[RavenAvi]

Volkswagen might have to buy back some of it's "cheat software"-ridden cars from disgruntled owners as they face over 200 lawsuits in the US.

Many of the more than 200 lawsuits filed in the past few weeks allege that for seven years VW marketed four-cylinder diesel Golfs, Jettas, Beetles and Passats as clean alternatives to gas engines, knowing all along that the cars were spewing pollution that far exceeded legal limits.

Seattle lawyer Steve Berman seized on that time frame when he sued VW last week in Los Angeles, seeking full restitution for owners of nearly 70,000 affected cars in California.

In a somewhat unique approach, Berman is seeking to get his clients their money back under California laws requiring automakers to guarantee emissions control parts for up to seven years or 70,000 miles. His lawsuit says that VW can't promptly make its diesels comply with the warranty, so under a different statute it "shall either promptly replace the new motor vehicle or promptly make restitution to the buyer."

ET Auto


As resale values plummet of Volkswagen cars, owners are stuck with their vehicles as selling now will incur a severe loss.

Auto industry consultant Edmunds.com said on Monday the price of used VW diesel vehicles sold at auction by dealers to other dealers dropped 6.5 percent, based on Sept. 1-Oct. 9 data.

The average price of these cars fell to $10,586 after Sept 18, the day the scandal broke, from $11,319, Edmunds.com said. "The drop reflects a lot of the uncertainty and speculation that's out there," said Edmunds.com analyst Jessica Caldwell.

That contrasts with healthy U.S. used-car prices, which were 7.6 percent higher year-over-year in the second quarter. Volkswagen did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

As lawmakers and regulators seek answers on how the cheating by the world's second-largest carmaker occurred and how it will make amends, Volkswagen's reputation has suffered, reflected in fewer online searches.
Car-buying website TrueCar found a 57 percent drop in searches for VW diesel cars since the scandal broke on Sept 18. The overall brand was itself affected, with total searches for all Volkswagen vehicles down 9 percent.
Swapalease.com said VW lease transfers have dropped 50 percent thus far in October, including gas and diesel engines.

ET Auto

[viren83]

Mazda is smart

[msprabhakar]

Originally Posted by msprabhakar

...I'm a fan of Ferdinand Piëch, too. But I think we should trust VW board and the new CEO Matthias Müller to turn around VW as transparently and aggressively as Ferdinand Piëch did during his best days...

Guess who's trying to turn VW around...

According to an article published in London's Financial Times, Ferdinand Piëch’s influence is seen everywhere at Volkswagen. Some predict that the former chairman could make a return to carmaker after VW's emissions scandal.

The full article can be read here:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/fe07b240-7...#axzz3p5lEcWpV

This article is behind a subscription pay wall. For those of you who don't subscribe to FT, I've attached a PDF version here:

[volkman10]

VW suspends quality chief in emissions cheat probe.

Volkswagen has suspended its suspended its head of quality control, Frank Tuch, in connection with the emissions scandal at the automaker.

Tuch, 48, is the fifth high-ranking VW executive put on leave as the company and external investigators probe how software designed to cheat emissions tests ended up in 11 million VW Group engines worldwide.

Audi r&d boss Ulrich Hackenberg, VW brand development chief and group powertrain head Heinz-Jakob Neusser, and Porsche chief engineer Wolfgang Hatz, who previously was VW group powertrain head are among other senior executives who have been suspended.

http://europe.autonews.com/article/2...mail-ane-daily

[nijelj]

Originally Posted by ddis_dude

One doubt - in the above, I get the "reduced power" part since the engine is now operating in a mode tuned for emission and not power. What I dont get is "increased fuel consumption" - how can you ever burn more fuel than before and still produce lesser emission?

There is a NOx storage catalyst /NOx adsorber/ Lean NOx trap in the vehicle. This works by storing the NOx until full. Once full, obviously it cannot store more NOx. So then the procedure is to release extra fuel (inject fuel in the exhaust stroke); this excess fuel reacts in the NOx storage catalyst and uses the O- oxygen from the stored NOx making it N-Nitrogen + water + CO2.

So the increased fuel consumption is due to the extra fuelling required to empty the NOx storage catalyst

[execve]

Volkswagen halts sale of European diesels linked to emissions scandal

http://www.cnet.com/news/volkswagen-...sel-stop-sale/

Volkswagen on Wednesday ordered a halt to sales in Europe of all models that feature diesel engines equipped with defeat devices meant to falsify emissions compliance, the latest in a global scandal expected to cost the German automaker billions of dollars.
...
The European stop-sale affects diesel models equipped with Volkswagen Group's EA189 four-cylinder turbodiesel engine. The EA189 was replaced by the EA288 in 2014, the latter of which been the diesel engine in US VW models since the start of the 2015 model year. Volkswagen toldReuters that this stop-sale only affects a small number of vehicles, and those cars would be sold once fixed.

[sukarsan]

Logically, I can’t understand how the EA 288 series was developed to replace EA 189. I can’t see how the defeat devices were discarded in 2014 when they were working so well with the EA189 series engines for 5-6 years. If the new series was compliant in all aspects, then the management would have questioned the decrease of mileage for sure.

So basically VW is saying that, they decided to upgrade the EA189 to EA 255 and gladly accepted the drop in mileage after investing millions in a new engine program. Something is fishy here.

[tj123]

VW problems may get even worse as authorities are investigating other VW models , per NY Times. article

Volkswagen said on Thursday that it was investigating whether substantially more vehicles than previously disclosed were equipped with software intended to deceive emissions tests, raising the possibility of even greater damage to the company’s reputation and finances.

The automaker admitted last month that 11 million cars and light commercial vehicles equipped with a diesel motor line known as the EA 189 had the illegal software. On Thursday, Volkswagen said it was investigating whether some versions of another diesel motor line, known as the EA 288, also had software intended to detect when a vehicle was undergoing emissions testing and turn on pollution controls.

Under normal road use, the EA 189 vehicles, which included popular models like the Passat, Jetta, Beetle and Golf, could emit up to 40 times the allowed amount of nitrogen oxide, a pollutant linked to numerous lung ailments.

A Volkswagen spokesman would not comment on how many more cars might be affected. Since 2012, the EA 288 has been installed in vehicles like the best-selling Golf, suggesting that the number of additional cars could be in the millions. The EA 288 was also installed in cars sold in the United States.

A company spokesman said that the newest versions of the motor, which are certified according to the latest European diesel emissions standard, are compliant with emissions rules and do not have illegal software.

Under pressure from German authorities, Volkswagen is recalling about 8.5 million European vehicles with the EA 189 motor to bring them into compliance with emissions regulations. Volkswagen has also promised to fix about 500,000 diesel cars in the United States.

Matthias Müller, the Volkswagen chief executive, said this month that the cost of repairing the vehicles would far exceed the 6.5 billion euros, or about $7.4 billion, the company initially allocated for recalls. If many more vehicles are affected, the expense to Volkswagen could rise significantly.

Not only would Volkswagen have to repair more cars, but it would also face more lawsuits from customers whose vehicles have lost value, or who contend that they were sold cars under false premises. Volkswagen marketed its “clean diesel” vehicles as an environmentally responsible choice for buyers who also wanted peppier performance than they would get from a hybrid competitor, like the Toyota Prius.

On Wednesday, Volkswagen said it had halted the sale of what it called a limited number of new cars with EA 189 motors from 2015 or earlier that were already at dealerships but had not been sold.

A 2-liter, four-cylinder version of the EA 288 was installed in Golf, Jetta and Passat cars sold in the United States beginning in 2012, according to an article on the website of Car and Driver magazine. The motor was more powerful than the EA 189, the magazine said, and treated emissions partly by recycling some exhaust gases into the motor. In addition, like the EA 189, the motor had a system to inject the chemical urea into the exhaust, which if designed properly could neutralize most of the nitrogen oxide emissions.

In treating some emissions by recycling them, the engine would have placed less of a burden on the chemical system, and owners would not have had to refill a urea supply tank as often. But the recycling system can also hurt acceleration and fuel economy. Volkswagen could have been motivated to dial back the pollution controls, except during testing, to give drivers better fuel consumption and performance, engineers outside the company have said.

In Internet forums, Volkswagen drivers often reported better fuel performance than in official government ratings.

Volkswagen could have saved fuel or improved performance by allowing more pollutants to pass through its cars’ exhaust systems, researchers said.

EA stands for “entwicklungsauftrag,” or “development order,” and signified a major new engine line. Volkswagen deploys its engines and other components not only in Volkswagen cars, but also in other brands belonging to the company, like Audi or Skoda. The strategy saves money because costs of development and production are spread across a large number of vehicles. But it means that any problems infect a large number of vehicles.

The engines were configured in different ways depending on the vehicle, further complicating the task of bringing them into compliance. According to Car and Driver, there was also a 1.6-liter version of the EA 288 that was not sold in the United States.

Volkswagen has said that in some cases, the cars can be fixed by reprogramming the software. But in other cases, Volkswagen may need to install new hardware, like systems to inject chemicals into the exhaust to neutralize nitrogen oxide emissions. Mr. Müller, the Volkswagen chief executive, has not ruled out giving some customers new vehicles if repairs are not possible.

Volkswagen has suspended five high-ranking executives in connection with the scandal. Mr. Müller has said that a small number of employees were responsible for the illegal software.

Determining how many people were in the know is one of the main goals of an internal investigation being conducted by Jones Day, an American law firm with offices in Germany. The investigation is still in its early phases and it is not clear how many managers, engineers and others may eventually be implicated, but the number is expected to rise.

At the very least, employees with knowledge of software coding would have to have been involved in order to program the motors to cheat.

Source

[sukarsan]

http://www.theguardian.com/business/...ating-software

Reading the article above is giving me the chills. Even VW is not sure what's going on!!! My guess is that every vehicle till mid 2014 with both EA189 and EA288 series are polluting with these 'defeat devices'

[AutoInt]

There is no further news on the investigation carried out by ARAI for the VW Indian models. Does anyone have any update on the same? IIRC ARAI is to submit the report by end of Oct 2015.

[tbppjpr]

Originally Posted by sukarsan

[url]My guess is that every vehicle till mid 2014 with both EA189 and EA288 series are polluting with these 'defeat devices'

The above statement like your's along with many others posted earlier in this thread make it look like only these two engines make pollution and rest all are clean.

I am sorry but truth is not like what has been made look like. Have a look at here:

VW Passat and Jetta having controversial engines emit 0.62g/km NOx. This is around 3.5 times higher than the allowed limit of 0.18g/km as per EURO 5 norms.

Now see what others do:

• Mercedes-Benz’s diesel cars produced an average of 0.406g/km of NOx on the road, at least 2.2 times more than the official Euro 5 level
  
  
• Honda’s diesel cars emitted 0.484g/km of NOx on average, between 2.6 and six times the official levels.
  
  
• Mazda’s diesel cars had average NOx emissions of 0.293g/km in the real world, between 1.6 and 3.6 times the NEDC test levels.
  
  
• Mitsubishi diesel cars produced an average of 0.274g/km of NOx, between 1.5 and 3.4 higher than in the lab.
  
  
• Molden said Emissions Analytics had analysed about 50 Euro 6 diesels and 150 Euro 5 diesels, with only five having real-world NOx levels that matched the regulatory test.

Sources:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/oct/09/mercedes-honda-mazda-mitsubishi-diesel-emissions-row

http://www.dnaindia.com/money/report-mercedes-honda-mazda-mitsubishi-join-volkswagen-in-the-diesel-emissions-scandal-row-2133482

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal

[srishiva]

Originally Posted by tbppjpr

The above statement like your's along with many others posted earlier in this thread make it look like only these two engines make pollution and rest all are clean.

I think whats being talked about is the cheating during test conditions. The real world emissions were ALWAYS more and it has been known for a long time.
With changes being looked into for real world like test conditions, car makers will have to adhere to those too. (without cheating )

[sukarsan]

Originally Posted by tbppjpr

The above statement like your's along with many others posted earlier in this thread make it look like only these two engines make pollution and rest all are clean.

I am sorry but truth is not like what has been made look like.

There is huge variation between emission certification trials and on road emissions. This is well known and extensively documented.
Infact, it’s a 5 years cycle wherein regulations are revised based on such inputs from real world data.

The studies you cite are genuine , but they emphasize on the need for better testing protocols. The result is the development of WHTC(world harmonic transient cycle) which is now rolled out in Europe I think.

However, what VW did is illegal and they have admitted. Every other automaker has already clarified that they are following the law.

[johannskaria]

Dominos effect continues

Volkswagen, which declined to comment on Saturday's report, has said it will cut investment plans at its VW division -- the largest by revenue -- and speed up cost cutting to cope with the cost of cleaning up the emissions scandal.

According to Manager Magazin, the VW brand is to bear the brunt of the costs, while more upmarket brands like Audi and Porsche are to be shielded from the current crisis.

Audi told employees it plans to keep hiring and affirmed a jobs guarantee through 2018, a spokesman for Audi said on Saturday, confirming a German media report.

"We are sticking with plans for strategic growth and are continuing to hire new employees as planned," newspaper Heilbronner Stimme had earlier quoted Audi personnel chief Thomas Sigi .

ET Article

[sukarsan]

Something about the new EA288 engine still bothers me. On Oct 22 nd VW issued a statement that this engine is not affected. On the same day BBC had an article saying some engines of EA288 are being investigated. Most surprisingly there is a stop of sale order issued by VW on the new 2015 models in USA.