Volkswagen emissions scandal

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Volkswagen emissions scandal

"Remember Me" on this forum, when ticked, means that each time you visit Fiat Forum your computer will remember to keep you logged into your profiled so that you can post / read messages etc as PuggIt Auld Jock. This should pretty much be checked all the time on your personal computer or phone. If you were using a friends computer, or a public library for example you wouldn't want "Remember Me" to be checked as then the computer would keep your Fiat Forum account logged in and other people may use it. So that's why it's not always enabled, as there's some cases where if you forgot to log out yourself, the computer would be protecting your information by 'timing out', basically signing you out automatically after a short space of time to keep strangers from accessing your account.

Hope that helps? Apologies if it confuses you more!
Thanks very much for explaining that to me. You didn't confuse me at all! I am ussualy on my Hudl when browsing and laptop on other occasions so from now on that " remember me " box will be checked.
 
Was that just diesels, or petrols as well?

It doesn't really matter as it hasn't happened but I think it was both. Tbf euro 4 is pre 2005 so in terms of cars on the road it is the older cohort that would be affected.

Doesn't mean cities won't ban or charge a lot of for them though which I seem to recall reading about Oxford.
 
It’s unclear which cars will be able to meet Euro 6 standards in the laboratory and in real-world tests, but in order to escape the new VED rise, diesels will have to meet Euro 6 standards according to real-world RDE criteria, part of the new WLTP efficiency assessments.

That seems rather disingenuous, you know that euro standard you've had 5 years to work on and was a legal minimum requirement from september 2014? If you haven't hit it by 4 years after it was introduced you can still sell non compliant products..with a bit of extra tax.

:bang:

Tbf I know the majority of them only comply with euro 6 on rollers..but still.
 
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My years in "the trade" were spent in a variety of small family garages and a couple of large main dealers. I enjoyed the family owned businesses most, not just because the workforce was small and the atmosphere convivial, but also for the wide variety of vehicles and tasks you had to do. I was interested to see the comment earlier in this thread about "hating" a particular make of vehicle. My experience has been that all vehicles have good design points and bad but it's our job to mend them. For example I remember the first time I tackled a Peugeot torsion bar rear suspension with collapsed bearings. I was given one of the young "lads" to help and I remember him, half way through struggling with some seized fixings, asking why it was designed in this diabolical way? (or words to that effect!) and that he "hated it and would never buy one himself". My take on this is that I can't help the design, it's just our job to get on and fix it! Although I have to admit I hid in the oil store when the next one appeared so I wouldn't have to do it! The problems are model related not manufacture related and all manufacturers have good and bad models! Learning and avoiding the bad ones is the trick!

With diagnostics featuring so strongly in car repair today (and the expense) My own preference for FIAT & VAG products is because I have VCDS (VAG-COM) and now Multiecuscan. Few other brands are so well provided for and have such readily, and cheaply, available spares. I'm also "steering" the family fleet of 6 vehicles, which were all diesel a couple of years ago, back towards petrol. Not so much for poluting reasons but because modern diesels are really quite significantly more expensive to repair and more difficult. DPF problems are rife because people are not educated correctly by the supplier or are sold a vehicle inappropriately (ie for a shopping car). Have you tried to get an injector out of a late model diesel? The length of the thing is ridiculous and the chances of it being siezed in place quite high. There is a whole business growing up around mobile workshops who come to you to hydraulically pull these things! And the cost? Phew, don't ask! High pressure pumps also occassionally break up and generously seed the entire system with very fine metalic dust so requiring not just the pump but all the hp pipes and injectors to be replaced as well. Direct injection petrol systems will probably develop problems too (early TSI pumps can wear the camshaft where the plunger bears on it but newer pumps now use a roller) but the petrol still seems, so far, easier and cheaper to rectify. This is not to say the diesel probably still has the edge for high mileage users and reliability as well as, probably, cleaner emissions (if used correctly) on newer examples.

Ok so it's looking as if we're going electric in the long term. Although, at 71 years old, it's not actually occupying too much of my thoughts! Hope someone's got a good plan for producing all the extra generating capacity that will be needed and for reducing the electricity lost during transmission and conversion from the point of generation to where it's needed and at the voltage required. On the face of it I think an electric car might be quite nice for everyday use, cheaper to maintain and more reliable. I believe they operate at quite high voltages though and the potential for high current with such large batteries is just a little frightening when you think about what might happen in the case of a really big shunt, or an inexperienced person "tinkering".

And just for finishers, and to bring us back onto the subject of my post much earlier. Don't you all think taking an old gross poluter, like my Tony, off the road and replacing him with a small, relatively cleaner petrol, like the Panda Dynamic Eco which I'm looking for for my Mrs at this time, makes a lot of sense? It's going to significantly reduce the pollution she's putting out going round the shops and, unlike us buying a brand new car, which is not even a remote possibility anyway (had to break into all 3 piggy banks and slaughter the pig itself to buy Twink) the used vehicle has already been manufacture so buying it has no manufacturing poluting factor! Win. Win? Surely? So why no scrappage allowance on poor old Tony in these circumstances?
 
I’ve been drinking I’ll look tomorrow as I’m squinting through one drunken eye to read this and making sense through predictive text
Hope you didn't pay to high a price for the drinking Jimbbob. One of the most fun holidays I ever had was back in the early 60's when my pals and I went on a "road trip" holiday ( didn't know in those days that's what it was called). We started off in North Wales and drove south, following the coast, all the way round into the west country, didn't actually make it into Cornwall though! We slept in the cars or in dug out holes on the beach on warm nights. There was a lot of drinking too and I well remember the horrendous headaches from the rough cider! The cure was ussualy to chuck the afflicted in the sea!
 
Autocar is a sad little rag. I wouldn’t trust anything they say. Diesel will soon be every bit as clean as petrol. I still won’t like it, but it’ll be clean.
I hope you're right - because I still don't think with current battery technology electric is ready to replace the old guard. After all
1) it doesn't solve the problems associated with burning fossil fuels - most electricity is still generated that way. It just moves the pollution somewhere else.
2) Mining for the elements used to make the batteries plus the manufacturing of those batteries is incredibly polluting - as is the recycling of those materials when they reach the end of their useful life.
3) There are already concerns about obtaining a sufficient supply of the materials used to make those batteries... when most cars aren't electric. How would manufacturers cope with the kind of sales volumes seen for petrol and diesel cars? They couldn't meet the demand.

So as things stand diesel and petrol are here to stay - at least for the foreseeable - as electric cars aren't 'ready' to replace them.
 
I hope you're right - because I still don't think with current battery technology electric is ready to replace the old guard. After all
1) it doesn't solve the problems associated with burning fossil fuels - most electricity is still generated that way. It just moves the pollution somewhere else.
2) Mining for the elements used to make the batteries plus the manufacturing of those batteries is incredibly polluting - as is the recycling of those materials when they reach the end of their useful life.
3) There are already concerns about obtaining a sufficient supply of the materials used to make those batteries... when most cars aren't electric. How would manufacturers cope with the kind of sales volumes seen for petrol and diesel cars? They couldn't meet the demand.

So as things stand diesel and petrol are here to stay - at least for the foreseeable - as electric cars aren't 'ready' to replace them.

There's a much higher chance of all that being overcome than diesels as we know them today becoming even as clean as petrols lol
 
Autocar is a sad little rag. I wouldn’t trust anything they say. Diesel will soon be every bit as clean as petrol. I still won’t like it, but it’ll be clean.

Does rather depend how much the new emissions gear adds to the sticker price. If it's too much then they become literally pointless for many drivers. At what point is it economic to keep developing more convoluted and expensive solutions for what is a zombie technology? It was already marginal for people doing average miles to begin with, once you've removed cheap tax, cheap fuel and added even more to the sticker price the break even point between diesel and petrol is getting further and further away.

Then add the fact it's unsuited for hybrid use due to the weight and while yes technically you can throw the kitchen sink at it, it's unlikely to remain viable.
 
There's a much higher chance of all that being overcome than diesels as we know them today becoming even as clean as petrols lol
Do you even know why diesels are ‘dirty’? Guess what, petrol is about to go in the same direction in a bid to emit less CO2...
 
Does rather depend how much the new emissions gear adds to the sticker price. If it's too much then they become literally pointless for many drivers. At what point is it economic to keep developing more convoluted and expensive solutions for what is a zombie technology? It was already marginal for people doing average miles to begin with, once you've removed cheap tax, cheap fuel and added even more to the sticker price the break even point between diesel and petrol is getting further and further away.

Then add the fact it's unsuited for hybrid use due to the weight and while yes technically you can throw the kitchen sink at it, it's unlikely to remain viable.

NOX traps are already out there and in use.
 
Iirc those engines didn’t have NOX traps, one of the reasons people looked into them.

They used Lean nox trap technology, most others use selective catalyst reduction which requires something like adblue to work. Lean nox traps don't need a separate catalyst to work but require fuel to sprayed into the trap, this knackers fuel economy and produces more soot. This is why VW programmed them to only spray small amounts of fuel in normal use into the trap, rendering them ineffectual in all but test conditions.
 
Yup, that’s it. SCR works just fine.

When all petrol engines are direct injection then petrol will suffer the same issues as Diesel...

VW ****ed up with dieselgate, but it’s not an inherent problem with diesels that can’t be solved.
 
Yup, that’s it. SCR works just fine.

When all petrol engines are direct injection then petrol will suffer the same issues as Diesel...

SCR brings its' own fun, catalyst crystallization in the lines and around the injector being one example.

GPFs are coming, thereotically you could design a petrol engine to not require one but it's cheaper to bang a filter on an existing engine. Although given EGTs are far higher in a turbo petrol than a turbo diesel they shouldn't be as much of liability.
 
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I think modern DPFs are quite evidently signs that even some of the most advanced engine designers and producers for passenger cars around the world are struggling to keep Diesels within the tough, rapid succession of the Euro X standards.

Hence why VW felt the need to make false claims and test-cheating software in the first place. If it was 'easy' to genuinely clean up diesels and have them subsequently pass tests assessing their cleanliness to the environment there would never have been cheating software, nor a scandal.

And many customers of even better manufacturers like Toyota have had DPF issues all the way to Vauxhall owners too..

I think it's quite evident that the DPF technology has quite a lot of shortcoming in the real world and it's done it's bit to put people off modern diesels, VW scandal aside. And yes.. even people who do a TONNE of miles, day in and day out. The Italian tune-up isn't as simple a solution as some people say it is.

I'd be very surprised if things changed and the manufactures suddenly could clean up diesels to pass emissions tests honestly and improve them generally. I'm sure it's possible - anything is - but as we're discussing now... will it be worth the effort? Will customers care anymore?
 
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