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Volkswagen rigged tests on 2.8M cars in Germany, Berlin says

reuters.com

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Re: Volkswagen rigged tests on 2.8M cars in Germany, Berlin says

#71

Post by mikeash »

smnrchrds wrote: post #58
cbhl wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC, that's not how car prices work. A new car on a lot is worth far more than a used car with exactly 0 miles driven on it.

I hear a lot that a car loses 10-50% of its value the moment it leaves the dealership, but I am somehow skeptical. If it is true I would love to buy a new used car right outside of, hell, even 50 miles after the dealership at half the price. I think the truth is that it is so rare for a car to be sold at 0 miles that we don't really have a price point on it. It is effectively an illiquid good, so the pricing is just…

It's rare but it's not completely nonexistent. Sometimes the dealership will take possession of a recently sold car, perhaps because they offered some sort of guarantee on it. Once the car has been sold it can't be sold again as "new" even in a case like this, so it will be sold as used with almost no miles on it. Almost nobody is going to buy a car and then immediately turn around and sell it at a huge discount, but that's not the only way cars get sold.

Here are a few listings to check out, as proof they exist:

http://www.cars.com/vehicledetail/detail/648714782/overview/

http://www.cars.com/vehicledetail/detail/647726128/overview/

http://www.cars.com/vehicledetail/detail/645336026/overview/

I can't be arsed to do the comparison to see how much value they've actually lost compared to new, but the data is there to prove or disprove the claim.

Re: Volkswagen rigged tests on 2.8M cars in Germany, Berlin says

#72

Post by heygrady »

tw04 wrote: post #33
dba7dba wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Globally? Electric cars will never reach that much consumers in Asia as it has in US. Very few people in Shanghai/Seoul/Tokyo own private garage to charge cars in over night. And this is why Toyota/Hyundai are stubbornly pushing Hydrogen cars.

That's as much a technology problem as anything else. If you line the streets with chargers, then have the car and charger interface with each other to report which car is actually charging, you can bill the owner. Whether or not the areas cars are parked have the appropriate wiring to facilitate chargers is another problem entirely. And quite frankly, I'm still skeptical our electric grid can handle everyone pluggin…

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/518066/could-electric-c...

> Researchers ... have calculated that the grid has enough excess capacity to support over 150 million battery-powered cars, or about 75 percent of the cars, pickups, and SUVs on the road in the United States.

Re: Volkswagen rigged tests on 2.8M cars in Germany, Berlin says

#74

Post by oltta »

Why does everyone seem to assume this is specific to VW in particular. They nay have been the most egregious but I would be surprised if this was isolated.

Just look a those EPA mpg estimates, everybody seems to game the system and "tune" their cars to get highest ratings. Does anybody still hope to get anywhere near the estimate when buying a new car, especially city mpg?

I would argue this sort of manipulation is done widely and was pretty well known and accepted but VW must have overdone it. Of course Diesel cars have potential for worse emssisons than gas but I bet this happens across the board, except the Germans are screwed because they are pushing Diesels.

Re: Volkswagen rigged tests on 2.8M cars in Germany, Berlin says

#75

Post by tga_d »

I see a lot of people posting things to the effect of "It's probably not a huge deal, just a firmware patch." That strikes me as unlikely. If that were the case, then why would VW take this risk in the first place? Clearly, there was some benefit to the car that made engaging in what was clearly illegal behavior seem like a financially sound option to who knows how many people within the company. If applying a firmware patch to fix this doesn't change the value of the car that much, why wouldn't they ship it was that firmware in the first place?

Re: Volkswagen rigged tests on 2.8M cars in Germany, Berlin says

#76

Post by happyscrappy »

tga_d wrote: post #75

I see a lot of people posting things to the effect of "It's probably not a huge deal, just a firmware patch." That strikes me as unlikely. If that were the case, then why would VW take this risk in the first place? Clearly, there was some benefit to the car that made engaging in what was clearly illegal behavior seem like a financially sound option to who knows how many people within the company. If applying a firmwa…

>I see a lot of people posting things to the effect of "It's probably not a huge deal, just a firmware patch."

Yeah if it were just a firmware patch VW would not have set aside billions to deal with the fallout and had the CEO resign.

Re: Volkswagen rigged tests on 2.8M cars in Germany, Berlin says

#77

Post by binarycrusader »

inversionOf wrote: post #59
binarycrusader wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this assertion. The two VW diesel (US) automobiles I've owned have had an AdBlue system. One was a base model Jetta TDI and the other a Passat TDI (which I now want rid of).

And the vehicles in question -- the ones that are causing VW these issues -- do not have any urea injection system. That's the whole point. http://ask.cars.com/2012/11/why-do-some-volkswagen-diesels-u... VW claimed to have a trick that removed the need for it on their smaller, lighter cars. But that trick was a trick that only allowed them to pass EPA tests.

Ah, so come to find out, the Jetta TDI 2009-2014 did not have AdBlue (I mistakenly believed the one I owned previously did, a 2010 model).

However, VW added the AdBlue system to the 2015 Jetta TDI -- perhaps because they knew that this was a problem:

http://www.bimmerfest.com/forums/showthread.php?t=765593

On top of that, even though the Passat has an AdBlue urea system, it's still affected:

  On the open road, a Volkswagen Jetta TDI blew through the
  U.S. nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions limit by 15 to 35
  times. A VW Passat TDI (with urea aftertreatment) was 5
  to 20 times the maximum.
http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1100125_vw-diesel-emissi...

So yeah, I'm not a happy owner right now.

Re: Volkswagen rigged tests on 2.8M cars in Germany, Berlin says

#78

Post by rurban »

dba7dba wrote: post #13
adventured wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The economist has an interesting article out right now, about how the discussion over diesel cars is almost moot with the rapid rise of the electric car globally over the next few years: http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21666226-volkswagens-f...

Globally? Electric cars will never reach that much consumers in Asia as it has in US. Very few people in Shanghai/Seoul/Tokyo own private garage to charge cars in over night. And this is why Toyota/Hyundai are stubbornly pushing Hydrogen cars.

The idea is not to charge the e-cars overnight at home, but during the day at the company parkhouse or parking lots, so that the energy companies can unload energy during the peak hours from those batteries. That's the most expensive energy, and car batteries are perfect for that. Win-win.

Re: Volkswagen rigged tests on 2.8M cars in Germany, Berlin says

#79

Post by _up »

rurban wrote: post #78
dba7dba wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Globally? Electric cars will never reach that much consumers in Asia as it has in US. Very few people in Shanghai/Seoul/Tokyo own private garage to charge cars in over night. And this is why Toyota/Hyundai are stubbornly pushing Hydrogen cars.

The idea is not to charge the e-cars overnight at home, but during the day at the company parkhouse or parking lots, so that the energy companies can unload energy during the peak hours from those batteries. That's the most expensive energy, and car batteries are perfect for that. Win-win.

Or like in the air refueling. Self driving e-cars will probably be able to connect to each other while still driving and sell energy to each other.

Re: Volkswagen rigged tests on 2.8M cars in Germany, Berlin says

#80

Post by brianwawok »

ubercore wrote: post #36
brianwawok wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe. I am not sure this would be the way to go on this. Really the car the consumer got was better (to them) than the product ordered. It had better gas mileage, and better performance than it should have had. The net loser in the trick was the environment (/ the world). If a company does a trick to make money and hurt the environment, the government should step in and make them pay, right? Like if I run a tire sho…

A closer analogy would be selling tires that spew asbestos as you drive. The consumer _is_ damaged by the sale because the cars are no longer legal to drive on roads. Even with good-faith doctrines that mean the consumer isn't in the wrong, there are commensurate damages in resale value, and performance _below_ what the consumer was sold. Horsepower and torque numbers will almost certainly need to go down, and urea N…

Are these cars not legal? has any action been brought on the owners?

If the tires spewed asbestos and no law was against you driving them, then I think my argument still stands.

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