VW no doing so well, Ja?

Ford of Europe boss Jim Farley sent out a bulk mail to all Ford employees yesterday, stating he was confident that Ford hadn't cheated any emissions tests and had conformed to testing regulations. Certainly hope that is the case, they can ill afford a similar scandal as VW whilst trying to get Ford Europe back into profit.

There are now stirrings regarding real world fuel consumption figures being wildly different to the government test figures. Mercedes and BMW being at the top of the supposed culprits with discrepancies in the region of 50%. With Europe not moving forward to Real world testing until 2017, I wonder if any manufacturers will be brave enough to publish real world figures before then and try to get a jump on the market.
 
wave01 said:
No these cars will become collector's item and the price will rocket
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I think you may have "Not being able to touch it" and "Not wanting to touch it" confused.
 
Funnilly enough I was thinking of a small caddy van soon, might be some bargains to be had.
 
Yeah they are expensive, me and the missus fancy swapping the car for a small van so we can get our bikes around much easier for rides and stuff, weekends away and all that.
 
neil_g said:
yeah i was looking at a caddy for the same reason. unfortunately they seem to fall into the same popular trends as the T4/T5 etc
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what options have you come up with instead?
 
nilagin said:
I wonder if any manufacturers will be brave enough to publish real world figures before then and try to get a jump on the market.
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I imagine CEOs are currently grilling their chief engineers on exactly this point - "How certain are we that our figures are 100% reliable? Can we hang our reputation on this?".

A company that can be confident that's its figures are both reliable and better than market average will want to exploit that... although I have a sneaky suspicion that "reliable" and "market-leading" may be mutually exclusive... ;)
 
Nah I want to be able to park up and have all the stuff inside the van hidden from thieving scroats.
 
Mr Bump said:
Nah I want to be able to park up and have all the stuff inside the van hidden from thieving scroats.
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Because scroats never see a van and think "wonder what's inside that"? :p
 
There are some very good lease deals on VW Golf GT TDIs at the moment. A lot of car for the money.
 
Just bought a new Golf GTD. Euro 6 engine so not affected by recent row. Replaced a VW GT TDI 2014 which even though I part ex it was a great car, constantly got 60 mpg from it.

I suspect a lot of car manufacturers are speaking to their production teams.
 
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Being reported on LBC this morning that 1.2 million VW's in the UK are in the affected group of cars.
 
“The issue is a systemic one” across the industry, said Nick Molden, whose company Emissions Analytics tested the cars. 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. NOx pollution is at illegal levels in many parts of the UK and is believed to have caused many thousands of premature deaths and billions of pounds in health costs.

diesel = death
 
neil_g said:
Honda, Mercedes, Mitsubishi and Maza supposedly also not as good for the environment as they'd have you believe..

http://www.theguardian.com/environm...da-mitsubishi-diesel-emissions-row?CMP=twt_gu
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Mr Bump said:
“The issue is a systemic one” across the industry, said Nick Molden, whose company Emissions Analytics tested the cars. 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. NOx pollution is at illegal levels in many parts of the UK and is believed to have caused many thousands of premature deaths and billions of pounds in health costs.

diesel = death
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Odd how the Guardian ran the first article with the headline name manufacturers, as when you compare the actual results in the table they are nowhere near the culprits. And BMW is at the same level as Mercedes of those cars tested together with a whole bunch of others at about 2x more. Very different from the ones at the top which aren't named in the headlines...There are a whole bunch all floating at about 2x more, seems more of a test issue than any suggestion of malicious wrong doing... Renault, Citroën, Hyundai & Volvo however.... That link of Mr Bump is telling a less sensational story than the first one....
 
neil_g said:
like it or not, my 2.0 TDI VW for example emits the same CO2 as a much newer 2.0l Petrol BMW.



personally because i doubt the F150 V6 can do 50+MPG. in fact they appear to do about 15-22 (depending on which version V6). but like you say, fuel in america is cheap so its likely that they just dont care.

put petrol at a similar cost to here and i'm sure that picture would change.
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How do you know that is fact....though?
 
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neil_g said:
i dont. id say its a pretty reasonable assumption however.
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Based upon current information I am not sure we can trust any stated figures for emissions on most cars and deffo not VW for obvious reasons...
 
Leeds University have been conducting emissions tests on the road on cars since the VW fiasco and it's been found that Vauxhalls are producing NOX emissions 17 times the limit and twice the level that other makes produced during the tests. http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rc...3g_G8XC8D0_s15Nuw&sig2=zrH4nY8rybrDS8mvPwGyiA
It's now thought Vauxhall must have used a similar cheat tactic, although they are denying this. Add to the recent spell of Zafira fires, they're not having a great time of it at present.
 
Can't help wondering which other manufacturers are cheating but haven't been caught yet.
 
Nod said:
Can't help wondering which other manufacturers are cheating but haven't been caught yet.
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I read Leeds University have conducted tests on something like 20, 000 cars so far and only Vauxhall has proved to be irregularly higher than the average for other manufacturers. As I may have wrote in an earlier post, a couple of manufacturers had a similar cheat around 10yrs ago. I am surprised any would have been daft enough to try it again.
 
nilagin said:
I am surprised any would have been daft enough to try it again.
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Its not surprising that
1) how many Golfs I see trying to hide behind, beside, or between lorries.
2) Beastie boy fans have been spotted in a few area's replacing VW badges
( Linky for you yung'uns)

:D
 
Here's a contrary view of the VW story. What have they actually done wrong?

I mean, the standard with which they are supposed to comply probably states that emissions should be no more than "X" when the car is driven in a certain defined way. And VW cars achieve that. So what exactly is the problem?
 
StewartR said:
Here's a contrary view of the VW story. What have they actually done wrong?

I mean, the standard with which they are supposed to comply probably states that emissions should be no more than "X" when the car is driven in a certain defined way. And VW cars achieve that. So what exactly is the problem?
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They can't hit the standard when 'driven' at all. They can only hit the standard when the software is in 'test' mode.

A bit like a lens that will only perform in test conditions but can't focus in the real world (and as I wrote that I'm thinking it'd be impossible to do with a lens)
 
Not with firmware!
 
Phil V said:
They can't hit the standard when 'driven' at all. They can only hit the standard when the software is in 'test' mode.
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Two objections.

One. The regs don't say anything about emissions in conditions other than those specified by the testing protocol.

Two. If you drive the car exactly as it is driven in a test, the software detects what you're doing and switches into 'test' mode. So its emissions will reach the standard.

So what's the problem, again?
 
Surely it's just like fuel consumption tests. In the old days the manufacturers had to publish figures for consumption at a constant 90 kph / 56 mph. Of course the manufacturers tuned their engines so that they were as efficient as possible at that speed. The published figures might not bear much relationship with what most drivers would achieve, but that's because they choose not to drive at a constant 56 mph. If they did, they would achieve the published figures.

The consumption tests are a bit more sophisticated these days, but the same principle applies: if you drive the same way as is specified in the test protocol, you get the same results. If you don't, you don't. Everyone understands that. And emissions are the same.
 
StewartR said:
Two objections.

One. The regs don't say anything about emissions in conditions other than those specified by the testing protocol.

Two. If you drive the car exactly as it is driven in a test, the software detects what you're doing and switches into 'test' mode. So its emissions will reach the standard.

So what's the problem, again?
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No, you can't do that. The testing rig has to plug into the ECU (to disable safety features - because it's a rolling road just for the driving wheels, the car would think it was in a skid if the test rig didn't override it) which triggers the cheat, there is no way that the car can do this 'on the road'.

So nothing like 'fuel consumption tests', this is a software / hardware system designed to 'cheat' the tests, not just ECU programming designed to flatter performance. There's no way this system can be used in real driving, it's designed just for the test. Earlier in the thread there's costs listed for keeping the hack running during normal use, it's not practical.
 
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Phil V said:
The testing rig has to plug into the ECU (to disable safety features - because it's a rolling road just for the driving wheels, the car would think it was in a skid if the test rig didn't override it) which triggers the cheat, there is no way that the car can do this 'on the road'.
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Oh wow, I hadn't appreciated that. (Maybe I should have read the whole thread, but nearly 300 posts seemed a bit long!) But yeah, if that's what they've done, then you've answered my "What have they actually done wrong" question definitively. Thanks.
 
StewartR said:
Oh wow, I hadn't appreciated that. (Maybe I should have read the whole thread, but nearly 300 posts seemed a bit long!) But yeah, if that's what they've done, then you've answered my "What have they actually done wrong" question definitively. Thanks.
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Failed the analogy last night, but it's like a camera that has in body IS only when plugged into test software.
Apparently Merc started the fiddle using a sensor that knew when the bonnet was up which IIRC was designed to stop the auto braking, but which they then used to alter the ECU to make it more economical.
 
StewartR said:
Two objections.

One. The regs don't say anything about emissions in conditions other than those specified by the testing protocol.

Two. If you drive the car exactly as it is driven in a test, the software detects what you're doing and switches into 'test' mode. So its emissions will reach the standard.

So what's the problem, again?
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It won't though. The cheat was set up by having to turn off, the front crash sensors. The car can't perform on the rollers because the crash sensors detect the proximity of the cooling fans placed in front of the car and apply the brakes. VW point this out to the testing body who could see no problem in turning the sensors off. In turning off the sensors the alternative map is loaded.
 
nilagin said:
The cheat was set up by having to turn off, the front crash sensors. The car can't perform on the rollers because the crash sensors detect the proximity of the cooling fans placed in front of the car and apply the brakes. VW point this out to the testing body who could see no problem in turning the sensors off. In turning off the sensors the alternative map is loaded.
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I've been doing some reading about this, and interestingly the original notice of violation issued by the US Environmental Protection Agency doesn't mention crash sensors. The letter is here: [click]. It alleges that the defeat device "senses whether the vehicle is being tested or not based on various inputs including the position of the steering wheel, vehicle speed, the duration of the engine's, operation, and barometric pressure". Surely, if it uses the crash sensors to detect that it's being tested, then it doesn't need to do all that fancy stuff involving the position of the steering wheel and the speed?

What's also interesting is that, even if the VW defeat device were operable on the roads (assuming the driver drove at the correct speed, etc), it would still be illegal. Credit here to the lawyers who drafted the regulations, because they did an excellent piece of work. The relevant regulations are here: [click]. VW are accused of a breach of §7522(a)(3)(B) because the software was designed to beat the tests whether or not it was also operable "on the road"; and a breach of §7522(a)(1) because they had not declared the device and obtained a certificate of conformity for it.
 
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