Do you really care if VW/Others manipulate EPA ratings?

[impactbumper]

i don't care at all.

[mikester]

What if they did this to pass a child safety standards test?

[vash]

somebody lied. that sucks.

i know a lot of folks that bought the VW thinking they would save fuel cost and spew out very little emissions while driving. now, they are gross polluters. haha.

what happened to the value of the TDI cars? they hit the toilets?

i'm no EPA expert, but i know i dont want to breathe air like in China, or see people dump dirty motor oil into the drains..some BS needs BS to fight it.

[1990C4S]

Originally Posted by jcunning

VW makes a great car and the diesel engine is a great engine, even if it is a bit more polluting than advertised... The fact that they engineered this trick into their cars is ingenious and makes me want one even more!

A great engine? Really? Have you ever googled the current litany of problems they had before this issue cropped up? Check out the Passat exploding turbo....Some diesel engines are great (and the VW ALH was one of them), but their current engines are a LONG way from great.

Originally Posted by GWN7

Nope.

They were told to get emissions down to a certain level. They did that.

Just because the cars ran like a dog at those levels and people wouldn't buy them if they did and the company would go out of business means nothing.

I hope that was meant to be green. BMW appears to have done it right, their diesel engine passed the EPA test AND the road test.

If VW couldn't make a clean enough diesel then the answer is to withdraw from the market, not mislead consumers and create a 'clean diesel' ad campaign.

The law is the law, break it and suffer the consequences. Or are VW conscientious objectors?

VW lied and cheated, condone it if you wish, but it's wrong. There are specific EPA rules that do not allow a 'test mode'. VW were not creative, they cheated.

[javadog]

Originally Posted by mikester

What if they did this to pass a child safety standards test?

You have a point. On the other hand, around 10,000 kids under 20 are injured or killed annually in the US by gun-related violence. Many more are injured or killed by other forms of violence.

Which problem might be more likely to injure a child? Which one needs to be solved first?

Not picking on guns, just illustrating a point. Some problems cause a lot of outrage when they make the news. Others slide on by essentially un-noticed, every day, even though they might be worse.

JR

[ckelly78z]

Al Gore will probably be making a statement soon about the harm to the polar ice caps. It sucks that they lied, and kinda funny that they got caught when this sort of thing has most likely been going on for ages and everybody else got away with it.

I'm definately not one of the Vegan, tree-hugging, EV driving, liberal crazies who seem to make more noise with thier complaining than thier cars do.

[vash]

Originally Posted by mikester

What if they did this to pass a child safety standards test?

........or food safety standards....

[aschen]

you lost me at "VW makes a great car"

Also, you really think it is clever to engineer cheat mode into thier ECM, I am sure literally every OEM calibration engineer has joked about doing it at some point.

It is about as clever as a banker thinking about stealing from the register.

[1990C4S]

These are not 'engineers'. Real Engineers are bound by a code of conduct and ethics.

Things like 'fidelity to the public needs'.

Professional engineers have a clearly defined duty to society, which is to regard the duty to public welfare as paramount, above their duties to clients or employers

[Hugh R]

I also live in Los Angeles and did air pollution control work for about 25 years. The air quality in LA is much better now than it was in the 60s and 70's MUCH BETTER! While you may not like the EPA, they've done some good things with regard to air pollution. I don't think we've had a 1st Stage SMOG alert in 20 years.

By forcing technology, cars now go 100,000 or miles between tune ups. Remember when you had to change plugs, points, rotor, etc. every 5K-10K miles?

Mileage is also much better, because unburned hydrocarbons exiting the tail pipe means less combustion efficiency. Oxides of Nitrogen (NOx) are what causes SMOG, diesels produce a lot of NOx.

When you pollute the air or water you affect others. Remember the Cuyahoga River in Ohio that caught fire in 1969 due to all the pollutants being dumped into it?

VW is fuched on this.

[E Sully]

Originally Posted by javadog

You have a point. On the other hand, around 10,000 kids under 20 are injured or killed annually in the US by gun-related violence. Many more are injured or killed by other forms of violence.

Which problem might be more likely to injure a child? Which one needs to be solved first?

Not picking on guns, just illustrating a point. Some problems cause a lot of outrage when they make the news. Others slide on by essentially un-noticed, every day, even though they might be worse.

JR

Poor logic in my opinion. These 10,000 kids under 20 are injured or killed because someone did not follow the law either. The gun did not kill them, the lazy idiot or law breaker who left it available for them to get their hands on it is responsible. I would never leave my gun unlocked and in a position for someone else to get their hands on it.
Emission laws are too strict? They said the same thing many years back, but from what I see available today, the complainers were wrong then and now. It is possible, look at the high horsepower and low emission cars available now. I'm just sorry if you find it an inconvenience to put time and effort into being better in the long run.
Go to a car show and breathe in the exhaust from the oldies, llok at old pictures of major cities clouded in smog. I have no issue with the pollution from a few Classic cars in the hands of collectors, but to try and justify what VW execs did seems foolish.

[Rikao4]

Originally Posted by PetrolBlueSC

If it's ok for VW to deliberately avoid meeting rules that others were following, I'd like to get a list of rules that I could also break to get an advantage over my peers, neighbors, co-workers, taxes ......

best you check with our current Administration..
as they currently ignore quite a few...
or selectively enforce other's...

Rika

[bobrestore]

"Fixing" the cars is only one of the "costs" of this affair. The shareholder law suits will be significant. IMHO...

[pksystems]

Who did more damage to the environment? VW or the EPA in the August toxic waste spill into a river in Colorado? Who determines the fines for the EPA?

Hopefully all these VW's get devalued like crazy so I can grab one cheap. No emission testing here.

[1990C4S]

Originally Posted by pksystems

Who did more damage to the environment? VW or the EPA in the August toxic waste spill into a river in Colorado? Who determines the fines for the EPA?

It doesn't have to be 'either or', both VW and the EPA can be wrong....but in my mind you can't rationally argue that the EPA put VW in this position.

VW had many options. They chose to cheat on the test, lie to their customers, and set their shareholders best interests aside.

Not sure how anyone sees anything positive here. Or anything to be proud of.

[javadog]

Originally Posted by E Sully

Poor logic in my opinion. These 10,000 kids under 20 are injured or killed because someone did not follow the law either. The gun did not kill them, the lazy idiot or law breaker who left it available for them to get their hands on it is responsible. I would never leave my gun unlocked and in a position for someone else to get their hands on it.
Emission laws are too strict? They said the same thing many years back, but from what I see available today, the complainers were wrong then and now. It is possible, look at the high horsepower and low emission cars available now. I'm just sorry if you find it an inconvenience to put time and effort into being better in the long run.
Go to a car show and breathe in the exhaust from the oldies, llok at old pictures of major cities clouded in smog. I have no issue with the pollution from a few Classic cars in the hands of collectors, but to try and justify what VW execs did seems foolish.

You miss my points entirely. I was pointing out that he shouldn't make an appeal to pity to further an argument. If he was really concerned about the welfare of children, woudl it not make sense to tackle a bigger threat to their welfare than a smaller one?

I'm not against the control of pollution. I think it is a good thing. I do think globally, though. I realize that air pollution does not respect national boundaries and the bigger problem facing the world comes from countires that have exponential population growth (or just a huge existing population) and a rapidly evolving industrial economy with few, if any regulations.

There a finite resources available to deal with problems, whether those be time, money, or political will. I'd rather focus on the things that make the biggest difference, to the entire world.

JR

[widgeon13]

I like to see people and organizations play by the rules!

[gacook]

Alternatively, has this scandal not proven that EPA's testing is "broken?" If VW was able to cheat the test all these years simply through software, does that not signal a failure within EPA and their analysis?

[gtc]

You don't think that 11 million vehicles emitting up to 40 times the legal NOx limit is worth worrying about???


The way they defeat the test is to reduce the fuel flow rate. So in real world driving, not only are you polluting more, you're also getting worse mileage than advertised.

Originally Posted by javadog

No, I don't care. I'd rather we concentrate on the biggest emmissions worldwide and quit worrying about the smallest.

JR

[sugarwood]

Stock is down 40%. Might be a buying opportunity.