[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by Sutripta

Wondering if the EPAs test procedure is an automated fixed known cycle. Wouldnt be difficult to detect the sequence, which will also tell you when it has ended.

Detecting the EPA test cycle is probably not that difficult. What I don't understand is how they actually got different results. What is they do to get, apparently, a forty times better result? that needs some serious fiddling one way or the other.

I would just like to understand the technicalities behind this fiasco. Just because VW has acknowledged they have a problem, doesn't mean to much.

There have been similar cases in the past where it was just down to interpretations on requirements and test protocols. But once these sort of things hit the media, there is no way you can explain this on facts and interpretation anymore.

What is a bit remarkable that on a car enthousiast forum everybody seems to be in total agreement with what has been reported in the media, without any technical and or other insights. If anything it is a good demonstration on how powerful (social) media can be these days. Best to admit, declare mea culpa and try and limit the damages no matter what the facts are or were.

For VW this is not about how or what happened, but what is going to happen and how can they limit the damage. I'm sure two years from now this will be study cases in various MBA courses on how to deal with negative PR.

I have just spend some twenty minutes surfing the EPA website to find more information. Cant find a thing. Cant even find whom to contact.

Jeroen

[amit_snk]

Why not develop a system where car's emmisions are displayed real time on to the dashboard multifunction display. If on board computer can calculate fuel efficiency, DTE and other stuff, why not this. If done, there will be no need of EPA or other regulatory inspectors as every owner can himself check against necessary and achieved emmisions

[CarJunki]

Even if someone with detailed technical knowledge participated in any of the online forums, I seriously doubt they will come out in open. As most knowledgeable persons would be the ones directly connected with developing such a mechanism.
All employees at big companies have signed Non Disclosure Agreements of some sort.

So there is no possibility of getting this kind of detail unless it is filed in some court and from there made public.

And lets face it, it has taken some good 6 years for a regulatory body to figure out this issue. That speaks a lot for the cleverness of algorithm.

[ecenandu]

Originally Posted by Sutripta

Wondering if the EPAs test procedure is an automated fixed known cycle. Wouldnt be difficult to detect the sequence, which will also tell you when it has ended.

Regards
Sutripta

I don't know about EPA but for Indian driving cycle its pretty easy to detect whether the vehicle is on the Emission test mode. Have a look at the cycles





The gear data is missing in the above diagram.

After starting the vehicle the software can check for 108 seconds(for 2W) or 195 seconds(for 4W) whether the vehicle follows the above pattern or not. If it follows the said pattern, then it can fetch the values from a different map which is tuned for emission.

To prevent false 'Emission mode' detection, the software can continue cross checking whether the driving pattern still follows the emission pattern or not.

Engine rpm, Vehicle speed, Gear position(if any) would suffice for the detection

Picture source : https://www.araiindia.com/pdf/Indian...on_Booklet.pdf

[rrsteer]

One of the key questions would be to understand if other manufacturers too are doing something similar? And did VW employ similar tactics in Europe? I read sometime not too long ago that emission tests in Europe and NA are based on divergent philosophies, so is it possible that VW engines passed EU norms, but couldn't pass the NA regulations?

EDIT: I am also curious how did EPA find out about this malpractice- is there a relation between this development and the recent leadership struggle within VW?

[Jeeper1941]

John German and Peter Mock from the International Council on Clean Transportation were the researchers responsible for actually calculating the emissions and thus discovered that what was coming out of the tailpipe and what VW was telling the EPA did not match up. Once the EPA understood what was going on, it forced VW to explain things.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl...lean-air-group

Sales of VW diesels in the US have since been stopped: http://www.autonews.com/article/2015...-official-says

Realistically however, they won't face the maximum fine but we can expect the fine to be substantial and they will probably also be told to rectify the problem on cars already on the road. Ultimately though, it was a very stupid thing to do, and will be interesting to see as this scandal unfolds, who within the VAG was actually responsible for signing this off.

Knowing how litigious Americans are there is already talk of a class-action lawsuit: http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielfi...her-consumers/
I think we can expect this soap-opera (already dubbed "dieselgate") to take several years to run it's course. The big winners in this whole saga will of course be the greedy lawyers.

Finally, how ironic is it that Audi's new slogan is "Truth in Engineering" (the Audi A3 TDI is also caught up in this scandal).

[deetjohn]

This is a big one! Wonder when our Automotive governing bodies will be as tough as the US ones and not give into manufacturers lobby.

As per Jalopnik, this is what happened.

Originally Posted by Jalopnik

1. In order to meet tougher emissions regulations that went into effect in 2008, most automakers started supplying their diesel cars with tanks of a urea-based solution (often referred to as “AdBlue”) that cuts down on nitrogen oxide emissions.


2. Many larger diesel engines on big sedans and SUV, including some from Audi as well as competitors at BMW and Mercedes, use such a system. And so did some of the Passats, too.

3. But VW and Audi said the 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine on the smaller cars was able to meet the requirements without a urea injection system — although many people have wondered exactly how. Newer TDI models like the MK7 Golf, made from 2015 on, do include urea injection.

4. On Friday, the EPA announced they found the TDI cars contained “a sophisticated software algorithm” which detected when the car was being tested for emissions. When that happens, the software drastically reduces the emissions as compared to normal driving, indicating to testers that the car had passed.

5. Basically, it’s like taking a test when you already know what the answers are. It appears the cheat device was present on all TDI cars, not just ones sent for emissions testing.


How did the EPA find this?

A relatively small clean-air NGO, the International Council on Clean Transportation, noticed discrepancies between tests of diesel Volkswagens in Europe, so last year they borrowed equipment from West Virginia University to test the cars’ actual emissions in real-world driving in the U.S.

Rather than trying to cast doubts on Volkswagen, they’d hoped to prove that small diesels like the cars VW made could run cleanly. While the VWs passed the lab tests performed by the California Air Resources Board, they failed the real-world tests, which measured tailpipe emissions.

VW engineers struggled to explain these results to the EPA and CARB after an investigation began. Regulators weren’t satisfied with that explanation, so they threatened to withhold certifications and effectively halt sales.

Only then did VW concede the cars had a cheat device. The EPA didn’t know about this before because they depend on automakers to self-certify their cars.


How can VW fix this?

It’s also possible that restricting emissions in a way that complied with the law would have reduced the power and fuel economy that the TDI engines are known for. If VW is able to develop a fix and get it approved, the performance and fuel efficiency of their cars might fall. That’s more likely if the fix is only a software update, which would be far cheaper for Volkswagen.

If VW ends up having to make software changes and retrofit an entire SCR system to the cars (other than the Passat TDI)—something that would likely cost it thousands of dollars per car—performance would likely be unchanged, but interior volume might be reduced to accommodate a liquid-urea tank and associated plumbing.

To say the very least, its a big blow for VW and the Diesel engines for passenger cars in general. Small efficient Diesel engines just lost a BIG footing to the hybrids. Such a shame!

Source

[StarScream]

Just goes on to show that there is no such thing as "clean diesel."

[i74js]

Originally Posted by amit_snk

Why not develop a system where car's emmisions are displayed real time on to the dashboard multifunction display. If on board computer can calculate fuel efficiency, DTE and other stuff, why not this. If done, there will be no need of EPA or other regulatory inspectors as every owner can himself check against necessary and achieved emmisions

Most of the OBD based applications for iPhone / Android present emission data on real time basis. You can have one too The app along with OBD hardware put together will cost you around INR 1500.

This can be archived and can be generated into a free text / excel sheet. Yet it all depends on what algorithm operates in the ECU to estimate emissions. If there is incorrect algorithm, you may not get the correct emission data.

At the end, it boils down to the formula and mathematics behind it.

Cheers

[avira_tk]

Originally Posted by kovilkalai

Okay. Lets say the EPA is incompetent. Does that mean what Volkswagen did was okay? Unless VAG can claim that this is a witch-hunt and nothing like this really happened, all of the above is irrelevant, no? For instance, the EPA dumped toxic stuff into a river. Does that give us a license to do that?

What volkswagen did was OK in my book, the EPA tests consistently rated diesels below their actual fuel economy so after 6 years of doing nothing like checking if the tests were a waste of time, the EPA managed to get hold of university research for free and now plan to make money off it. You probably think that is ethical, I think it is wrong.

I have the example of the EPA waste dumping as an example of how these useless agencies operate without any accountability, nowhere did I say that's a license for everyone else to do so. To turn your question around, the you toxic dumping was done and no EPA employee will be punished for it, this has poisoned the water supply in a huge area and the losses are immense, if the EPA can be left off why should volkswagen have to pay for pollution which no one can prove as having caused a death or illness.?

[Peterf]

I just don't understand that are the US regulation laws so strict that carmakers like VW can't pass them with their diesel engines, and have to adapt other fraudulent techniques.
I used to think that new age diesel engines are significantly less polluting.
Or I am missing something here.
Definitely a big blow to diesel engines.

[StarScream]

Originally Posted by Peterf

I just don't understand that are the US regulation laws so strict that carmakers like VW can't pass them with their diesel engines, and have to adapt other fraudulent techniques.
I used to think that new age diesel engines are significantly less polluting.
Or I am missing something here.
Definitely a big blow to diesel engines.

http://www.vox.com/2015/9/21/9365667...passenger-cars :

Volkswagen hasn't explained exactly why it cheated, but outside analysts have a pretty good guess. The NOx emission controls likely degraded the cars' performance when they were switched on — the engines ran hotter, wore out more quickly, and got worse mileage. Some experts have suggested that the emission controls may have affected the cars' torque and acceleration, making them less fun to drive. (Indeed, some individual car owners have been known to disable their cars' emission controls to boost performance, though this is against the law.)

In other words, Volkswagen wasn't able to produce diesel cars that had the ideal mix of performance, fuel economy, and low pollution. (Or, at least, they couldn't do this profitably.) So they "solved" this trade-off by sacrificing cleanliness and loosening the emission controls. And they accomplished this via software designed to deceive regulators. This was wildly illegal, and they got caught.

[epuneet]

It seems from the posts & various articles that while the cars did have the tech to reduce emissions, it would activate only under test conditions. So my question is: Why did VW choose to deactivate the tech in real life driving conditions when you've already put it in the cars? OR did VW not have the emissions reduction tech in the cars & instead the software just used to fudge the emissions data - how's that even possible? Would'nt the test also take emission samples from the exhaust pipe?

[happy_traveller]

The South Koreans have started testing VW diesels and "the probe will expand to all German diesels is issues are found"

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-34322016

Not sure if the Korean emission norms are as strict as the US but if they find discrepancies, then it will be a big blow to the diesel market. This makes me wonder, how these could have passed the much stricter Euro emission norms.

[StarScream]

Originally Posted by epuneet

It seems from the posts & various articles that while the cars did have the tech to reduce emissions, it would activate only under test conditions. So my question is: Why did VW choose to deactivate the tech in real life driving conditions when you've already put it in the cars? OR did VW not have the emissions reduction tech in the cars & instead the software just used to fudge the emissions data - how's that even possible? Would'nt the test also take emission samples from the exhaust pipe?

It was the former. They had the tech but it was turned off by default to boost performance and mileage. A tail pipe, real world test by an outside agency is what caught the deception.