Volkswagen's Clean Air Act violations on 2009+ TDIs spark huge recall, investigations

Meanwhile, another faction of the U.S. government is preparing an enormous corporate bailout, according to The Fiscal Times. The so-called “Fairness in Class Action Litigation Act,” also known as the “VW Bailout Bill,” introduced by House Republicans, will be voted on in the House in early January, and would nullify the thousands of “non-injury” class-action cases that have been filed by Volkswagen owners who are angry that they were lied to—and that their cars have lost nearly all trade-in or re-sell value. The bill isn’t likely to make it through the Senate, however.

nwdiver said:

That would be why we're adding >20x more renewable production than new EVs consume every year and why the EPA also has strict emissions standard for power plants.
YOU eating at McDonalds is also unlikely to hurt your neighbor... no such thing as second-hand diabetes.

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Ever heard of health insurance? Poor eating habits that lead to health problems (as well as other bad habits) increase health care costs, and that gets spread out to otherwise healthy people.

So in a way...

But that is a whole different argument. In the end, frugal and efficient are just not terms Americans like or want to live with. Which goes hand in hand with this whole witch hunt over the NOx. Which isn't going to do squat, but we'll gladly keep buying Chinese junk by the shipload (you know they are constructing even BIGGER ships as we speak to move this crap around the world faster?). And China's air makes it look like 10,000 rednecks rollin' coal from their diesel pickups look like a squirrel fart in comparison.

Humans are such a trainwreck, LOL...

nwdiver said:

Statistically the VW cheat did kill people. NOx kills. Arguing that NOx doesn't cause deaths is no different than arguing that smoking is harmless... it's absurd. The coverup may have been intentional but GM and Takata didn't design the airbags to shoot shrapnel like VW designed their engines to cheat on emissions tests.

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So statistically, how many people did my TDI directly kill? Or your former TDI? Or anyone's TDI? Do you have some solid numbers for us?

nwdiver said:

So smoking isn't harmful? Stats are the only thing linking tobacco to cancer... lot's of 90 year olds out there with a pack-a-day habit...

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Yes but you fail to understand Stats, you cant use study of one set of Stats (Tobacco) to correlate the validity of all stats, such as the very dubious one you pulled out of nonsense.

turborod said:

How I read the article about how the Justice Department is suing VW of A is b/c the fix is too slow.

They are dragging their feet with us the consumers. The EPA wasn't too happy with it and got in with DoJ.

Is this why the CARB needed a few more weeks to approve the tentative VW solution?

Thus, this suit is used for leverage, as a kick in the butt, to get VW moving to settle our compensation for their fraud.

LA times today front page business section.

Seems this government is helping me.

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Yup. VW d1cking around for the past few months only gave the government more ammunition to weigh in like they did. That and the government filing the way that they did is pretty much their way of saying "this could be over tomorrow, if you were bright enough to pay up and get it over with." As pretty much every news piece I've read since the U.S. filing the civil suit has said..."VW can make this case go away tomorrow if they cough up enough money." I would imagine that the VW execs finally coming over for a visit over the next couple of weeks is likely to discuss a settlement.

Yup. I spend a significant percentage of my day dealing with government inefficiencies. This is one of the rare cases where the only reason that anything will get solved in a timely manner is because of government interference.

nwdiver said:

That would be why we're adding >20x more renewable production than new EVs consume every year and why the EPA also has strict emissions standard for power plants.
YOU eating at McDonalds is also unlikely to hurt your neighbor... no such thing as second-hand diabetes.

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McDonald's is so many orders of magnitude deadlier, that their grill emissions alone are probably statistically responsible for far more than 150 deaths. And we all breath air regardless of where we eat. And that air has hardly been impacted at all by 500,000 fuel sipping tdi's. In fact, any impact has probably been positive when you consider the emissions from the gasoline alternative autos.

nayr said:

Yes but you fail to understand Stats, you cant use study of one set of Stats (Tobacco) to correlate the validity of all stats, such as the very dubious one you pulled out of nonsense.

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Curious... what exactly are you suggesting? That NOx is somehow harmless and EPA chose to regulate it for fun?

In otherwords, VW should have just paid the two dollars.

That is an old joke that goes way back. Guy was fined two dollars for spitting in public and his lawyer wanted him to go to court and the fines just kept piling up. The guy wanted to just "Pay the two dollars", but the lawyer kept at it until the guy ended up in jail.

nwdiver said:

Curious... what exactly are you suggesting? That NOx is somehow harmless and EPA chose to regulate it for fun?

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He is suggesting, and I agree, that the amount of NOx contained within this issue is such a tiny amount that it is not worth getting all knotted up over. Yes, it is bad, yes it should be regulated, yes Volkswagen did something bad, yes they should be made accountable, but come on now...

divewreck said:

Meanwhile, another faction of the U.S. government is preparing an enormous corporate bailout, according to The Fiscal Times. The so-called “Fairness in Class Action Litigation Act,” also known as the “VW Bailout Bill,” introduced by House Republicans, will be voted on in the House in early January, and would nullify the thousands of “non-injury” class-action cases that have been filed by Volkswagen owners who are angry that they were lied to—and that their cars have lost nearly all trade-in or re-sell value. The bill isn’t likely to make it through the Senate, however.

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This was just a misleading title. The act has nothing to do with Volkswagen (it was created long before the VW diesel issue) and everything to do with protecting large companies, d1ck1ng over consumers, and making it as difficult as possible to file a class action claim.

I fully expect this bill to make it through the Senate. I won't go political on this (it would be too easy).

oilhammer said:

He is suggesting, and I agree, that the amount of NOx contained within this issue is such a tiny amount that it is not worth getting all knotted up over. Yes, it is bad, yes it should be regulated, yes Volkswagen did something bad, yes they should be made accountable, but come on now...

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The NOx emitted by VW may be small compared to total NOx emissions but they are not created equal. Most NOx emissions are from coal plants which typically do not place their smoke stacks 4" off the ground on main street... they're located miles outside the city with a 100' + stack. HUGE difference.

I agree that driving a TDI in rural west texas is pretty harmless but driving 1000 of them in LA is not. Perhaps the compromise would be to loosen diesel requirements but ban them from cities.

bubbagumpshrimp said:

This was just a misleading title. The act has nothing to do with Volkswagen (it was created long before the VW diesel issue) and everything to do with protecting large companies, d1ck1ng over consumers, and making it as difficult as possible to file a class action claim.

I fully expect this bill to make it through the Senate. I won't go political on this (it would be too easy).

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They can pass it if they like. It's dead meat anyway for this Congress; there aren't the votes to override the veto it will receive.

nwdiver said:

Curious... what exactly are you suggesting? That NOx is somehow harmless and EPA chose to regulate it for fun?

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I am suggesting the people GM killed are real, they have names, they factual human beings that died in avoidable accidents..

The people you think VW killed are fictitious, they do not exist, they never have and never will.. they are not nameless static in the background, they are the virtual people created by a purely political way of measuring environmental impact.

There will never be enough statistical data to scientifically correlate any dieselgate emissions directly to anyone's death.. Smokers were voluntarily putting the devices in there mouth constantly over decades and it still took mountains of data to come to that conclusion.

IMHO, I find shutting off things like engines, brakes, airbags, traction control, power steering, etc.. when you need them the most to be a much bigger problem to the driver, passengers and any other bystanders that you happen to take out while out of control... than say releasing a bit more nox..

The thing that is strange to me is that domestic car manufacturers haven't implemented a "trade your VW for one of ours" campaign...or that the government hasn't coughed up a subsidy for them to do so (if it's really about driving VW out of the US as some are claiming).

nwdiver said:

The NOx emitted by VW may be small compared to total NOx emissions but they are not created equal. Most NOx emissions are from coal plants which typically do not place their smoke stacks 4" off the ground on main street... they're located miles outside the city with a 100' + stack. HUGE difference.

I agree that driving a TDI in rural west texas is pretty harmless but driving 1000 of them in LA is not. Perhaps the compromise would be to loosen diesel requirements but ban them from cities.

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There are a couple of dispersion scenarios in which the plume of a stack can be brought down to the surface - "fumigation" and "looping". "Looping" is the worst and occurs in relatively windy, unstable boundary layer conditions.

I have no idea how many EGUs are located close enough to large population centers to know how many people are potentially exposed to these conditions, but I assume there are some.

nayr said:

The people you think VW killed are fictitious, they do not exist, they never have and never will.. they are not nameless static in the background, they are the virtual people created by a purely political way of measuring environmental impact.

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???? Are the victims of second hand smoke and lung cancer equally 'fictitious'? The evidence that tobacco contributed to their deaths is no more concrete...

Tobacco kills with cancer

NOx kills with asthma

Not all asthma deaths are the result of NOx just like not all lung cancer deaths are the result of smoking but the link is real.

bizzle said:

The thing that is strange to me is that domestic car manufacturers haven't implemented a "trade your VW for one of ours" campaign...or that the government hasn't coughed up a subsidy for them to do so (if it's really about driving VW out of the US as some are claiming).

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The government doesn't need to subsidize them to do so. My guess is dealers are waiting to see the fix and then will jump on that bandwagon. Not knowing the fix is probably all that's holding that back.

I can't imagine the government is truly out to run VW out of the country. Lots of VW employees, businesses and properties adding to the tax base throughout the U.S. Spank them? Wring money out of them? You bet but not run them off.

nwdiver said:

The NOx emitted by VW may be small compared to total NOx emissions but they are not created equal. Most NOx emissions are from coal plants which typically do not place their smoke stacks 4" off the ground on main street... they're located miles outside the city with a 100' + stack. HUGE difference.
I agree that driving a TDI in rural west texas is pretty harmless but driving 1000 of them in LA is not. Perhaps the compromise would be to loosen diesel requirements but ban them from cities.

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This proves right there that you do not understand what NOx is, and how it is harmful.

And that is why people who argue so hard about this really should learn about the actual topic at hand. What NOx is, what it does, WHERE and WHEN it does what it does, HOW it does this, and how long it takes and how long it lasts. Because it isn't doing anything 4 inches off the ground.

I rest my case....

nwdiver said:

The evidence that tobacco contributed to their deaths is no more concrete...

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False Statement, Again you dont understand Stats, probability is variable..

the probability that tobacco causes cancer = astronomically high... conclusion: tobacco probably causes cancer

the probability that dieselgate will kill anyone = astronomically low. conclusion: dieslegate probably wont kill anyone.

whitedog said:

In otherwords, VW should have just paid the two dollars.

That is an old joke that goes way back. Guy was fined two dollars for spitting in public and his lawyer wanted him to go to court and the fines just kept piling up. The guy wanted to just "Pay the two dollars", but the lawyer kept at it until the guy ended up in jail.

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Totally Off Topic but in light of the joke:

My wife's father as a young man in Germany was arrested for something and was told to either pay a fine or spend time in jail working off the fine. It was winter, he was out of work, so he chose jail. Now at that time prisoners were used to cut wood for the townspeople with some money going to the jail to pay off the fines and some kept on account for the prisoner. When her father's time was up, the amount paid to him was more than the amount of the original fine!

nayr said:

the probability that dieselgate will kill anyone = astronomically low.

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??? I agree that the numbers are low but it's difficult to argue that 'no one' was killed. The facts certainly don't support that...

FACT: >3000 asthma deaths per year

FACT: NOx causes asthma

FACT: Due to cheating VW vehicles release an additional ~10000 tons of NOx/yr

It strains credulity that increasing an agent known to cause asthma would have no effect on asthma...

Facts!? Learn some science son and question what you know to be fact.

(hint stats are not fact, notice I said tobacco probably causes cancer.. thats the scientific fact due to an abundance of data.. its not a fact that tobacco causes cancer, only probably causes cancer.)

how can something be a fact when you reproduce the same test over and over and get results proving your fact wrong? If every once and a while we tripped and fell up to the sky then gravity wouldn't really be a fact.

you do not have enough data to come to any factual conclusions, mere opinion is all you have..

oilhammer said:

He is suggesting, and I agree, that the amount of NOx contained within this issue is such a tiny amount that it is not worth getting all knotted up over. Yes, it is bad, yes it should be regulated, yes Volkswagen did something bad, yes they should be made accountable, but come on now...

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I see what you're saying, BUT unfortunately there was no exception/exemption in the CAA for VW of USA for NOx emissions (or any other emissions for that matter). Its a strict liability law, you either did OR you didn't. As I said before, we can rehash what was done and when it was done for years, BUT fact of matter is, it was DONE. Now its all about the damages. IN other words, how BIG will the check be??

romad said:

Totally Off Topic but in light of the joke:

My wife's father as a young man in Germany was arrested for something and was told to either pay a fine or spend time in jail working off the fine. It was winter, he was out of work, so he chose jail. Now at that time prisoners were used to cut wood for the townspeople with some money going to the jail to pay off the fines and some kept on account for the prisoner. When her father's time was up, the amount paid to him was more than the amount of the original fine!

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and since it was winter, he got "three hots and a cot." Back then , the graybar hotel was not such a bad deal!!

bizzle said:

The thing that is strange to me is that domestic car manufacturers haven't implemented a "trade your VW for one of ours" campaign...or that the government hasn't coughed up a subsidy for them to do so (if it's really about driving VW out of the US as some are claiming).

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They don't want them either!! (BUT, they could turn it into another cash for clunkers!!! )

nayr said:

(hint stats are not fact, notice I said tobacco probably causes cancer.. thats the scientific fact due to an abundance of data.. its not a fact that tobacco causes cancer, only probably causes cancer.)

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LOL... if you want to be uselessly pedantic then yes... VW 'probably' killed people just like smoking 'probably' causes cancer. But by that token GM and Takata didn't kill anyone either. Those people 'probably' died as a result of shrapnel but it's not impossible it was something else simultaneously.

Lucidexp said:

I NEVER SAID IT WAS UNSAFE ON THE ROAD!!!!!!

I noted that the level of NOX which is produces is unsafe - this has been verified by the EPA and CARB!

In the end VW lied about the levels of NOX it's cars produce then tried to cover up the lie.

If a TDI is a gleaming picturesque of what all cars can and should be then why cant they even pass a simple Ca. emissions test without a cheat?

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Please explain how it is so unsafe for one of these VWAG diesels which make up less than 0.01 % of what is on the road today pose any safety or otherwise risk to anyone??????


Quick answer is.......They could not possibly pose any risk to anyone anywhere in the US today!!!!!!!!

490,000 vehicles sold compared to 40,000,000 others sold during that time......Most of which were larger displacement gassers and direct injection gasssers who put out mega-t0ns of ultra fine PMs unregulated or measured....direct injection gasoline engines which exceed NOx maximum limits by extreme amounts during their daily time of 15-20 mins of warmup time, vehicles which make up 1-3+ million of what was sold over this time.....

So please enough with your bs, these things pose no safety or emissions issue in their current programming form because of the low numbers compared to everything else during this time...That is a FACT!!!! that the current BS being done by CARB & the EPA fails to take into account or admitt....

romad said:

But BOTH of them INTENTIONALLY hid the defect when it became known to them in order to save money. BTW, at part of the time that GM was hiding the defect, it was managed by the US government. So the US DOJ needs to sue the US Government if they want to be fair.

GM & Tanaka lied, people died.
VW lied, nobody died.

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With all due respect, from a legal standpoint, you entirely missed the issue. If you're negligent at the beginning in manufacture and /or design, which Takata and GM were (or their suppliers were , BUT that doesn't matter) and later "stall" or cover it up, that's NOT the same as intentionally causing it (firmware cheat) at the beginning knowing or should know that this will be a problem in the future; ITS a matter of intent at the beginning. YOU can insure for negligent losses like airbags or ignition switches, BUT you can NOT insure for intentionally cheating on your firmware and then say, "Look, we're insured??"

As to your lil poem, I read it like this on other forums:

GM & Tanaka lied, a few people died.
VW lied, many died

GlennGlenn said:

and since it was winter, he got "three hots and a cot." Back then , the graybar hotel was not such a bad deal!!

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Yep, plus it relieved his folks of feeding him! After thinking about it I think the way the system worked was the money he earned chopping fire wood for the townspeople went to pay off his fine plus (maybe) his "room & board", with the excess being given to him upon his release. IIRC, this was in the early to mid 1920s.

oilhammer said:

He is suggesting, and I agree, that the amount of NOx contained within this issue is such a tiny amount that it is not worth getting all knotted up over. Yes, it is bad, yes it should be regulated, yes Volkswagen did something bad, yes they should be made accountable, but come on now...

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If every car on the road emitted as much NOx as a TDI would that be OK with you? if not then what makes us (TDI owners) so special that we can pollute on a higher level than everyone else?