and unrealistic targets. VW seem to have gone over the top here, but all the moral outrage being expressed seems somewhat misplaced, they are far from alone in these activities. It will be interesting to see the results of tests on other manufacturer's vehicles.

Re: Surely their competitors knew about this?

Not only do their competitors know about this, they all do it themselves to a greater or lesser extent. The Peugeot HDI diesel engine is a case in point. The first of its type, claiming to give performance similar to petrol, with the economy of diesel. The particulate output of these is horrible - in normal use - but mysteriously they're able to comply with the EU regulations when tested on a rolling road for their annual MOT tests....

Ford also have some interesting code in their engine management firmware that they always claim is "proprietary" so isn't open to scrutiny. Draw your own conclusions......

AC because I design software for a motor manufacturer!

Re: "Wide Open Throttle"

@itzman nice explanation, I suppose the same applies to diesel power generators which, as I understand, are normally run at lean burn for fuel efficiency. If so, then there is a big question to green lobby: how many of these generators have been installed in support of wind turbines, how many are used, and what anti-pollution norms do they actually have to adhere to.

Re: "Wide Open Throttle"

And there is no currently deployable technological quick fix way out of that.

This is exactly what Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR) does. In low power operation it replaces some of that air with already-burnt exhaust gases, which cools the combustion and reduces NO formation.

Older cars had a very simple vacuum-based EGR valve which bled exhaust gases in when it detected high manifold vacuum, which was a very clumsy level of control and affected performance. Modern ones use an ECU-controlled valve, and this is probably where VW were playing games.

EGR causes other problems, such as soot build-up in the inlet manifold, and it was commonplace for people to blank off the valve by putting a small metal plate across the bleed pipe. That's harder now with the ECU-controlled valves, since the ECU can detect that opening the valve didn't cause any changes, and it's likely to flag this as an engine management problem (EML light comes on)

Re: "Wide Open Throttle"

If it's not economically feasible to clean NOx from diesel exhaust, this will be the end of the diesel car. Thoughts and questions:

Firstly, is urea in the quantities needed to clean the exhaust particularly expensive (and just how much is needed? ) Could diesel cars be made with an easily owner-filled urea tank, so that owners just have to tip a bottle of the stuff in when the low urea light comes on? (A bit like tipping engine oil into engines of 1960s vintage that ate oil at quite significant miles-per-liter rates even when new).

Secondly, if it's a problem only under light loads when the engine runs very lean, it's a good match to hybrid technology. Don't ever run the engine lean. Shut it down and run on the battery until more electricity is needed. Then restart the engine and run at the emissions-optimized power output until the battery is recharged.

One other thing: diesel fuel is taxed less than it should be in comparison to petrol. If the tax reflected the energy content of the fuels, then modern petrol-engined cars would look better value even to long-distance motorists. Diesel would once again become something used almost exclusively by off-road vehicles and goods vehicles.