VW , who next

[CloudWalker]

I think London Buses cause more pollution. Do they get tested?

[raphal]

I wonder how come the employees of the department involved in the development (who actually knew what they were doing) of that software kept it to themselves until found by EPA.

[centurian]

The old saying "What gets measured, gets fixed" is always the case, so you might expect car manufacturers to design their cars to have optimum emissions around the parameters being tested, even if those test parameters are not representative of real drivers.

They could always say, with good justification, that if you floor the throttle and take corners like Lewis Hamilton, it will go over the limits. But as long as you drove at a steady, slow pace (which few people do), you would get high efficiency / low emissions broadly the same as the tests.

But this goes way beyond that - this is outright fraud - to design components which will ONLY activate when it is on a test bed is unbelievable.

[d000hg]

If the engine has a low-emission mode that can be turned on when it thinks it's being tested, why don't they just leave it turned on?

I haven't seen a good explanation of what the tests involve that mean the engine can reduce emissions and still generate power to drive the car as normal, etc - anyone got a link or summary? Does it toggle to a different engine mode, or capture the emissions temporarily or something equally blatant?



I think buying VW stock is rather premature until all the disclosures come out and the fines are awarded.

[SueEllen]

If the engine has a low-emission mode that can be turned on when it thinks it's being tested, why don't they just leave it turned on?

Because the car is less responsive.

The tests are unrealistic as the car isn't being driven properly e.g. the steering wheel is placed in a certain position.

The reason they were caught is some firm did the tests whilst driving the car properly. They found loads of cars lied about their emissions.

I know you are good at Googling so you can find it yourself. Though the info I found out was by simply watching one of the more in depth news programs.

Oh and VW are a firm who use IT agency workers in Germany. I was approached a few years ago and laughed at them because the money was low.

[SimonMac]

If the engine has a low-emission mode that can be turned on when it thinks it's being tested, why don't they just leave it turned on?

I haven't seen a good explanation of what the tests involve that mean the engine can reduce emissions and still generate power to drive the car as normal, etc - anyone got a link or summary? Does it toggle to a different engine mode, or capture the emissions temporarily or something equally blatant?



I think buying VW stock is rather premature until all the disclosures come out and the fines are awarded.

I would imagine performance suffers

[SueEllen]

I think London Buses cause more pollution. Do they get tested?

Yes they do get tested.

There are suppose to be battery/diesel hybrids on some London bus routes but the batteries don't work so they run on diesel.

London Buses while they are organised by TFL are actually run by different private companies with different salaries. So some companies run some gas buses, others run some battery/diesel hybrids and the majority have diesel buses in their fleets.

[EternalOptimist]

Surely the real point about all this is that if you start offering subsidies, people will fight to get their snout in the trough.
It's the problem with all this green bollox. It's 100% Snout driven corruption.

[PurpleGorilla]

What diesel cars are there from the EU in the U.S.?

I'm pretty sure BMW only sell petrol cars, and Skoda and seat are not sold out there.

Anyone know if Mercedes, Audi or Porsche sell diesels in the U.S.?

[SueEllen]

Surely the real point about all this is that if you start offering subsidies, people will fight to get their snout in the trough.
It's the problem with all this green bollox. It's 100% Snout driven corruption.

One of the selling points is that the cars cost less to tax due to their lower emissions.

This was NO2 in the US but CO2 in the UK.

So we need to presume that all car manufacturers are lying about the amount of CO2 their cars produce.