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EPA & Volkswagen 20

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There are stories that an early 1542 spanish expedition called the area " bay of smoke".

I can recall years back hearing or reading that the native American name for the area (iyáangẚ ) translates as bay of smoke as well, but other Internet sources say the better translation is "poison oak place."
Google translate balks at iyáangẚ.
 
"LA had smog when the Spanish arrived. It always will."

It did NOT. The LA Basin has atmospheric inversion. This traps haze. Haze is NOT smog. When industrial pollution entered, then you got smog. If you lived in L.A. in the 1950s and '60s you know what smog is. L.A. is nothing like that today (well just a fraction). Pollution controls work!
 
If you lived in London pre 60's then you know what actual smog is like.

Posting guidelines faq731-376 (probably not aimed specifically at you)
What is Engineering anyway: faq1088-1484​
 
My parents were Londoners, born in the mid 40's. To hear them banging on about smog and how bad it was when they were kids, was like listening to a Monty Python sketch.

Steve
 
Ditto my dad.

Posting guidelines faq731-376 (probably not aimed specifically at you)
What is Engineering anyway: faq1088-1484​
 
And so it continues...


It's interesting that they seem to be starting at the 'top'. I wonder if we'll ever really learn how high-up it was that this decision was made to rig the engine management software?

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Digital Factory
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
 
I think that their board realizes that the only way out this in the long run is to flush a sizable number of people. Interestingly, NPR reported that the currently ex-CEO had just won a major board fight against his predecessor.

TTFN
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!
homework forum: //faq731-376 forum1529
 
Also keep in mind that the CEO who just resigned, Martin Winterkorn, it's being reported that his contract was going to expire on Friday anyway and that the board meeting that is going to be held tomorrow was already scheduled to vote on it being renewed, so who knows, his days at VW may have already been numbered.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Digital Factory
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
 
The NPR report indicated that his winning against the previous CEO had pretty much guaranteed contract renewal this week, had it not been for the EPA debacle. In some respects, VW's board dodged a bullet; had the EPA story broken two weeks later, they would have renewed Winterkorn's contract only to have to fire him immediately afterwards.

It's amazing how fast this spiraled; the EPA letter was dated less than 1 week ago.

TTFN
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!
homework forum: //faq731-376 forum1529
 
There were rumors of this circulating around Germany this past July already:


In the end, this scandal my not be limited to just the private sector.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Digital Factory
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
 
All will be revealed in a book in about 2 years. I expect it started with a lowly engineer frustrated with all the bureaucratic hoops he had to jump through to tune his engine and he had a light bulb go off. So he wrote some code and showed it to a co-worker who showed it to his boss. The boss saw that they could pass the emissions test, get good power and fuel economy and passed it on. Probably no one more than a level or two above the engineer understood any of the consequences, all they knew was it looked good in the test results. Everyone above that probably got bonuses for getting such good results with such cheap hardware. I'm sure no one in upper management had a clue about what was going on. Do you think the chairman actually understands ANYTHING about the software in an ECU?

----------------------------------------

The Help for this program was created in Windows Help format, which depends on a feature that isn't included in this version of Windows.
 
"Do you think the chairman actually understands ANYTHING about the software in an ECU?"

No, but he doesn't have to and shouldn't have to; however, the rapidity of his downfall suggests that someone VERY HIGH up definitely knew something was done to circumvent the EPA test. Winterkorn supposedly has a PhD in metals research and physics from MPI, so he ought not be a slouch.

Consider the difference with GM, where denials for even just a design error occupied years, while this took just 6 days from first mass market news story to resignation. According to this: VW admitted the fraud on 9/3

TTFN
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!
homework forum: //faq731-376 forum1529
 
Either their proto fleet all had the fix, in which case the following puzzles would have had to be suppressed during development:

[ul]
[li]Test fleet uses less urea than expected by a substantial margin[/li]
[li]reliability of emissions gear substantially greater than rig tests would predict[/li]
[li]on road vehicle performance better than the models would predict[/li]
[li]on road mpg better than modelled[/li]
[/ul]

Or most of the test fleet had the legal version of the software but the production cars had the fix.

The latter would require some senior management involvement, getting a tune into a Job 1 car is not something you slap together on a Friday night after a session down the pub. That's how we used to do proto tunes, when it was fun.

Equally given the cars have been in service for 6 years the same trends as in the second para would have been seen by the service people. I can believe that feedback from them to the company would have been limited, but if you are told to stock thousands of dollars worth of urea that never gets used you'd have thought somebody would smell a rat.

The best (amusing+not at least unbelievable) theory I have seen is that they had some new technology that they were expecting to use but could not be deployed in 2009 for whatever reason, so this bodge was used in the interim. Then people moved on, the new tech never appeared, and the bodge got grandfathered in.

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376
 
I'm a little confused by GregLocock's assertions regarding urea, the concept that urea consumption would be much lower than expected appears sound, but as a VW owner (!), I've never had to think about urea, either at the bowser or during service intervals. I've seen AdBlue and similar stuff available, usually at the truck filling location, but never given it a second thought.

Does this mean that its being topped up at service intervals and I don't know about it, or is there some other system at play? I do note that VW appeared to be the only manufacturer that got anywhere near the stated fuel economy figures, its one of the reasons I bought it.
 
The models on which this "fix" is understood to have been first implemented, use a LNT catalyst and do NOT have a urea/AdBlue system at all, so there is NO urea consumption.

dgallup is likely correct about how the "fix" came to be. A low level calibration guy was placed under orders that we have to pass the Federal Test Procedure (a relatively short driving sequence with relatively low engine load and operated on a dyno), and we have to pass a 120,000 mile durability test after which it has to pass the Federal Test Procedure again on a dyno. A light went on in the programmers head, the "fix" came to be; dyno tests were done; the prescribed dyno tests and durability test were completed and that was the end of that. The simplest explanation of why the high on-road emissions were never caught is that since there is no prescribed test for them, the testing was never done. The thought that the intent of the EPA standards was to have low emissions during actual real world driving probably never crossed anyone's mind, or if it did, there was no prescribed test for it so it didn't matter.

This was far from the only problem with that engine design that wasn't foreseen and caught during whatever validation testing that VW did. High pressure fuel pumps blow up too frequently, and intercoolers freeze up under certain weather conditions.
 
Only someone on crack or with zero morals or ethics could possibly rationalize the situation as having only to pass the test as being fully compliant with smog laws. This is precisely the rationalization that only true criminals can make.

What's really disappointing is that there had to be lots of people in the know, and these people who should have had pride in "German" engineering all failed this real-life ethics test.


TTFN
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!
homework forum: //faq731-376 forum1529
 
The EPA regs specifically state that disabling the emissions controls on the road will almost certainly result in certification for that engine being rejected. (sorry clumsily worded)

Sorry about the urea I thought I'd checked that they ran it.

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376
 
I like the "interim bodge that got (inadvertently) grandfathered in" theory. There's no way that VW management could hope to get away with something like this forever.

At a push I can imagine that the (no urea) LNT solution was too heavily invested in to back out from. Getting LNT technology to meet the targets has always seemed a bit of a stretch in the published stuff I've seen, even during dyno testing. Too immature in my view. So the management team could have accepted a calculated gamble: Cheat until we can get the LNT tech to perform, and if we can't in a given timescale, bite the bullet and switch that engine over to SCR.


Steve
 
Given that such cars have only about a 15 year lifespan (some are already six years old, and retrofits will take years more), perhaps the greater good could be accomplished by redirecting the same mountain of VW's money (fines, budget for fixes) towards unrelated green projects that would have vastly greater environmental benefits.

It's not often that so many billions ($ & €) suddenly appears on the table. Seems like a shame to waste any of it on retrofitting this fleet for such a relatively small benefit.

There must be other vast NOx sources where the same money could be put to much more effective use. Heavy diesel buses running back and forth all day? Coal fired power stations? Bunker fueled ships?

 
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