Audi, Skoda and Seat join.
Mazda Motor Corp.’s plans to introduce a diesel car in its most important market risk falling further behind schedule after Volkswagen AG flouted U.S. rules and unleashed global regulatory scrutiny on the technology. From backroom deals between European leaders to the burying of the bad news of 23,000 premature UK deaths on the day Jeremy Corbyn was elected Labour leader, the scandal that has engulfed the diesel car is a startling tale.
Approximately 1.42 million vehicles with so-called EU5 engines can be found in Western Europe, and nearly 13,000 in the USA, an Audi spokesman said on Monday.Diesel’s obituary has been written before: Rudolf’s, when he vanished 102 years ago; but also that of his engine in the U.S., when a disastrous experiment by Oldsmobile in the 1970s inoculated the public against the fuel.
The cloudy outlook for Mazda’s U.S. diesel ambitions stands out as an example of collateral damage from Volkswagen’s cheating on U.S. emissions tests. It is a story of good intentions being relentlessly undermined and has a nasty twist in the tail: even the real rationale for Europe’s drive for diesel – to curb global warming – has run into the wall. Remember when our rides weren’t controlled by secret, corrupt software — when your father’s Oldsmobile was solidly mechanical and so simple in its operation that even a government regulator could understand it? It’s important to note that the 2.1 million Audi TDI engines using the software are not in addition to the reported 11 million affected vehicles, but rather are part of that number.
Regardless, it seems extremely probable that cheating of this magnitude wouldn’t be committed if the diesel mass-market vehicles involved could have been produced to meet emissions standards without sacrificing target fuel efficiency, performance, other customer-appeal factors, and/or VW’s desired profit margin. Revelations that the German company achieved its promise of “clean diesel” by using software to beat laboratory tests not only sullied consumer perception of the cars, they also cast doubt on Mazda’s ability to create an engine that’s both fuel efficient and clean. “It’s been delayed and delayed, and Mazda keeps saying it’s coming,” Dave Sullivan, an analyst for industry researcher AutoPacific Inc., said by phone. “At this point, I don’t understand why they would need a diesel for this market. But emotionally attractive as it might be, the analog automobile isn’t a realistic option (which is perhaps why even Luddites aren’t asking for it). But with climate change a growing concern, diesel’s lower carbon dioxide emissions caught the attention of politicians looking for easy ways to cut carbon.
Now, with its smaller diesels pulled from dealer lots while engineers work on a fix, analysts are split on whether VW will be the only major automaker to report a sales decline for September. The real lesson in VW’s scandal — in which the automaker installed “defeat devices” that showed the cars emitting lower emissions in lab tests than they actually did — is not that our cars are stuffed with too much technology. It’s estimated that VW’s dubious diesels were responsible for as much as 1 million additional tons of nitrogen oxide being pumped into the atmosphere worldwide. “You feel duped”. “LEAN BURN ” The Energy Policy Act of 2005, signed by Bush, expanded a green vehicle tax break to include so-called “lean burn” vehicles like certain diesels for the first time.The concession represented the culmination of a years-long effort to rehabilitate the reputation of diesel-powered cars. “It was this dramatic visual effect created to persuade people who have negative views about diesel cars”. But the slow-burn rise of diesels accelerated into a boom after 1998, thanks to the arrival of a new quieter and more powerful engine – called the common rail – and a landmark agreement between Europe’s leaders and its car industry to drive down CO2. In fact, the faster we upgrade our roads and autos with better capabilities to detect and analyze what’s going on in the transportation system, the better we’ll be able to find hackers, cheaters and others looking to create havoc on the highways.
He acquired a 2009 Jetta TDI in July, fixed it up and listed it on Craigslist for $8,499. “Officials at Volkswagen should be granted no get out of jail free card, and the Department should accept no plea agreement with Volkswagen that does not ensure any and all information regarding criminal acts by high level officials is provided to the Department”, wrote Blumenthal and Klobuchar. Last weekend, his team sold six new vehicles and handled questions from customers who like the diesels, wanted to know when they’d be available and wondered what kind of discounts they’d soon carry. “People are smelling a little blood in the water,” said Brown, general manager of the store in Frisco, Texas, near Dallas. “The hope is the factory decides to give a little back to the community in the form of incentives. Right now we are at an awkward in-between phase in the transformation of the automobile — somewhere in the uncanny valley between the mechanical horse of Henry Ford’s era and the intelligent, autonomous, emissions-free, crash-free, networked fleet that will begin chugging along our roads later this century.
Created to detect when the cars were undergoing regulatory testing, the program built into the car’s on-board computer would temporarily reduce emissions of nitrous oxides, which are harmful to human health and the ozone layer, by up to 40 times. Volkswagen has set up a website, vwdieselinfo.com, which leads with communication from Volkswagen Group of America CEO Michael Horn, both in video and text format. “When we have a remedy in place, customers will be notified”, he says. Volkswagen disclosed last month that it sold as many as 11 million vehicles worldwide with diesel engines using software that limits full pollution controls to when the car’s emissions are being tested.
I think they will, and I think we come out of this stronger.” America’s love of trucks and SUVs, fueled by available credit, affordable fuel and the latest technology, is helping push auto sales to the highest level in more than a decade. Overall, this now brings the affected vehicle tally up to around 11-million worldwide, which really puts Volkswagen’s tainted ambitions into clear focus. The FAQ page detailing affected models, defeat devices, sales, safety of vehicles and how owners should proceed lines up with the current reports circulating around VW, so the company hasn’t backed out of any of its promises yet. But it was believed that problem could be neutralised. “The policy priority was climate change, [but] it was thought that air pollution regulations on vehicles would work,” said Martin Williams, who headed the UK government’s Air Quality Unit for 20 years and is now at King’s College London. “People said ‘sure, diesels emit more particulates and nitrogen oxides (NOx) but we have really stringent regulations”.
Cars today are lousy with code that can’t be inspected, opening the way for scary hackings and cheats and also the unforeseen complications of interactions between robots and humans. That’s because in the United Kingdom auto tax is based on how much carbon dioxide engines produce – with low-emission vehicles paying nothing at all.
Twenty years on, we have found out we were wrong.” “Everyone expected the new standards to deliver improvements in air quality,” said Greg Archer, at campaign group Transport & Environment. “But the motor manufacturers found ways to circumvent the tests.” The tiny particles of pollution pumped out of diesel exhausts have long been known to be very harmful to health, working their way deep into lungs and leading to heart attacks, strokes and cancers. When automakers report September sales on Thursday, the industry may show a 13 percent jump in car and light-truck deliveries, for an annualized rate, adjusted for seasonal trends, of 17.7 million, the average of 12 analyst estimates in a Bloomberg survey.
Now, the company that famously introduced the original Beetle as a “Lemon” and urged consumers to “Think Small” faces a public relations crisis, and a major challenge to restore its image. Filters that became mandatory in exhausts in 2010 have heavily reduced that problem, although some unscrupulous garages still offer to remove them and give the car’s performance a tiny boost. As many have pointed out since the VW admission, the code in our cars (and other life-threatening machines) shouldn’t be secret, but should allow for better inspection by authorities and independent experts.
Now, a new report from Reuters has quoted newly Volkswagen Group CEO Matthias Mueller in saying an announcement in regards to the fix is just a “few days” away. What customers likely will have to settle for is a few modest compensation and a auto that, after the cheat code is removed, probably has less power and worse mileage than the one they bought.
While it’s not for sale in the country, the company still promotes the Skyactiv-D engine on its U.S. website with a video that declares they’ve come a long way since Rudolf Diesel invented them in 1893. The Hungarian government said Tuesday it is consulting with Volkswagen unit Audi Hungaria and with Mercedes Benz, which also has a local assembly plant, about the issue. Mazda notes that diesel’s compromises have included the need for heavy, industrial-strength parts that sap driving performance because the engines run with higher combustion pressures. The EPA has alleged that Volkswagen overcame these issues using a “defeat device.” Mazda claims in its video that Skyactiv-D’s workaround was to lower compression ratios, delay combustion and give fuel and air a millisecond more time to mix, reducing pollutants. “When we were done, we had created a beast,” the video says, promising customers the driving performance of a larger gasoline engines and the fuel economy of a hybrid. “With such dramatic improvements, Mr. If sales do rise, analysts said it may be that VW, like other automakers, benefited from Labor Day weekend, a traditional car-shopping holiday which last year fell in August.
Diesel himself might not recognize it, but no doubt, he’d love to drive it.” Mazda never uses illegal software of “defeat devices” to comply with emissions regulations, the company said Tuesday in an e-mailed statement. As each passed, beams of infrared and ultraviolet light took a snapshot its exhaust fumes, while a camera recorded the registration plate, which could be used to look up the make and model. When the numbers were crunched, the conclusion was stark: there was a chasm between the levels of NOx that the vehicles were actually emitting and what they should have been emitting according to the regulatory tests they had passed. Volkswagen’s deception will make make it harder for Mazda as the U.S. government was already withholding support for diesel engines, AutoPacific’s Sullivan said. To try to more than double U.S. sales and meet a 800,000-vehicle sales goal by 2018, the automaker has relied on leasing to ensure a stream of repeat customers when their contracts end in 2017 — about the same time the fruits of its product-line reformation would hit dealers.
When it detected these routines, the car’s software figured, “Hey, someone’s testing me!” and then put itself into an innocent, low-emissions mode that it didn’t use on the open road. But the discrepancy between real-world driving and regulatory test results – if not outright illegal cheating – had been known for years, and it was getting worse. Leases, some as cheap as $39 or $49 a month, have accounted for about 40 percent of the company’s deliveries — more than Porsche and about double the rate of most mainstream brands. The cheating was discovered only when researchers at the International Council on Clean Transportation, a nonprofit automotive research group, working with scholars at West Virginia University, used smarter technology.
Volkswagen has become the subject of numerous government investigations and lawsuits since the Environmental Protection Agency said Sept. 18 that the largest European automaker admitted using a so-called defeat device that turned off emissions controls when vehicles weren’t being put through official tests. To analyze VW’s emissions in real-world conditions, they used sophisticated devices mounted inside the trunks of two VWs and one BMW that collected and analyzed exhaust fumes as the cars drove along routes mainly in California.
The devices found that nitrogen oxide emissions from the VW Jetta were 15 to 35 times the acceptable standards, while those from the VW Passat were five to 20 times over the limit; the emissions from the BMW X5 were generally at or below the standards. “This is a recent development — you miniaturize the equipment you’d have inside a lab so that it fits inside a trunk,” said John German, a senior fellow at the I.C.C.T. Few people believe VW are the only company doing so, legally or otherwise. “VW appear to have been caught red-handed, but it would seem highly likely that others have also played dubious games to pass emissions tests,” said Professor Alastair Lewis, an air pollution expert at the University of York. Though Baum & Associates figures show Americans buy more than three times as many hybrids and electric models as diesels, hybrid sales have been slowing and actually slipped last year as gasoline prices fell.
These devices are bulky and expensive: Each P.E.M. unit fills most of a car’s trunk, and operating the system and analyzing the data requires trained professionals. In 1999, a European Union directive set strict air pollution limits for NO2 (the toxic gas formed from NOx emissions) and gave member states just over a decade to get ready. Shoppers predisposed toward diesels are more likely to delay a purchase, if possible, than to choose an electric vehicle or a hybrid instead, said Jeff Schuster, senior vice president at LMC Automotive in Troy, Mich. “Those buyers share an interest in increased fuel economy, but that’s where it stops,” he said. “Those diesel buyers are going to be left hanging for a little bit.” Brown, who heads VW’s national dealer council, said that while the scandal has slowed consumer demand for now, it hasn’t diminished the interest in diesels. “The brand is working on incentives and how we’re going to face these headwinds in next few days,” Brown said. “VW has the funds to do it and do it right.” The choking truth was revealed in 2010, when London used up its annual allowance for NO2 in the first three weeks of monitoring. “The breaches were colossal,” said Alan Andrews at environmental lawyers, Client Earth.
Still, as in all things powered by software, it’s likely these devices will become more accessible over the next few years, permitting more such tests, if not everyday use. Remote sensors on roads, for instance, can measure the average emissions from a fleet of cars to figure out if there are large-scale deviations from what regulators might expect given their guidelines. Another idea is “plume chasing” — investigators drive behind certain cars and collect their gaseous wastes, permitting surreptitious analysis of real-world performance. The I.C.C.T. recently collected fuel-consumption data on more than 600,000 European cars from nearly a dozen sources (for instance, a German leasing company that automatically monitors its fleet’s mileage and a Dutch fuel-loyalty card that tracks how much gas people buy).
The research group blamed automakers’ ability to specially prepare their cars for tests, making them unrepresentative of real-world conditions, for part of the gap. In 2013, Germany was reported to have gone “rogue” in attempts to sideline greener car regulations that would impact its huge car industry, threatening Ireland over its Euro bail-out, Hungary with car plant closures and the Netherlands with cuts in plant investment. A month earlier, Germany had offered to derail an EU cap on bankers’ bonuses, which the UK opposed, in return for UK support in sidelining the stricter car regulations. Tesla, the electric carmaker at the forefront of building the connected automobile of the future, already anonymously logs its cars’ “telematics” — measurements like mileage and energy use, in much the same way that Apple and Google track how smartphones are performing in the field.
Germany, France and the UK have all lobbied recently against reforms to flawed emissions tests. “If ‘dieselgate’ has taught us one thing, it is that you need regulations that are robust, transparent, enforceable and not designed by industry for industry,” says Andrews. One, Automatic, a company that makes a device that is kind of like a Fitbit for your car, analyzes data as you drive to determine your car’s efficiency, among other factors. “What happened at Volkswagen had to do with embedded software that’s buried deep in the car, and only the supplier knows what’s in it — and it’s a black box for everybody else,” said Stefan Heck, the founder of Nauto, a new start-up that is introducing a windshield-mounted camera that monitors road conditions for commercial fleets and consumers. The camera uses artificial intelligence to track traffic conditions; over time, as more vehicles use it, it could provide users with traffic and safety information plus data about mileage and other automotive functions. But the industry is on record as saying nothing can possibly be done before 2020.” The final bitter note in the smoggy tale of diesel’s rise is that it did not even achieve its overarching goal. The emissions of carbon dioxide from diesels are indeed lower than those of petrol cars, but other efficiency improvements to cars in the last decade, such as lighter bodies, have been 10 times more effective.
He said there really isn’t any going back — software in cars is responsible not just for driver comforts like in-dash navigation, but also for critical safety and performance systems, many of which improve the car’s environmental footprint. “I think people are fundamentally comfortable with software running in the car,” said Dr. The scientists Michel Cames and Eckard Helmers sum it up simply in their analysis: “The European diesel car boom did not cool down the atmosphere.”