I really wish people who quote this BS of the exceeding limits by up to 40 times would give some honesty to those claims! #!!##!! Facts that seem to always be left out are that for most normal driving conditions their actual emissions were with in spec or just above spec. .....that bs 40x number only occurred under extreme load conditions! Continuing to quote that lie when under the actual real world driving conditions they do not exceed limits by any amount or by an amount so low as to be irrelevant to actual pollution in any given region. .......
That isn't true.
The Gen 1 cars when driven routinely by normal people in normal driving, emit ~ 15 times the amount of NOx allowed. Under some conditions it was up to 40 times above. There are virtually no circumstances encountered in normal driving in which these cars actually are within specifications for NOx emissions when averaged over full trips of normal driving.
Virtually the only circumstance in which NOx emissions are within limits on those cars is if your trip very closely matches one of the prescribed EPA test cycles and only if you do the test cycle once ... if you drive longer than the length of the EPA test cycle then it switches out of compliance mode. One of the ways CARB busted VW was simply by repeating the FTP75 test cycle on the dyno without stopping the vehicle. Passed on the first run-through ... then emissions skyrocketed. (On a normal car, emissions will be the same or lower on the second run-through on account of the catalyst already being warmed up.)
The Gen 2 (SCR equipped as an "add-on") did better but still well out of compliance. Remember, the Gen 2 manual transmission cars are the ones that VW gave up on. They're buying them all back and squishing them because they
could not achieve the agreed-upon reductions in NOx emissions (which were still substantially higher than the original NOx emission limits).
Gen 3 did better yet, those are the first ones in which the emission control system is designed in rather than added on, and those are the only ones in which the emissions recall work
actually achieves compliant emissions. But they weren't compliant in original form.
Remember, much of the reason CARB and EPA came down so hard on VW was the nature of how VW was attempting to cover up the situation. "it wasn't the crime, it was the cover-up"
EPA and CARB would have been well within rights to rigorously enforce the original emission limits on these cars, not agreeing to less-stringent limits that still represented a big reduction from original condition ... they could have just told VW "achieve full compliance, or buy them all back".
You can argue about the appropriateness of the emission limits all you want, I won't even disagree that current emission standards are possibly more stringent than what makes sense, but once they're set, the law is what it is. Can't comply? then don't sell the product.
