Back in 2013, the wheels were set in motion that would lead to one of the great car scandals in history. Volkswagen and other manufacturers of diesel-powered vehicles were found to have been cheating emissions tests through the use of defeat devices. Yet, the craziest part wasn’t the fines and arguably wasn’t the discovery of the cheating either, but how the cheating was found out.
Today, Thomas wrote about how the fallout of Dieselgate is continuing more than a decade later. It started innocently enough, with the International Council on Clean Transportation commissioning the West Virginia University Center for Alternative Fuels Engines and Emissions to test diesel car emissions. Holley:
It’s still crazy that Dieselgate was discovered by accident. Like holy shit imagine being those researchers, just trying to troubleshoot an issue you’re having and it leads you to uncover one of the biggest industrial scandals in decades.
Tbird:
College grad students asking questions no one else did.
Michael Beranek:
So, they would’ve gotten away with it if it wasn’t for those damn kids?
Harley-Davidson has been secretly working on a $6,000 motorcycle since 2021, and we’re due to see it next year. That’s great! In that article, I noted that one of the greatest uphill battles is getting an American rider to buy a new motorcycle when a used one will have low miles and be cheap. I didn’t elaborate further on this, but StillNotATony did:
This right here. SO many people buy a bike, then discover they don’t like riding when it’s cold.
Or hot.
Or raining.
Or when there’s traffic.
Or…
And the bike sits. Then it needs a new battery and the fuel system flushed and the tires replaced, even though it’s only got 2k miles.
Why would I buy a new bike for $10-15k when I can buy a nearly new one for a third of that (plus a few hundred in parts)?
Mark Tucker published a fancy Shitbox Showdown featuring a battle between a 1970 Lotus Elan vs a 2005 Lotus Elise. Melendez69:
2005 Lotus Elise (its real name) – $34,000
Now, that was funny. It caused me to chuckle audibly as I sipped on coffee.
It’s gold, Jerry.
Finally, Jason wrote a hilarious post about how the GOP bragged about making American cars great again with a photo of a Lada 2101. Now, I cannot nominate political posts for COTD, but I laughed so many times going through that comment section. Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man:
Well it appears to me that whomever made that post didn’t have a lot of time and was russian to get the job done because they didn’t have a lada time.
Have a great evening, everyone!
What I find most interesting as a car person to this day is how they all basically got a pass in the court of public opinion. Compared to Toyota with the unintended acceleration, dieselgate was like water rolling off the Volkswagen Group duck’s back.
Because the rules are what changed so harshly as to outlaw something that wasnt that dirty.
Each year things get “tougher” but did you know the jump from 2004-2006 was not a stairstep but rather a huge cliff, something like 400% reduction.
Poof everything is now illegal? No the rules were wrong. And screw those rules. We used and needed those vehicles.
Sorry but no. EPA Tier 2 was passed in 1999 and phased in from 2004 to 2009. It was based on fleet averages. The reduction for NOx was from .09 to .02 a 78% reduction over 5 years. (NOx is what VW cheated on). They simple didn’t want to use DEF like other companies and then when they added DEF for 2015 they still cheated because they didn’t want the owner to have to fill the DEF tank between 10k mile services.
VW cheated – end of story. Other companies followed the rules
I don’t think other companies followed the rules either, it’s just that VW got caught first. BMW and Mercedes both had to issue recalls on their diesels to “fix” them too.
I wouldn’t say they got a pass. There are plenty of people who have long memories and are never going to buy a VW product again, especially the ones who actually got hosed because they owned a TDI that went from “environmentally responsible” to “eco disaster” overnight. I had one of those 2.0 TDIs that I bought because it got 40+ mpg while I could shove an entire household worth of stuff in the back of the wagon, but suddenly driving around in my car made me look complicit in the cheating at the time. Luckily i got to sell back my car and got a different VW because of the sweet deals being offered, but it damaged the brand beyond repair for many, many people.
Hi Mercedes! I think I saw you at the IL Railway Museum today; I definitely saw the Honda Life kei car with Autopian stickers!
There were a few interesting cars, for sure. My son, who is 11, was really excited about the Trabant. He’s been into them ever since we went to the Lane in Nashville. Anyway, have a good one.
Ha! Thanks for the shout out Mercedes! 🙂
Dieselgate yet another reason why people in auto manufacturers boardrooms never get the ax. Seriously you’d think someone on the inside becomes disgruntled or gets fired it’s coming out
Germany has so far prosecuted four VW execs, and two of them have prison time. So occasionally consequences happen.
Yet more evidence for why research funding is disappearing and college is being demonized.
It is a well known fact that The number one cause of kids gettin’ too big for their britches and earning a smack in the mouth is fancy book learnin’
I know parents who have said that unironically.
I bought one of the fixed diesel-gate Passats. The craziest thing about it to me is the (no longer cheating) cars got pretty great mileage without needing to cheat.
So, why bother?
Maybe they found a better way to cheat.
Maybe they just pretended to fix them. Governments got their money and I doubt they really care.
Pretty sure CARB would check for that.
The SCR was a part of the Passat aftertreatment package, while it was omitted in Jettas and Golfs/Rabbits. I’ll bet doing more SCR was a pretty easy crank of the dial while trying to get the non-SCR ones clean was an uphill battle.
Very interesting. I thought all of them had lower power and worse fuel consumption after they were fixed. Spending slightly more on DEF is not so bad.
It has been awhile, but I recall an article that said the cheating was to extend the DEF fill up to coincide with the oil change interval. And after they were “fixed” the DEF fill up was needed once in between oil changes.
Because the actual emissions if the same testing was done on your car would show almost nothing changed.
This was all arbitrary bull. The “fix” was some pretend praying and a “part” to make people buy it.
Do the same dyno tests of a random picked car with “the fix” before and after and you may find another dieselfix-gate.
With the Passats VW cheated by dialing back the use of DEF so that the tank would not need to be filled between 10k mile services.
VW should’ve ended right then and there.
VW will soon buy Jeep once Stellantis fails. They will be next.
I had recently started working as a service advisor for a VW/Audi/Porsche dealer when my service manager called most of the service department in to let us know about VW’s cheating.
I was able to quickly fire an off an email to TTAC with some formal documentation so they could break the news. They only had a few minutes to get something together because while I was the first, I wasn’t the last source that day.
TTAC got some much needed attention as they were then credited throughout the initial coverage!
The following years were wild because I don’t think I have met a more smug group of people than the better part of VW diesel buyers.
Some dumped their cars immediately because of “hurt feelings” because they, apparently, had deluded themselves into thinking that driving a diesel was, somehow, saving the environment.
People would come in with their VW gift cards to get them activated and shout at us like we had something to do with the scandal.
Owners were given two $500 Visa gift cards and the one was only good at the dealer and would expire in like 12 months, or something, but then they would forget and try to use the card after it expired and start shouting at us about it.
Sooo much work went into modifying the fleet and VW bought back a lot of their vehicles, so much so that resellers would get involved and buy them off owners to then sell back to VW for a tidy profit.
When the Audi’s and Porsche’s came up for repairs, most needed new tires, brakes, fluids, batteries, wipers, etc. to be ready for resale and we were in a prime spot near a large auto auction, so my sales numbers were astronomical at over $300k in parts and labor for several months as we worked on all of the vehicles and got them ready for resale.
Wild times!
Ooh, I’d love to hear a service manager’s take from the other side of the counter. I don’t think there’s anybody that ripped people off more than Honda and Stelantis other than Audi or Mercedes, but you also have to deal with some of the worst customers.
“I don’t think there’s anybody that ripped people off more than Honda other than Audi or Mercedes”
What has Honda done to be put on this low shelf of shame?
While I was picking up a $26 bolt from a parts counter, I overheard the service manager quote some woman $1200 to replace only the front brake pads.
I see. I never visit the dealership parts counter so I haven’t seen that. The dirtiest a Honda dealership did me was to recommend replacing the front lower control arms during one of those “complimentary inspections” during a recall. That unfolded into one of my most clusterf#ckd DIY jobs ever. The s#it icing on the s#itcake was being told by the independent mechanic who finished the job that the original arms were still servicable.
That’s on the dealer but also on me for not getting a second opinion first.
There’s also the 1.5 liter Earth Dreams turbo engine fiasco that’s turned into a nightmare. Lawsuits are still ongoing for that engine.
The oil dilution thing?
Yup. And it has snowballed to include the 2.0 liter turbo engines as well. Quite a few Honda Accord owners are reporting the same issues as the 1.5 liter engines. Oil dilution,turbocharger and head gasket failures.
Audi treats their customers and technicians fairly.
Audi has had some really unreliable cars over the years, but they do a lot of goodwill warranty repairs for brand loyalists.
Audi warranty times are reasonable and don’t leave technicians fighting for time, and Audi Care is a really inexpensive service plan with fair times for the tech to perform the services.
I left the industry in ‘18 though, so prices and labor costs have skyrocketed since then.
I don’t disagree with you and as far as what is under the dealership’s control they are top notch. I suppose my issue is with the engineering of the cars themselves. Consumable parts are buried underneath many layers of stuff, their reliability is not exactly stellar, and they feel like they were designed to be hostile to the owner being to fix them. Parts are very expensive, however if it’s a low-volume part that’s understandable. Contrast this to Honda though, their cars are very reliable and are some of the easiest to work on and their parts are cheap. There’s no reason for repairing one of them to be comparable in cost to Audi. Either way you feel like you’re paying 2-3 times what you should, and in the case of Honda dealerships seems less excusable.
Most luxury vehicles are no better built than more plebeian models.
Lexus is not that much better than Toyota, but people pay a premium for the Lexus badge.
A Macan and a Q5 have similar underpinnings, but are styled quite differently and appeal to different buyers.
That’s pretty rich, because I don’t think I have ever met a more smug group of people that dealership service advisors.
than*
I loved the comments on Jason’s post and definitely expected those for COTD, but I appreciate you sticking to your principles.
Thank you for staying classy, Mercedes!
Speaking of Dieselgate, seeing the thousands upon thousands of VWs sitting at the Silverdome parking lot was unreal. It was a great visualization of how large the scandal was.
Yeah, it was nuts. They didn’t even have a plan for them either they just parked the cars next to this decrepit stadium and nobody was certain VW was going to come back for the them. Fortunately the government settlement forced them to either repair or destroy the cars.
On a high note for those who were still interested you could still score a cheap VW or Audi. When Dieselgate broke those cars literally lost 1/3rd of their value overnight.
I pretty much got the deal of the century on a new ’17 GTI Sport because of how sales had cratered due to the scandal. The dealer was ecstatic to have somebody come in the door. $7K off, and they gave me ALL the money for the 2yo M235i I traded in – didn’t lose much on it relatively speaking. Then, like a moron, I sold the GTI to Carvana about the peak of the pandemic used car madness for what I paid for it new four years later. And I still regret it to this day. Should have kept that car, it was fantastic.
How I wish I had the foresight to buy a dozen low-mileage Touareg and Cayenne TDIs just to sell now. Other than a Cayenne Turbo or GTS, their resale value now is through the roof.
Me personally I would’ve leaned towards an Audi A6 or A7 with the TDI. I remember when I worked for an Audi dealer we had numerous customers who had to take their vehicles on “extended drives” because the vehicles’ had difficulty passing the state emissions tests.
Every vehicle affected had the 3.0 liter TDI V6. Most of the vehicles involved were the Audi Q7 and Q5 SUVs,with the occasional A6 or A7 thrown into the mix. Then Dieselgate came out,and all F’n hell broke loose!!
Not only were customers pissed off to no end,but lawyers everywhere were drooling,looking for clients to represent in lawsuits, and the attorney commercials were relentless!!
“ If you or a loved one purchased a Volkswagen or Audi vehicle equipped with a TDI “clean diesel engine”, you may be entitled to financial compensation!!”
One of the local Pick N Pulls was winning bidder for at least one big batch of the cars to be scrapped and I visited at the time. They actually moved some fencing to make a large storage and processing area what easily had a 100 vehicles in it. Out side of that fence were probably 6 pallets stacked 5′ high with tires and wheels from those that had already been processed. If I remember right they were only asking $125-$150 for a set of 4.