Volkswagen exec reaffirms commitment to diesel: ‘Now it is absolutely clean’

[TDIMeister]

https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-rival-volkswagen-exec-clean-diesel-commitment-interview/

Recent comments from a Volkswagen executive suggests that the German automaker is not yet ready to fully let go of diesel-powered vehicles. The comments, which were related by Sebastian Willmann, Head of Diesel Engine Development at VW, were published by the veteran carmaker in a blog post promoting its 2.0 TDI EA288 Evo diesel engine, which is designed to meet the strict Euro 6d-Temp standard.

 

[casioqv]

I hope this means they will eventually reintroduce diesels in NA, but I doubt it.

Volkswagen has since unveiled its first all-electric car, the ID.3

Hmmm... I'm pretty sure my e-Golf is all-electric, as were the CityStromer Golf models going back to 1989

 

[IndigoBlueWagon]

Just yesterday I was talking with my local guru about the return of VW diesels. He believes that VW won't do anything until the buyback cars are all sold. We're getting close to that. And then he thinks they may bring the EA288 back, as it will meet EPA standards without difficulty. We were also wondering why VW doesn't seem to be doing much in the way of gasoline engine development. Perhaps that indicates a desire to add diesels to the lineup instead of new gasoline engines.

Or we could be dreaming...

 

[atc98002]

Yeah, we're dreaming.

I did read an article the other day that ocean-going vessels are all going to have to switch from bunker fuel to something a little more refined, and that was expected to cause a significant rise in the price of diesel fuel for general use. Can't remember when the cutover was supposed to happen, but it wasn't far off. A couple of years at most. While there are stations around me that have kept the price of D2 near RUG, there are others that D2 is a little higher than PUG. If what this article said is true, D2 could end up $1 or more per gallon higher than even PUG. That alone would kill any chances of the TDI returning to the US.

Myself personally, I've already gone to a plug-in hybrid, and when VW finally gets the ID Crozz (hopefully with a better name) stateside my lease will be up and I'll be looking hard it at. With my current car, I'm around 400 MPG, and using about $15 per month in electricity. I can live with that.

 

[Pat Dolan]

When the elctric car thing bombs (there will be a surge of interest, since the whining Euro weenies and the looney idiots in the press tell everyone that they are the future) there MIGHT be a chance to buy another diesel from someone, maybe not VW though. Too bad, since after 50+ years of involvement, I have probably bought my last ever new VW (Q7 TDI)

 

[nwdiver]

When the elctric car thing bombs

What exactly would cause them to 'bomb'? There has already been significant improvement just in the past 5 years and the rare materials like cobalt are being engineered out of the battery. Batteries are getting cheaper, more powerful, longer lasting AND more sustainable.

PLUS there's an increasing amount of clean and 'free' energy available called 'curtailed renewables'. CA is tossed out enough surplus solar in May to power >1M EVs. Add an EV to a network and you can get free power when free power is available. Doesn't get any cleaner than solar or wind that would have been wasted if it wasn't used to charge a car

 

[IndigoBlueWagon]

One thing that might help electric cars bomb is if owners have to pay the full cost for the car without subsidies, and if they have to pay the same taxes for fuel as other cars. The fuel tax won't amount to much, given electric's MPGe, but eliminating the Federal and state handouts could cause buyers to look to less expensive options.

Sadly, the current oil glut doesn't give drivers incentive to save fuel with either diesel or electric. That's why Ford sold nearly a million F 150s last year. Doesn't bode well for diesel or electric.

 

[bhtooefr]

When the elctric car thing bombs (there will be a surge of interest, since the whining Euro weenies and the looney idiots in the press tell everyone that they are the future) there MIGHT be a chance to buy another diesel from someone, maybe not VW though. Too bad, since after 50+ years of involvement, I have probably bought my last ever new VW (Q7 TDI)

Have you driven a good EV?

One thing that might help electric cars bomb is if owners have to pay the full cost for the car without subsidies, and if they have to pay the same taxes for fuel as other cars. The fuel tax won't amount to much, given electric's MPGe, but eliminating the Federal and state handouts could cause buyers to look to less expensive options.

Sadly, the current oil glut doesn't give drivers incentive to save fuel with either diesel or electric. That's why Ford sold nearly a million F 150s last year. Doesn't bode well for diesel or electric.

While crappy compliance cars' sales fall off a cliff when incentives are removed and taxes added, actually good EVs merely see a pull-forward of the existing demand to get the incentive, and then a dip in sales for a quarter or two until the demand recovers. We're seeing this effect with Tesla in the US right now, and we've seen it in various European countries.

Part of this is simply because in some ways, EVs are better. Much smoother and much more responsive power delivery than a turbocharged ICE with a randoshift transmission or a CVT, quieter, and if you've got somewhere to plug it in at night or at work, you don't have to stop to refuel it for your daily driving.

And, F-150s are really an American thing - in much of the rest of the world, fuel taxes (which attempt to internalize the negative externalities of burning fuel) make them too expensive to use. But, even in that kind of giving no ****s about the environment or fuel costs market, Tesla's selling every car they can make here.

 

[oilhammer]

I hope they come back here. That would be great. Their US portfolio is just getting worse and worse seemingly by the day.

 

[IndigoBlueWagon]

Toof, I think it's premature to make any claims about sales trends as rebates disappear. And Tesla's days of selling every car they can make (despite their history of not meeting production targets) may be behind them. We don't have enough history on that to say, either.

And you're right, trucks are an American thing. That's where I live. But electrics are kind of an American thing, too. Europeans I talk to don't take electrics seriously except for urban use, because at European highway speeds they can have trouble with batteries overheating and the actual range is dramatically reduced. I haven't talked to anyone from Norway, however.

I honestly can't believe that as a culture how totally insensitive we are to the fossil fuels we consume. At Starbucks this AM the parking lot was gridlocked momentarily because of the huge trucks and SUVs trying to get in and out of spaces that are too small for them. All the vehicles I saw had one occupant and no payload. Crazy.

 

[nwdiver]

One thing that might help electric cars bomb is if owners have to pay the full cost for the car without subsidies,

Except the cost of EVs is falling faster than the subsidies are phasing out. By ~2025 they'll likely be cheaper than an equivalent ICE.

 

[Rob Mayercik]

I'm with IBW that EVs are not carrying their share of the "road tax" burden, since that's levied through purchase of fuels they don't use. This is likely to become a LOT more interesting when the all-electric tractor-trailer cabs start appearing on the roads, since diesel tractor-trailers buy a LOT of fuel. There's been no real discussion about how to account for the "gas tax" revenue lost to EVs, other than some hare-brained silliness about GPS trackers being forced on the owners, and it needs to start happening SOON.

 

[tdi54]

One positive news about the Diesels, I hope VW brings these fine vehicles back to NA.

 

[IndigoBlueWagon]

Except the cost of EVs is falling faster than the subsidies are phasing out. By ~2025 they'll likely be cheaper than an equivalent ICE.

What evidence do you see of this? Tesla's playing pricing games, has nothing to do with the cost of building the cars, as their second quarter profit figures demonstrated. New EVs from Audi, Jaguar, and Mercedes are all in Model S price ranges.

Look at it this way:

• MSRP for a Chevrolet Bolt is $36,620. It earns a $3,750 federal tax credit, and up to an $1,875 state tax credit ($1,500 in MA). That makes the total cost of the car $30,995.
  
• A Chevy Sonic Hatch an MSRP of $18,020. A Cruze Hatch is $19,620. A Trax is $21,300. So the largest price difference is $12,975.

Some buyers may not be able to use the entire tax credit. And they may need a charging station in their house. The $13,000 difference works out to about $240/month on a 5 year loan. That would buy a lot of gasoline.

So even with the credit and rebate the electric is going to cost substantially more to own in the first 5 years. And a lot more if the incentives go away.

 

[wxman]

I know this has been discussed on here before, but the speculation that BEV will reach price parity with ICEV by 2025 is not a unanimous conclusion.

According to a recent comprehensive "cradle-to-grave" study (Elgowainy et al. (2018), “Current and Future United States Light-Duty Vehicle Pathways: Cradle-to-Grave Lifecycle Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Economic Assessment” Environ. Sci. Technol.), the cost of long-range BEV on 100% solar power is expected to decrease to $0.38/mile over its entire lifespan (15 years) by 2035, while the cost of ICEV over its lifespan is projected to be $0.26/mile (fossil gasoline) to $0.31/mile (renewable gasoline/diesel) by 2035.

 

[casioqv]

the cost of long-range BEV on 100% solar power is expected to decrease to $0.38/mile over its entire lifespan (15 years) by 2035

Is this supposed to include purchase price and maintenance or just electricity/fuel? With our unusually high electricity prices in CA, I'm paying about $0.06/mile for electricity in the e-Golf. That's at $0.22 /kWh, and owning your own solar panels is supposed to be cheaper than that.


I got the car really cheap as it was a year old slow charge model, but my total price estimate is about $0.145/mile if I go 200k miles in 15 years, including maintenance (tires, etc.) and purchase price, but not including insurance and registration.

 

[oilhammer]

Is this supposed to include purchase price and maintenance or just electricity/fuel? With our unusually high electricity prices in CA, I'm paying about $0.06/mile for electricity in the e-Golf. That's at $0.22 /kWh, and owning your own solar panels is supposed to be cheaper than that.


I got the car really cheap as it was a year old slow charge model, but my total price estimate is about $0.145/mile if I go 200k miles in 15 years, including maintenance (tires, etc.) and purchase price, but not including insurance and registration.

You won't be able to go 200k miles/15 years in its current state. At least, I very much doubt it. Although this "aging" will likely just manifest itself with a shorter and shorter range, but its cost-per-mile will likely remain the same, unless the battery's aging also includes a loss of efficiency. Meaning, now you have X amount of electrons going in and giving you X distance. But if the same X needs to go in, but after 50k miles you are getting only X - Y the distance, then the cost-per-mile WILL go up some.

It would be like buying a car that gets 30 MPG when new, but only getting 20 MPG later on, and there is nothing you can do about it.

 

[flee]

Missing from the comparisons of ownership costs of BEV vs ICE cars is the
most expensive condition that BEV's are (relatively) immune from, that is
the inevitable rise in the price of fossil fuel.
Electricity prices, while likely to increase, are set by state and local utilities
and not allowed to rise dramatically. By contrast, a single disruption in fossil
fuel supply can result in overnight price increases of double digit percentages.

 

[IndigoBlueWagon]

I'm betting that in most metropolitan markets electricity costs have risen faster than gasoline costs in the past 5 years. Utilities are charging more for delivery and maintaining their grids, increasing costs.

And these days an increase in fossil fuel isn't that "inevitable." The US now has more fuel reserves than in recent history. When prices increase slightly, producers just bring more wells on line. I think fuel costs are going to be relatively stable for the foreseeable future.

 

[turbobrick240]

And these days an increase in fossil fuel isn't that "inevitable." The US now has more fuel reserves than in recent history. When prices increase slightly, producers just bring more wells on line. I think fuel costs are going to be relatively stable for the foreseeable future.

Have you seen who is at the helm of the crazy train that is our current government? Nothing would surprise me at this point.

 

[wxman]

Is this supposed to include purchase price and maintenance or just electricity/fuel?...

It includes all costs over the lifespan of the vehicle, including the vehicle purchase price (without tax credits).

The cost of electricity is assumed to be $4.56/gge in that study.

 

[nwdiver]

I'm betting that in most metropolitan markets electricity costs have risen faster than gasoline costs in the past 5 years. Utilities are charging more for delivery and maintaining their grids, increasing costs.

At least one VW executive sees EV parity with ICE in '3 to 5 years'.

And you can't go by the average price of electricity as an indicator to how much it will cost to charge an EV. Soon you won't even be able to go by the lowest TOU rate. More and more aggregators are going to offer the ability to use EVs as a way to balance the grid. This will make charging them extremely cheap.

You won't be able to go 200k miles/15 years in its current state.

My 2012 Model S has now clocked >150,000 miles and I still get >220 miles on a charge. I just finished a road trip from NM to WA with no problems. The new cars are even better. There's also a few Teslas driven as a service that have >400,000 miles. The degradation you describe is also not how degradation works. If a 70kWh battery now has 60kWh of capacity after 10 years it does not require 70kWh to get 60kWh out. The batteries are simply able to hold less charge... it's not much different than having a smaller gas tank. The round-trip efficiency of the battery may decline a little over time but it's not going to be >10%. Have you never had an old cordless tool battery that didn't really hold a charge anymore? They charge significantly faster since they simply can't hold the energy any more....

 

[casioqv]

You won't be able to go 200k miles/15 years in its current state.

I disagree, based on my understanding of how lithium ion batteries age, and are managed in EVs.

Lithium ion life is drastically longer if the batteries cycle over a narrower range, e.g. 20% to 80%, and avoid full charges and discharges. The factory "full capacity" on an EV only allows this, e.g. charges within about the 20-80% range. As real capacity reduces over time, these boundaries relax keeping the usable capacity roughly the same, but eventually accelerating battery aging. You won't see a usable reduction in capacity for a long time- probably well over 200k miles based on what I've heard from other people. This is why EV batteries last so much longer than phone or computer batteries. With the e-Golf you can also manually narrow this range further with the CarNet software, to further increase battery life.

As lithium batteries age, they do not get noticeably less efficient... they merely can't be charged with as much energy. The total range of the vehicle will eventually fall, but the cost to charge will fall proportionally.

A lithium battery using 100% capacity lasts only about 400 charge cycles, but using only 60% capacity raises this 10 fold to 4,000. 4,000 cycles at 100 miles per cycle is 400,000 miles. My e-golf is rated to 83 miles but actually gets 100-120 in my experience, unless climbing steep grades or running the AC hard.

So if EV batteries were used like cell phone batteries at full charge-discharge, they'd only last 40k miles, but I would expect around 400k life from an EV with proper software and/or an owner that carefully manages charge levels. That seems to be consistent with what high mileage modern EVs are reporting as shown in the post above (400k battery life). This would likely double again to ~800k mile life if you do only short trips in a small town and drop the full charge level via software to 75% of full capacity or so.

 

[vwxyzero]

Yeah, we're dreaming.

I totally agree. Although I have a great deal of respect for the TDI maestros here, deisel is being shuned in many European cities, and if it's downhill in Europe it ain't gonna be uphill in the States. Yes I still own my VW diesels, but two of them are up on blocks, and my daily driver is electric (guess I need to fix my profile.)

To many recent articles make clear points that diesel is dying.

Two of many:

Bloomberg

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...-end-for-fossil-fuel-in-europe-s-city-centers

LA Times

https://www.latimes.com/business/st...es-hitting-a-dead-end-in-europes-city-centers

Sent from my Moto G (4) using Tapatalk

 

[vwxyzero]

https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-rival-volkswagen-exec-clean-diesel-commitment-interview/

It's also worth reading the comments on this article, as well as following the Twitter link for all the rebuttals.

Sent from my Moto G (4) using Tapatalk

 

[IndigoBlueWagon]

What did you expect from people reading something called Teslarati?

EVs have their supporters. So do diesels. Both groups are going to express opinions in ways that support what they like. Very little of it is factual, probably none of it is objective.

Whether or not we see diesels again probably has more to do with money and politics than anything else. And whether or not EVs become a significant part of our transportation culture will be driven by the same forces. Americans in particular have demonstrated their indifference to climate change. That threat is not going to get many Americans to change their habits.

It doesn't matter what's cleaner, more reliable, or even less expensive to operate: a lot of people like internal combustion engines, and that affection may take generations to go away. I expect Europeans will continue to buy diesels, and I also believe they could find a market in the US if a manufacturer wants to offer vehicles here. VW was able to sell off its "dirty diesel" cars pretty quickly. There may well be enough demand for more to persuade VW to bring them back, if the courts and EPA will allow. Like I said, money and politics.

 

[nwdiver]

Americans in particular have demonstrated their indifference to climate change. That threat is not going to get many Americans to change their habits.

As the song goes, 'The times they are a changin'...'

Frank Luntz, the GOP’s message master, calls for climate action

“I’m here before you to say that I was wrong in 2001,” Luntz told the Senate committee. “Just stop using something that I wrote 18 years ago, because it’s not accurate today.”​

 

[jackbombay]

One thing that might help electric cars bomb is if owners have to pay the full cost for the car without subsidies...

I'm sure you would fall off your chair if you had to pay the full cost of your fuel without subsidies, the list of subsidies for our fuel should include the cost of the wars we have fought to ensure reliable access to oil from the middle east, for example.

I honestly can't believe that as a culture how totally insensitive we are to the fossil fuels we consume. At Starbucks this AM the parking lot was gridlocked momentarily because of the huge trucks and SUVs trying to get in and out of spaces that are too small for them. All the vehicles I saw had one occupant and no payload. Crazy.

Do you remember the intro the the Six Million Dollar Man TV show? Where Steve Austin is a test pilot and crashes his plane at hundreds of miles per hour? That's exactly what humans are in the process of doing with the entire planet.

https://youtu.be/0CPJ-AbCsT8?t=116

 

[IndigoBlueWagon]

As the song goes, 'The times they are a changin'...'
Frank Luntz, the GOP’s message master, calls for climate action

“I’m here before you to say that I was wrong in 2001,” Luntz told the Senate committee. “Just stop using something that I wrote 18 years ago, because it’s not accurate today.”​

I'd love to think they're changing, but I just don't see it. Some people are now saying the right things, but they're largely falling on deaf ears.

 

[oilhammer]

At least one VW executive sees EV parity with ICE in '3 to 5 years'.

And you can't go by the average price of electricity as an indicator to how much it will cost to charge an EV. Soon you won't even be able to go by the lowest TOU rate. More and more aggregators are going to offer the ability to use EVs as a way to balance the grid. This will make charging them extremely cheap.



My 2012 Model S has now clocked >150,000 miles and I still get >220 miles on a charge. I just finished a road trip from NM to WA with no problems. The new cars are even better. There's also a few Teslas driven as a service that have >400,000 miles. The degradation you describe is also not how degradation works. If a 70kWh battery now has 60kWh of capacity after 10 years it does not require 70kWh to get 60kWh out. The batteries are simply able to hold less charge... it's not much different than having a smaller gas tank. The round-trip efficiency of the battery may decline a little over time but it's not going to be >10%. Have you never had an old cordless tool battery that didn't really hold a charge anymore? They charge significantly faster since they simply can't hold the energy any more....

Settle down, moneybags, I was talking about an eGolf, not your precious Tesla. We all know thanks to you Teslas are perfect and we should all be so lucky as to afford one like you. Thread crapping again. Some of us LIKE our diesels, and this thread was a glimpse of hope for us. Thanks again for smearing your zealot feelings on it. I will think of you today as I put three more old cars back into service.