“Your Guide To Dieselgate: Volkswagen’s Diesel Cheating Catastrophe” (Jalopnik) succeeds where our nation’s big newspapers have failed. The core issue seems to be that Volkswagen claimed to have succeeded at something that had eluded all other automakers: a clean diesel engine without a Selective Catalyst Reduction (SCR) system:
In order to meet tougher emissions regulations that went into effect in 2008, most automakers started supplying their diesel cars with tanks of a urea-based solution (often referred to as “AdBlue”) that cuts down on nitrogen oxide emissions.
But VW and Audi said the 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine on the smaller cars was able to meet the requirements without a urea injection system — although many people have wondered exactly how.
On Friday, the EPA announced they found the TDI cars contained “a sophisticated software algorithm” which detected when the car was being tested for emissions. When that happens, the software drastically reduces the emissions as compared to normal driving, indicating to testers that the car had passed.
Chris Cunningham’s comment to the WSJ: “Cars are no longer a mechanical device we directly control, they’ve evolved into glorified computer games we risk our lives on. Hopefully this scandal will help open the code up to more external reviews for all cars.”
My comment to a friend who was expressing shock and horror at VW’s actions: “Who could have imagined that a company co-founded by Adolf Hitler would eventually do something to irritate people?”
It is kind of interesting to me that VW competitors didn’t figure this out a long time ago. Suppose that the SCR adds $250 to the cost of making a diesel car. Wouldn’t Ford, for example, have tried to figure out how to copy’s VW’s innovation and also save itself the same $250 per car? Why wouldn’t Ford have put a VW TDI car through a bunch of real-world tests and then announced that its big competitor was cheating?
I’m still looking for the newspaper article that clearly explains all of the emissions controls on a modern diesel car engine. And, separately, I wonder how this will affect the nascent market for aircraft diesels (sadly much heavier than traditional gas engines but they run on Jet-A fuel, which is much cheaper and more widely available worldwide).
What do folks think will happen to VW? I am going to bet that the Tesla- and Prius-driving shareholders, who had no idea that this was happening, get a thorough beating while employees who perpetrated the crimes against Mother Earth keep cashing paychecks. (as with banks)
Related:
This isn’t a bad, high-level overview:
http://www.cdti.com/content/americas/products/hd_diesel_products.htm
My experience is with “over the road” truck engines (tractors, or semi’s). The important parts are the EGR, the DPF, and the SCR. I’ve run tests with experimental DOC’s, but it’s my understanding that they’re not used in volume in this market.
I don’t understand the “urea” section being listed separately from the SCR. I’ve never heard of just spraying urea into the exhaust stream without a catalyst, but maybe there are applications in other markets where this makes sense.
DPF’s and DOC’s are physical traps. Once they reach a certain level of “clogged,” there are electrodes embedded in the substrates which are energized at much-higher-than-normal-exhaust temps, which incinerate the collected soot.
EGR’s are present on gas engines as well, but are a bigger deal on a diesels, which burn such dirty fuel, and benefit more from recirculating exhaust gasses.
How do you “detect when the car is tested for emissions” with software ?
Thanks, David, for sharing your knowledge. Is gasoline truly cleaner from a systems point of view? Or is it just that the dirty stuff was pulled out at the refinery and spewed into the air there so we don’t see it? (On the third hand it is a lot easier to control pollution in a big refinery than underneath a car. On the fourth hand the typical gasoline refinery is not a place you’d want to live downwind of…)
Jérôme,
The software was monitoring steering wheel position, throttle inputs, temperature, and barometric pressure, and comparing them against the known inputs during the EPA test procedure.
This sounds exactly like the cheating that has been going on in computer benchmarks forever, e.g.:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7384/state-of-cheating-in-android-benchmarks
This just has a bigger real-world consequence.
I do not agree with severe punishing VW, just as I don’t agree with punishing Tom Brady. This is primarily a regulatory failure. Just fix the testing system.
What is still unexplained is what downsides go along with the engine running in this low-emission mode? High fuel consumption? Low power output?
Phil, See the explanation of fractional distillation here: http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/energy/oil-refining4.htm. Taking the lower boiling gasoline fraction doesn’t have any direct impact on emissions at the refinery. It doesn’t create dirty diesel, it just leaves the diesel fraction behind. The fractions can be adjusted so that each has a different average molecular weight. I suppose that highly paid engineers (correction: not highly paid engineers, rather computer programs) expend great effort optimizing the fractions.
If the shareholders should not be punished by the actions of management and employees, should the shareholders be rewarded by the actions of management and employees?
What’s more likely in these kinds of scandals than the employees not being fired is that the employees will be laid off, the mid level managers fired while the upper level manager who actually set the plan in place will get a promotion and eventually lead the company.
Hey, look, it’s Dennis Muilenburg, head of Boeing who rose up from Boeing Defense and in particular, Future Combat Systems.
The conversation in the TDI engineering planning meeting back in 2007 probably went something like this:
VW executives: “You are accountable for meeting our revenue targets next year.”
VW engineers: “We cannot meet new US emissions regulations without an SCR system on the TDI engines.”
VW accountants: “We can’t afford it. We will lose money on every car we sell if we add an SCR system.”
VW executives: “Perhaps you didn’t hear us. You are accountable for meeting our revenue targets next year.”
VW engineers: “Okay boss.”
Why wouldn’t Ford have put a VW TDI car through a bunch of real-world tests and then announced that its big competitor was cheating?
1.Apparently the equipment for monitoring emissions on the road is not common – most emissions testing is done on a dynamometer.
2. Also no one seemed to have suspected that the world’s #1 auto maker would just cheat.
3. Ford doesn’t sell diesel cars in the US so they didn’t view VW diesels as a competitor in their segments. BTW, I drove a Ford European diesel minivan in Europe that I would have bought in a minute. It didn’t stink or knock like old fashioned diesels (you wouldn’t have known it was a diesel) but it got crazy good gas mileage.
And, separately, I wonder how this will affect the nascent market for aircraft diesels (sadly much heavier than traditional gas engines but they run on Jet-A fuel, which is much cheaper and more widely available worldwide).
Doesn’t it make more sense to build gas engines that run on regular gas instead of avgas – avgas seems to be a dying product? With knock sensors, turbochargers, etc. there’s no big need for avgas -you can get plenty of power out of regular (hi-test) gasoline.
Or is it just that the dirty stuff was pulled out at the refinery and spewed into the air there so we don’t see it
That doesn’t make sense – crude oil goes into a refinery and a variety of products come out – you can’t make just diesel fuel or just gasoline or just kerosene/jet fuel. The dirty stuff doesn’t relate specifically to gasoline or any refinery product – it’s what is left over after all the usable products are extracted from the feedstock.
On NPR this morning they interviewed independent testers who said that virtually all diesel cars polluted at high levels in actual operation and (surprisingly to me) that the 2 liter VWs weren’t any worse than others that had passed the emissions tests legally.
“Why wouldn’t Ford have put a VW TDI car through a bunch of real-world tests and then announced that its big competitor was cheating?”
First rule of corporations is not criticize another openly.
In fact Honda had announced TSX to be diesel but then backed out
and some engineer did make a comment to press on how Audi was
able to meet the regulation.
Some states do emission test but just hook up to car’s computer diagnotic
and just look at whether everything is ok.
Even if they measured tail pipe. Car is stationary. It would be simple to
changed the engine mapping to give better results.
The MPG game is another faking. It never meets the EPA numbers and
the number decline as car ages.
The whole Clean diesel that was suppose to make it even more stringent
emission standard.
besides every car manufacturer can be found guilty of some violation or other.
Only the egregious even show up in the press.
This blog post seems to describe it pretty well: https://nadim.computer/2015/09/25/volkswagen-backdoor.html