Ouch - VW/Audi in the US of A

[Greedy]

Well that my newly acquired A6 2.0 Ultra buggered. Was going to pay off the PCP after the 1st month but think I'll stick with it and force them to honour the return value cos the 2nd hand price will be taking a nose dive. Best case I can see is that the software will be tweaked by recall to use more AdBlue to meet the promised emission and that will cost the driver a fortune in AdBlue.

There's me thinking I was buying a responsible car comparing the emissions to other I considered. Think VW will have to be providing AdBlue very cheaply to driver to prevent law suit for cars bought under false expectations on cost.

[Bar Shaker]

Volkswagen emissions scandal: millions of Britons could be driving illegal cars - Telegraph

One can only wonder what this will do to the resale value of affected cars?

And whether potential purchasers will be pulling out of orders...

Very sad day for VW/Audi.

It won't make any difference to the resale value of your car, nor anyone else's.

Manufacturers have been doing this for years, all of them. Anyone remember the old Scooby algorithm? If you drove in second gear at 3,000 rpm for more than 2 seconds and then booted it, you only got 0.5 bar of boost. You couldn't replicate this in any other gear or rpm sector. The reason? To pass US emission tests which required the car to be fully accelerated from half revs in second gear.

I doubt there is a single manufacturer that doesn't have a bit of code for optimising emission tests.

I also don't see much wrong with it. What is this 'normal driving' that the complainers refer to? The only test that really matters is mpg.

I am sure VAG's lawyers will have their day in court and this story will run and run, especially once other manufacturers are caught out and writing in these lines of code is seen to be the norm.

[A6S]

To be honest the emissions claims are b0llocks anyway. Like the mpg claims. I have never got close to the manufacturers mpg figures in any car.

[Phutters]

To be honest the emissions claims are b0llocks anyway. Like the mpg claims. I have never got close to the manufacturers mpg figures in any car.

In all fairness the fuel consumption figures (whatever the rights and wrongs of how they are achieved) are there for the purposes of comparison with other vehicles rather than as a guide to what you yourself will get.

They could never be the latter because you don't - and can't - replicate test conditions in everyday driving.

And as far as the other business is concerned, it doesn't matter a jot how many other manufacturers were bending the rules for their own ends and got away with it.

VW got caught cheating, and it's going to cost them a sh*tload of money.

Them's the breaks, init.

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[Bar Shaker]

The manufacturers are told what the test is and how the cars will be driven during the test. They are also told what the emission limits are when the car is driven in such a manner. All manufacturers need to use specific maps to pass the tests because no one would buy the cars if the performance was so clipped for all driving conditions.

If the USG said that these cars had to have emissions below a threshold, not matter how they were driven, that would be a different story. They haven't.

I don't think VAG will be fined a penny and I might just go and buy some shares, as they are 20% down on their value right now.

[Aholmes281991]

What's the difference they call claim ridiculous MPGs on cars that are impossible to achieve in the rail world pulling a car from a production line at random to test is essentially the same thing, and not like driving around a city.

VW won't be the only one it hot water over this. Just watch all the car manufacturers conveniently release a customer satisfaction bulletin for ECU update

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

[Embisix]

I have a strong feeling VAG aren't the only ones manipulating ever more unrealistic emmissions figures...

This story is going to run and run for sure....

I also suspect there are a few CEO's clenching right know....

[Phutters]

The manufacturers are told what the test is and how the cars will be driven during the test. They are also told what the emission limits are when the car is driven in such a manner.

If the USG said that these cars had to have emissions below a threshold, not matter how they were driven, that would be a different story. They haven't.

You're suggesting that the emissions test should have no parameters at all, and that the subject vehicles have to pass that test irrespective of everything; throttle position, speed, gear, engine loading, altitude - the whole shooting match.

How is that even remotely workable without severely disadvantaging the larger capacity petrol engines which just happen to be the lifeblood of the American auto industry?

You can't oblige the car makers to subscribe to a set of rules which would clearly favour the kind of small and highly efficient engines which are pretty much the preserve of Asian and European manufacturers without crippling a major sector of the domestic economy.

And besides, the US makers are producing engines much better suited to a very different set of requirements; namely the huge distances people routinely drive and the fact that fuel is much, much cheaper there.

Would you prefer to drive from Phoenix to Pittsburgh in a turbocharged three-cylinder 900cc Euro-microbox or in the comparative luxury of a comfortable four litre V8?

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[Bar Shaker]

No, that's not what I am suggesting at all. I am saying that the USG said something along the lines of... "We will test the car through this engine load and rpm cycle and the car must not produce more than X grammes of nasty stuff".

VAG have produced a range of cars that do exactly as they were asked. The cars need to pass that 'test cycle', they don't need to be as economical or clean in any other combination of engine load cycles.

That some ********, yoghurt knitting, US owners have worked out if they drive their cars in a different way to that precise test cycle, then the emission results are slightly different - is surely not reason to bankrupt Europe's biggest company... even though the ultra inefficient US auto manufacturers would love to see it.

I am sure VAG will have a field day when they get into court. If it ever gets that far.

[Phutters]

I am sure VAG will have a field day when they get into court.

I doubt it. Foreign companies who screw up tend not to do particularly well in American courts.

I can't for one minute imagine that BP could possibly have anticipated the outpouring of vitriol and xenophobia which followed that ignominious incident in the Gulf of Mexico. If a foreign outfit is seen to have stepped out of line, people fall over themselves to get the boot in or to try and take them for every dollar they can, spuriously or not.

This kind of thing is manna from heaven in the litigation capital of the world.

There are an awful lot of vested interests in America, and when challenged they retrench and give two fingers to everyone else.

By and large it succeeds too, because they are the biggest kid on the block. If they don't like the goalposts where they are they'll move them until they do.

I can't see any way that anything good will come out of this as far as VW is concerned. The best they can do is eat as much humble pie as they can, cough up and lie low until either the storm blows over or someone else is found to have cheated as well.

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