Comment only — Excellent trivia! In 2014 I bought a diesel Jeep Grand Cherokee and was amazed by its good fuel economy. (My 2015 thread is here ➜ Good Fuel Economy in my Diesel Jeep Grand Cherokee ■ ). But then later, Jeep brands got slammed by required testing and emissions controls fixing which choked the engine and its excellent MPGs. Damn!
Sadly, this issue hits close to home for me.
In play — The Volkswagen emissions scandal is also known as Dieselgate. Around 2006, VW began cheating when testing their TDI diesel engines (diesel Turbo Direct Injection) by having their emissions controls active only during laboratory emissions testing. The cheating was implemented by firmware programming that detected when the vehicle was likely undergoing US EPA protocol testing as determined by the vehicle’s steering wheel angle, vehicle speed, and engine operation duration, and when the vehicle met these criteria it activated its full emissions controls system. This masked elevated NOx emissions that went unchecked during real-world normal usage.
This cheating was discovered by West Virginia University during their independent testing in 2013. A later study showed elevated NOx emissions from Volvo, Renault, Jeep, Hyundai, Citroën and Fiat, resulting in investigations opening into other diesel emissions scandals.
And thus, we Jeep diesel owners too got captured in this fiasco. Damn!