Aren’t turbochargers (which use the exhaust pressure to turn a turbine to compress intake air) an incredibly complex device to install in a compact car?
It seems like the mindset was “We’re going to make this shitty diesel work!” and started adding ever-more complex devices on it until it had enough horsepower and torque (reasons for the turbo) that it would be more-or-less usable in a passenger car - as long as the car was small enough.
The obvious - um, ya know, we could just use a gas engine - was, it seems, heresy.
(not that there is anything wrong with heresy, just sayin’…)
Ok, that article is very poorly written. not least because it makes it sound like VW invented the direct injection diesel engine.
I don’t care about marketing/trademark fluff. Just because VW has a trademark which says no one else can use the abbreviation “TDI” doesn’t mean the engines aren’t.
I mean, UPS has a trademark on the shade of brown they paint their vehicles in.
good for them. every single car/truck diesel engine on the market is turbocharged and direct-injected*. Just because VW reserved use of the “TDI” moniker doesn’t change what they are. I’m not selling anything, so I am not required let them dictate my use of the term.
the main reason they came up with the “TDI” moniker is because up until then, most automotive/light truck diesel engines were indirect-injected; combustion began in a small swirl chamber connected to the main cylinder via a narrow passage. This was sort of a “fad” in the '70s and '80s to try to make diesels quieter and cleaner, at the cost of a bit of efficiency. prior to that, direct injection was common going all the way back to the 1930s.
Well, VW is saying that 11 million vehicles worlwide have the test-cheating software, and they’re setting aside over $7 billion to fix the problem.
To me, the fact that they were able to come up with this number so quickly (remember, this scandal only broke last Friday), suggests that they must have known all along what they were doing.
I’m wondering about the $7 billion price tag. I’d think they’d just need to reprogram the cars so the emissions controls are always on. (Or were the emissions controls originally designed under the assumption that they’d only ever be used during testing, and thus are grossly inadequate for real-world use?)
There’s no suggestion involved: VW has not admitted to making a technical error, they admitted to deliberately cheating. It would be weird and sloppy if they didn’t know exactly how many vehicles they had programmed to cheat.
Next time I go to buy a car, in a couple of years, if you pay for it I will get whatever car you want me to have. Personally I’d like a Hummer H1 Alpha but we can talk about that when the time comes.
You can use whatever term you want in whatever circumstances you want but if you speak of a Tdi engine then learn to live with the fact that pretty much everyone who knows anything about cars will assume you are talking about a diesel engine.
I suspect this constant misunderstanding gives you a nice opportunity to push your glasses up the bridge of your nose and say “actually…I think you’ll find that…etc. etc.” and of course you’ll be technically right but by the time you’ve explained yourself everyone will have drifted off out of sheer boredom.
At least no one has died as the result of VW’s cheating software. Yeah, this was a pretty shitty thing for VW to do, but saying the GM scandal was “just a flaw that got ignored,” kind of ignores the worst part of the whole thing.
I read a Motor Trend article this morning that suggested turning on “compliance mode” drastically reduces horsepower and torque and introduces driveability issues (hesitation?).
Even if it is just a power reduction it opens up VW to class action law suits as cars that were sold as having a certain power/performance now have substantially less.
Still, I bet they get fined far worse than GM or Toyota did, because of the intent. The feds will take an extremely dim view of a company that deliberately gamed the system.
Also, the low emissions were a major selling point. The idea that these were “green” vehicles was heavily flogged. So, you can make a very plausible argument that VW was defrauding its customers.
The part about this whole story that gets me is how ineffective the EPA was at catching this. They were so obviously ineffective, that VW was apparently confident they could get away with it. They got away with it for 6 years, and if it weren’t for some independent researchers trying to show how clean diesel could be, they would still be getting away with it.
Meanwhile, we have those that want to do away with the EPA entirely, when it’s evident that we need more EPA enforcement. SHOCKER: It turns out that letting manufacturers “self-certify” their own emissions claims isn’t the greatest idea.
I expect it will be along the lines of “We can hit you for 18 billion. We’ll be kind and only ask for half of that to start the negotiations.” You pretty much have to deliberately emit deathanol in in Times Square while filing a report saying you’re emitting rainbows, kicking a puppy and stealing candy from children to get the maximum penalty.
Thanks for the explanation. I couldn’t reconcile adding nitrogen in urea to reduce NOx, but that makes sense. (I work with air pollution regulations, but I don’t ever deal with this type of post-combustion control.)