The Volkswagen Whee ..

Midpack said:
Lots of good data here (general website) even if you don't appreciate their articles/conclusions.

The 6 kWh electricity to refine gasoline would drive an electric car the same distance as a gasser? | The Long Tail Pipe
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I will not go into the calculations etc. to try and figure out who what and where.... I will just go to what is plainly in front of me.... the price I have to pay...

First, we will state that the price we have to pay for things is a market price that includes all input, including electricity used to refine...

We will also have to agree that the EV market is subsidized making it less costly to a consumer....


Now, I can pay a good amount of money over and above an EV car, drive it for 100K miles using 'cheap' electricity and still pay more than an ICE car and all that gas that I used...

So, in the end I really do not care if it is 6kWH or .9kWH or anything in between.... the cost of an EV is still higher than the cost of an ICE...

And back to the thread.... the cost of buying a diesel is higher than the cost of an ICE even when you include the gas... and now we know they pollute more....
 
Perhaps we should have a separate, permanent, ongoing thread about electric cars, electrical grid management and government subsidies........:rolleyes:
 
travelover said:
Perhaps we should have a separate, permanent, ongoing thread about electric cars, electrical grid management and government subsidies........:rolleyes:
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+4. :blush: :LOL:
 
OK.. can the mods move the posts to a new thread... and anybody who thinks a post was moved that had relevance to this thread can repost....

So this makes me +5
 
Texas Proud said:
OK.. can the mods move the posts to a new thread... and anybody who thinks a post was moved that had relevance to this thread can repost....
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Uh, why not just leave everything as is, get back to the thread topic, and anyone wanting to discuss something else can start a new thread.
 
Texas Proud said:
OK.. can the mods move the posts to a new thread... and anybody who thinks a post was moved that had relevance to this thread can repost....

So this makes me +5
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Hijack-No.gif
 
MichaelB said:
Uh, why not just leave everything as is, get back to the thread topic, and anyone wanting to discuss something else can start a new thread.
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M Paquette said:
Oh, wow. We can do that?
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Well, technically, I suppose it's possible, but it ain't easy! :)

Seriously, sorry for the distraction, I tried to stay on topic with the VW NOx comparison, but I drifted (and was pulled a little) far afield.

How 'bout 'dem Cubbies!? Ooops, I did it again!


-ERD50
 
Meanwhile, Audi has confirmed that they have 2.1 million cars that somehow share the same test cheating code as VW engines do. It's unclear how many other manufacturer's may be affected. Independent testers last week have linked BMW, Opel, Citroen and Mercedes to engines which exceed allowed emissions in real-world driving tests, although Mercedes is contesting the results and denying any involvement in cheating. Still a lot more details to be discovered.
 
It was already in the works, but this stunt by VW is giving regulators ammo for more widespread testing. While I am generally in favor of emissions standards I recognize the tendency for regulatory agencies to ensure their existence.


Sent from my iPhone using Early Retirement Forum
 
I am kinda curious if all the bad press has made dealers desperate. I might head down this week and test drive something and see if i can get a deal.


Sent from my iPhone using Early Retirement Forum
 
I think dealers are starting to panic. DS is in the market for a new car. Wants a vw GTI with SE trim. True car says $28.5k is an average price for a 2016. $28.2k is supposed to be a great price. He's got a $26.7k offer which implies a big vw rebate to the dealer to move even their gas powered cars.


Sent from my iPhone using Early Retirement Forum
 
dallas27 said:
I am kinda curious if all the bad press has made dealers desperate. I might head down this week and test drive something and see if i can get a deal.


Sent from my iPhone using Early Retirement Forum
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They had a new clip where a dealer said they had sold 13 cars the day before the news came out and 1 the day after... so yes, it is hurting all of their sales...
 
Buying now means taking on a very serious risk of them folding. I'd need a deep discount, like them selling at a loss to create cash fir their future restructuring. I would want blood.

I can see them selling off assets in the next quarter just to manage debt. They are going to need to do something pretty amazing to convince people to buy again.




Sent from my iPhone using Early Retirement Forum
 
Do we really think most consumers care about the increase in pollution ?
There may be a percentage of consumers whose moral compass disagrees with being a polluter, they are the same consumers who eat gluten free and hug trees and wear Birkenstocks. For years they drove around in polluting VW busses too.

A few do run their diesel on recycled cooking oil ...doing their part for their carbon footprint and all...

I think the reality will settle in - that most people don't care (maybe regulators do) and most will forget about this and continue to drive their turbo diesel whether it pollutes a bit or not. The people who buy diesel cars in America are an interesting breed - Hardly consider them environmentalists...

We're not looking at a China-like pollution situation here in the USA either. They will drive their turbo diesel home, cook on the bbq grill ( pollutes more than their diesel car) and be on their way for another day at the coal mines.

I think this is media hype ... A brand disaster, no doubt, but give it 6 months and will be forgotten.

There are certainly some new car deals to be had ... But I predict the price of the used VW diesels doesn't crater - opposite in fact if for no other reason than the "fix" may degrade next model years performance.
 
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ERD50 said:
...
OK, it's common for complex software to have multiple 'debug flags', and often, they are not binary flags, but can be set to a value. So a specific routine to control some specific function, might have a debug flag that could have any value between zero and one. And in testing they could turn the function essentially off (with zero), to full ON (1), or anywhere in between. This even be used to test what value is needed under certain conditions. These flags would be in the final code, with the values set to some nominal 'no effect' value, that would be normal.
...
-ERD50
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+1
Very good point. Also as a long time embedded systems programmer, for most complex projects there are multiple, and often parallel paths to detect and flag errors. Having all these checks running during code development is impossible, hence many of these are turned off. When the code is shipped all the debugging stuff is set to be not compiled.

Now I can imagine that someone outside the technical staff notices that the product doesn't run as well in production mode as it did in some other test or debug mode. And instructs the guys to compile it so it runs best. They would not necessarily know they are breaking the law and potentially costing the company billions.

I know in the past I have been told to turn off some error checking because the hangups gave the customer the feeling that product was faulty, better just to let it run with some minor faults.

So I can well imagine how this could happen, especially if the managers were outside of the country and maybe not caring much about those "silly" rules that make our products run poorly.
 
CaliforniaMan said:
+1
Very good point. Also as a long time embedded systems programmer, for most complex projects there are multiple, and often parallel paths to detect and flag errors. Having all these checks running during code development is impossible, hence many of these are turned off. When the code is shipped all the debugging stuff is set to be not compiled.

Now I can imagine that someone outside the technical staff notices that the product doesn't run as well in production mode as it did in some other test or debug mode. And instructs the guys to compile it so it runs best. They would not necessarily know they are breaking the law and potentially costing the company billions.

I know in the past I have been told to turn off some error checking because the hangups gave the customer the feeling that product was faulty, better just to let it run with some minor faults.

So I can well imagine how this could happen, especially if the managers were outside of the country and maybe not caring much about those "silly" rules that make our products run poorly.
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That may be true if you are designing a consumer electronic product, but meeting Federal emissions laws is a big deal in the automotive industry and the sign off calibration is not left to some low level programmer. This was no accident.
 
travelover said:
That may be true if you are designing a consumer electronic product, but meeting Federal emissions laws is a big deal in the automotive industry and the sign off calibration is not left to some low level programmer. This was no accident.
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I don't think it was an accident either. Just suggesting that we not jump to the conclusion that the engineers who designed the switches must necessarily have been in on the deception. They might have been, but we don't know yet.

The decision of which software switches, which in and of themselves could be entirely normal, to activate during the test could rest with a relatively small number of individuals. I certainly hope so. It could be the reason none of this came out before.

We will know eventually, this kind of thing cannot be hidden for long. Makes me wonder if other auto manufacturers might be doing similar things.
 
CaliforniaMan said:
...........
We will know eventually, this kind of thing cannot be hidden for long. Makes me wonder if other auto manufacturers might be doing similar things.
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VW has known that they were found out for a year an a half now. So, I'm confident they have been busy in that time interval - either finding the guilty or desperately hiding the paper trail. :LOL:
 
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growing_older said:
Independent testers last week have linked BMW, Opel, Citroen and Mercedes to engines which exceed allowed emissions in real-world driving tests, although Mercedes is contesting the results and denying any involvement in cheating.
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This is not news - atleast in Europe the emission testings are known to be not too realistic. But the car makers have the same rules to follow so the test still shows who's better - as long as they aren't cheating.

The emissions taxes then are calculated based on these results. Still a fair system as long as nobody cheats.

If the tests were made more realistic then the taxes would have to be lowered or cars would be too expensive for most people. And we would end up with taxes more or less like today. So the system kind of works. And no customers really expect to get the mileage the manufacturers state.
 
growing_older said:
Meanwhile, Audi has confirmed that they have 2.1 million cars that somehow share the same test cheating code as VW engines do. It's unclear how many other manufacturer's may be affected. Independent testers last week have linked BMW, Opel, Citroen and Mercedes to engines which exceed allowed emissions in real-world driving tests, although Mercedes is contesting the results and denying any involvement in cheating. Still a lot more details to be discovered.
Click to expand...


This cannot be true because I believe Audi's tagline is "Truth in Engineering," no?:LOL:
 
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