Half a million VWs recalled, sneaky emissions software.

[richie99]

I'm baffled what VW are proposing to achieve with a recall. If all they propose to do is remove a software cheat that only ever activates during test conditions, then what is the point? It will never be activated again in the life of the car.

If they are proposing to retune the engine to try to improve the emissions, then surely that will just make them even worse to drive. If I owned one of these, I would not be letting it anywhere near an improvement to make it worse.

[KTF]

VW USA said:

"My understanding is that it was a couple of software engineers who put these in."

I find this very hard to believe.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34475408

[hornetrider]

KTF said:

The VW USA boss said:

"Mr Horn said: "My understanding is that it was a couple of software engineers who put these in.""

I find this very hard to believe.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34475408

Ridiculous.

[Fish]

My defender passes EU5 without adblue and actually does very few regens I believe.

Our Mazda CX5 is EU6 without adblue and I believe the only car to do it. The Skyactive engine is rather special though from an engineering perspective...

It is doable though.

[London424]

hornetrider said:

KTF said:

The VW USA boss said:

"Mr Horn said: "My understanding is that it was a couple of software engineers who put these in.""

I find this very hard to believe.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34475408

Ridiculous.

I was just coming on to post about that. I saw a snippet of the testimony and heard "it was a couple of software engineers" and nearly burst out laughing.

[Scuffers]

Fish said:

My defender passes EU5 without adblue and actually does very few regens I believe.

Our Mazda CX5 is EU6 without adblue and I believe the only car to do it. The Skyactive engine is rather special though from an engineering perspective...

It is doable though.

Missing the point.

Yes they can be made to scrape though the test, (must be some interesting mapping) but will be miles away in real world driving.

[Mr GrimNasty]

Scuffers said:

Fish said:

My defender passes EU5 without adblue and actually does very few regens I believe.

Our Mazda CX5 is EU6 without adblue and I believe the only car to do it. The Skyactive engine is rather special though from an engineering perspective...

It is doable though.

Missing the point.

Yes they can be made to scrape though the test, (must be some interesting mapping) but will be miles away in real world driving.

No that's the point entirely, they only have to pass the tests in the way in which the tests were run at the time of production.

What happens in the real world is completely irrelevant.

But in the real world, all Euro 5 & 6 engines by all manufacturers are pretty much of a muchness in road side drive by tests, VW group are not the worst, and all petrol cars exceed massively too, and do you know what type of cars exceed stated emissions by the greatest margin in the real world - hybrids.

The word is that about 430,000 American cars will require physical alterations, the rest remaps, so Europe probably just software update for the technicality of removing the cheat logic.

[Scuffers]

Mr GrimNasty said:

No that's the point entirely, they only have to pass the tests in the way in which the tests were run at the time of production.

What happens in the real world is completely irrelevant.

But in the real world, all Euro 5 & 6 engines by all manufacturers are pretty much of a muchness in road side drive by tests, VW group are not the worst, and all petrol cars exceed massively too, and do you know what type of cars exceed stated emissions by the greatest margin in the real world - hybrids.

The word is that about 430,000 American cars will require physical alterations, the rest remaps.

No argument there.

That's not really what I was answering.

Munter said:

Because the EU limits are higher, you're saying it's harder for the cars to pass the test without adblue?

Yes,

The limit may be lower, but the test methodology is different.

Any measurement on its own is meaningless without the test methodology being specified.

[Fastdruid]

Mr GrimNasty said:

But in the real world, all Euro 5 & 6 engines by all manufacturers are pretty much of a muchness in road side drive by tests, VW group are not the worst, and all petrol cars exceed massively too,

No they don't.

Here have a study to prove it (page 28 FYI).
https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/Driv...

TL;DR: Diesels exceed Euro NOx limits in "real world" driving tests at all levels, Petrols don't.

[karma mechanic]

Fish said:

Our Mazda CX5 is EU6 without adblue and I believe the only car to do it.

Current BMW 3-series diesels don't use Adblue/SCR and they are all EU6. Instead they use a stage called NOx Storage Catalyst (NSC) as part of the DPF.
However, the 5-series cars do use SCR.

[Munter]

Scuffers said:

Fish said:

My defender passes EU5 without adblue and actually does very few regens I believe.

Our Mazda CX5 is EU6 without adblue and I believe the only car to do it. The Skyactive engine is rather special though from an engineering perspective...

It is doable though.

Missing the point.

Yes they can be made to scrape though the test, (must be some interesting mapping) but will be miles away in real world driving.

But what has real world driving got to do with VW getting cars to pass the EU tests? Absolutely nobody is suggesting VW need to make the cars meet the emissions requirements with real world drivers in the real world. They just need to make sure they pass the relevant EU test for their type approval/sale date. Which for EU5 can be done without adblue by most engine/car combinations from other manufacturers, so likely can be done by VW. We don't even know if they'll have to tweek the map to pass the test. They might not.

So running around saying they'll all need adblue seems a bit premature.

[Scuffers]

karma mechanic said:

Fish said:

Our Mazda CX5 is EU6 without adblue and I believe the only car to do it.

Current BMW 3-series diesels don't use Adblue/SCR and they are all EU6. Instead they use a stage called NOx Storage Catalyst (NSC) as part of the DPF.
However, the 5-series cars do use SCR.

From Wikipedia.

A NOx trap is used on the Volkswagen Jetta Clean TDI and the Volkswagen Tiguan concepts. Both are projected to be introduced into the American market by 2008.[2] They were to be marketed as part of the BlueTec program from Audi, Daimler-Chrysler, and Volkswagen.


Ohps....

[karma mechanic]

Yes, using Lean NOx Traps didn't seem to work out that well for VW, hence the software cheat. Some good info here: http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/transportation/blogs...

US BMWs all use SCR, while European 3-series use a NOx Trap. This will run and run.

[joe_90]

London424 said:

I was just coming on to post about that. I saw a snippet of the testimony and heard "it was a couple of software engineers" and nearly burst out laughing.

No auditing, no QA, nothing.. just a couple of random devs for no reason decided one day to lower the emissions with no review or oversight.

The idiot does not clearly understand how software dev on mission critical systems works.

[Scuffers]

Munter said:

But what has real world driving got to do with VW getting cars to pass the EU tests? Absolutely nobody is suggesting VW need to make the cars meet the emissions requirements with real world drivers in the real world. They just need to make sure they pass the relevant EU test for their type approval/sale date. Which for EU5 can be done without adblue by most engine/car combinations from other manufacturers, so likely can be done by VW. We don't even know if they'll have to tweek the map to pass the test. They might not.

So running around saying they'll all need adblue seems a bit premature.

I'm not arguing that.

What I am saying is this:

1) you cannot just compare the US and EU NOx limits as the test methodologies are very different.
2) no matter what the 'test' figures are, the real world ones will be nothing like.
3) IMHO it's impossible to meet EU6 without SCR unless you are doing some massive test-based cheating.
4) NOx storage systems are currently not going to cut it except in the controlled environment of the current tests.

does that make my POV clear for you?

[RYH64E]

Mr GrimNasty said:

No that's the point entirely, they only have to pass the tests in the way in which the tests were run at the time of production.

What happens in the real world is completely irrelevant.

The point is that they have to pass the test using a real world engine map, one that produces emissions at or below the limit in the test without unduly compromising daily driving performance. What they've had before is have a test map, that's good for emissions but probably not so good for driving, and a real world map that's crap for emissions but good for driving, they can't do that now.

If they have a map that's good for both emissions and driving then surely they wouldn't have had to cheat?

[Munter]

Scuffers said:

Munter said:

But what has real world driving got to do with VW getting cars to pass the EU tests? Absolutely nobody is suggesting VW need to make the cars meet the emissions requirements with real world drivers in the real world. They just need to make sure they pass the relevant EU test for their type approval/sale date. Which for EU5 can be done without adblue by most engine/car combinations from other manufacturers, so likely can be done by VW. We don't even know if they'll have to tweek the map to pass the test. They might not.

So running around saying they'll all need adblue seems a bit premature.

I'm not arguing that.

What I am saying is this:

1) you cannot just compare the US and EU NOx limits as the test methodologies are very different.
2) no matter what the 'test' figures are, the real world ones will be nothing like.
3) IMHO it's impossible to meet EU6 without SCR unless you are doing some massive test-based cheating.
4) NOx storage systems are currently not going to cut it except in the controlled environment of the current tests.

does that make my POV clear for you?

So this was a typo?

Scuffers said:

so, that pretty much backs up my point, you cannot legitimately get though EU5 without adblue.

Or you did what I said. You made a leap that wasn't right. We do not know that CocoPops (EU5) Q3 will have to have adblue fitted, just because it's in the recall. All we know is that the Q3 has the cheat code in it's ECU. How they need to modify it to legitimately pass EU5 could be anything from, no changes except removing the cheat, to a new map and fancy capture in the exhaust, to adblue.

But this.

Scuffers said:

so, that pretty much backs up my point, you cannot legitimately get though EU5 without adblue.

Deliberate or not, is wrong.

[Efbe]

And are we supposed to believe this has only happened with VW group on just one engine? yeah right.

I foresee this being a whole lot bigger.
Car manufacturer claims and reality is getting further and further apart.
though a different measure, try looking at the real world and claimed mpg on fuelly.com or spritmonitor.de.
The further forward in time you go, the more the disparity increases between reality and manufacturer claims.

[Scuffers]

Munter said:

So this was a typo?

Scuffers said:

so, that pretty much backs up my point, you cannot legitimately get though EU5 without adblue.

Or you did what I said. You made a leap that wasn't right. We do not know that CocoPops (EU5) Q3 will have to have adblue fitted, just because it's in the recall. All we know is that the Q3 has the cheat code in it's ECU. How they need to modify it to legitimately pass EU5 could be anything from, no changes except removing the cheat, to a new map and fancy capture in the exhaust, to adblue.

But this.

Scuffers said:

so, that pretty much backs up my point, you cannot legitimately get though EU5 without adblue.

Deliberate or not, is wrong.

no, I do not think you can legitimately get though EU5/6 (without SCR) without either cheating or putting up a engine that's crippled.

that fact that the SQ5 is EU5 BUT we know it has the dodgy software kind of makes the point, if it could manage it without, they would have not bothered with the 'cheat'

if they re-map the to comply, I bet the performance figures are massively hit (both in terms of BHP/Lbft and CO2)

[Scuffers]

Efbe said:

And are we supposed to believe this has only happened with VW group on just one engine? yeah right.

I foresee this being a whole lot bigger.
Car manufacturer claims and reality is getting further and further apart.
though a different measure, try looking at the real world and claimed mpg on fuelly.com or spritmonitor.de.
The further forward in time you go, the more the disparity increases between reality and manufacturer claims.

yes and no.

it's not so much one engine as the price bracket for the car.

adding SCR systems costs money, on a $60+K car, not such a big deal, on a cheap Golf etc., it is, hence why in the US the ones hit are the cheap small cars.