EPA caught VW cheating - how does the car know it's being tested?

I think that Steve W is closest to the truth/reality.

VW 2.0L TDI diesel emission systems use a NOx trap in the exhaust separate from any other catalysts.

See:

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swagon-emissions-explainer.html

and

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOx_adsorber

In use, the NOx adsorber acts like a catalytic converter and does consume s ome diesel fuel to aid in the NOx reduction reaction. How they inject the fuel into the adsorber is still somewhat unclear to me. It appears that al l they do when the said vehicle is being emission tested on the treadmill i s activate the fuel supply to the adsorber and, shazamm, it starts working . The NOx emissions drop substantially. When/if the OBD2 test plug is remo ved (after testing) the ECU senses that and cuts the fuel supply to the ad sorber. Now the vehicle is back in "road mode." Thats why the fuel consum ption gets significantly better. (about 50 mpg compared to 43) Unlike gas engines, most diesels are lean burn rather than stoichiometric.

VW got busted when some researchers simply did a road test using a portable exhaust gas analyzer rather than an "official" EPA/CARB emission test mach ine. The car didn't KNOW it was being tested. The road test numbers didn' t jive with the certified emission test numbers. It all went downhill (qui ckly) from there. How could VW be so stupid as to think this wouldn't ever happen?

Reply to
epiform
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Thanks for explaining.

I just wonder why many people think EVERYTHING is caused by one party or the other.

In this case, VW simply cheated. They broke laws on purpose. And they repeatedly lied (probably to avoid detection).

All to make money. At the expense of everyone else.

If I was a competitor, I'd be livid that I had to spend money to meet a standard that VW didn't even bother to meet, and yet profited for years by not meeting.

Reply to
Winston_Smith

I don't know how VW works, but, in one newspaper, they "speculated" that this kind of cheat had to be approved at the top level.

Reply to
Winston_Smith

But don't you think the code, which clearly had legal implications known to all involved, would have to be signed off at the highest level?

Reply to
Winston_Smith

That's an interesting observation!

Reply to
Winston_Smith

That's assuming none of the other auto makers pull(ed) the same trick. I think this is the tip of an iceberg...

John :-#)#

Reply to
John Robertson

That Pinball website of yours is Great, I like that. Back in the 1950s and 1960s I played a lot of Pinball machines.

Reply to
JR

Pick up a history book sometime and see what a "goof" it is. Government has always been a criminal enterprise whose primary activities have been theft, extortion, murder, and slavery.

Volkswagen lied, but they lied to a motley collection of liars, thieves, thugs and other miscreants. (As a practical matter, the total emissions are still very low with no actual effect on air quality vs. the arbitrary EPA "standard." The environmentalist crowd has never really grokked the concept of "diminishing returns" or the fact that causing a vehicle to use more fuel just shifts emissions elswhere to provide the extra fuel.)

Screw the EPA and the horse they rode in on (the federal beast). The best comment I saw on the VW situation was this on a political site:

Translation: Slaves rebel; caught trying to escape from The Plantation. Massa plans to whip their asses.

Reply to
Roger Blake

This reads more like a comedy routine than a serious protest.

Screw the lead, asbestos and dioxin, full speed ahead.

That much is true, Felipe Massa always hopes to beat every driver.

Reply to
.

Yes. The real mystery here is who implemented this and who all knew about it. I think they have to run the cars on test tracks for 50 or

60K miles to verify they system holds up but even if not, surely during development of any engine system they must run them fully instrumented for quite a while to see what the "real world" results look like as well as how well the "lab strategy" works in the field. Surely *someone* at VW must have noticed that when they tested instrumented vehicles on the road they were not meeting emissions standards. It's inconceivable they never tested these "in the wild" but only tested them back at the shop on the dynamometer and the "switch" kept those engineers from seeing that things weren't as they should be.
Reply to
Ashton Crusher

Ewald Böhm wrote in mti9lu$jb$ snipped-for-privacy@news.mixmin.net:

This video says that the VW TDI meets all California and US & Europe requirements!

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Reply to
Vincent Cheng Hoi Chuen

Ashton Crusher wrote in snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

What I don't understand is that the code, apparently, allowed *more* fuel to the engine (to cool the combustion chamber) which lowered NOx emissions.

So, fixing the problem should result in *less* fuel to the engine, if that's the case.

When they reflash the ecu, wouldn't that lowering of fuel *increase* gas mileage *and* bring NOx emissions back down to where they said they were?

Reply to
Vincent Cheng Hoi Chuen

I have to agree with you.

Notice what Winterkorn said, which was that he wasn't aware, "to his knowledge", that he cheated. Hmmmm...

And Clinton didn't have sexual relations with that woman either.

Reply to
Winston_Smith

Here is the notice of violation filed by the EPA:

www3.epa.gov/otaq/cert/documents/vw-nov-caa-09-18-15.pdf

It explains a lot.

Reply to
epiform

Google,,, Volkswagen plans for manufacturing electric cars

Reply to
JR

Backwards.

Less fuel = hotter burn in the combustion chamber = higher NOx numbers It shows up as vehicles that get better EPA mileage numbers than the sticker says because they are burning less fuel.

To correct the issue they need to increase the fuel to the engine to cool the combustion temperatures.

The end result will be that the EPA MPG numbers will be closer to reality because the engine is now using the fuel to keep the NOx numbers down. The only "bad" side effect will be that the particulate trap and the NOx catalyst will need to burn more often to regenerate.

OR VW could come up with a DEF retrofit to drop the NOx numbers.

Reply to
Steve W.

Remember we are talking DIESEL here. The more fuel, the hotter the burn. Same is true of Gasoline, but only to a point. The point doesn't come in to play with a compression ignition engine

Are their DEF vehicles included in the "scam" -(Tourag, T7 and Passat) TDI

Reply to
clare

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..Diesel Power!

Reply to
JR

"Bob F" wrote in mu202h$knp$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:

It was ironic.

Reply to
Vincent Cheng Hoi Chuen

What I don't understand is that VW had to submit test results from a (supposedly) independent company in Europe to get certified in Europe for the 11 million cars that might be affected.

They apparently contracted that job out to Applus Idiada of Spain.

Has anyone any idea how Applus Idiada verified the wrong numbers?

Reply to
Winston_Smith

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