Thursday Sept 24, 2015
VW Customers are now feeling buyer's remorse. VW happily announced their new fuel diesels wold get 44 mpg and meet emissions regs.Now it appears that was not the case.
VW's 650 American dealers have only sold 238,000 vehicles through August. 20% of those were diesels. No one knows if a download software fix will solve the problem or whether it will take a two thousand dollar mechanical repair. And of course re sale value of the cars has fallen 20% since this happened.
Now let's address the obvious question, whey did VW do it? Never mind whether the CEO knew or did not know another subject for ethical consideration.l Well as this WSJ editorial explains, the company was struggling to meet conflicting objectives.
Engines tuned to produce more torque, the quality of a diesel, and less carbon, also produce more nitrous oxides. So either way you go there is a problem. I suspect VW did this as meeting both goals was just not possible.
Which brings us to the role of unrealistic regulations, a hallmark of this administration. As the WSJ puts it, is this the well known regulatory trade off that is being harshly punished for the first time?
My 2009 Chevy Cobalt SS is equipped with the now industry standard 2.0 liter 250 bhp, 260 ft lb of torque output thanks to direct fuel injection and turbo charging. Nearly every auto maker has gone to this formula to meet emissions and power output standards. I mean even the larger Jaguar sedans have such an engine.
And in real world driving down 281 to school the engine consistently delivers 25 mpg on 89 octane. I'd say that is quite an accomplishment. The real climate problem is in China and India where citizens routinely wear masks due to heavy pollution. Setting an unrealistic 55 mpg requirement will only result in more companies resulting in cheating like this.
Wake Up America!
Professor Elam 
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