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Voltswagen of America

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Re: Voltswagen of America

#441

Post by samcheng »

Syonyk wrote: post #362
hinkley wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about 'rolling coal'?

What about it? No vehicle will do it from the factory, so I don't see how it's relevant here. It's the result of running a diesel massively, massively over-rich (with aftermarket tuning), and it's absolute hell on the engine - that amount of diesel in the cylinder washes down the cylinder walls and wipes off the lubricating film, so the cylinder wear is insane from even fairly short periods of it. Even in diesel truc…

It's not just trucks - I was able to get my (pre-cheating-scandal) 2003 VW TDI to belch a cloud of smoke if I idled for a while (over five minutes) then worked it hard (e.g. a freeway onramp). I remember getting honked at by a Prius once...

IMO, these occasional particulate emissions were outweighed by the excellent fuel economy - rated at 46 MPG but regularly 43 MPG.

Of course, this technology has been largely obsoleted by electric drivetrains. No rolling coal from a Tesla!

Re: Voltswagen of America

#442

Post by gonehome »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #373
gaoshan wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I have seen VW had a sort of genuine reckoning with the whole diesel issue. They have reinvented themselves, shed cruft, cut all fuel vehicle development and completely devoted themselves to an electric future (vehicles, batteries, chargers). They have turned things around wholesale and are now producing amazing, relatively affordable electric vehicles (their new id.4 SUV will debut in the US for just a lit…

So can I now go into a VW / Audi dealer in North America and buy an EV off a lot? Because every time I look (and I've looked constantly since I traded my Jetta TDI for cash in dieselgate) I still can't. And they are issuing a new press release every few months promising mass production EVs next year. Back in 2017/2018 when this all went down they actually removed all electrified cars from their lineup. Stopped making…

This is basically my take too - dealers suck and will make this an uphill battle even if VW is being honest about their EV intentions.

GM has improved now, but when I looked at Volts it was similar (dealers knowing nothing, actively hostile to me trying to buy a car from them).

I have a Model 3 now and think its features are really not available in the competition at any price point, but especially sub 40k.

Re: Voltswagen of America

#444

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

kbos87 wrote: post #179

I previously owned a VW, but swore on my life that I'd never buy another one after the emissions cheating scandal. There are plenty of reasons why a VW likely wont be my next choice, but I'm softening my stance a bit. What they did was absolutely reprehensible, but I later learned that the more accurate story is that they bore the brunt of media attention for something that nearly every auto manufacturer was later fo…

One of the sub-aspects of it also seemed to be tradeoffs between kinds of emissions (where driving down one drove up the other).

Weren't the cheating VWs extremely fuel efficient (and thus less CO2 emitting), at the cost of emitting something else nasty?

Re: Voltswagen of America

#445

Post by gsnedders »

yread wrote: post #433
Syonyk wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about it? No vehicle will do it from the factory, so I don't see how it's relevant here. It's the result of running a diesel massively, massively over-rich (with aftermarket tuning), and it's absolute hell on the engine - that amount of diesel in the cylinder washes down the cylinder walls and wipes off the lubricating film, so the cylinder wear is insane from even fairly short periods of it. Even in diesel truc…

> My truck (24 years and change) will smoke a bit if I stand on it and the fuel flow outruns boost coming up, but it's also entirely emissions compliant and passes the tests cleanly - it's just something older diesels do under certain conditions I always thought that banning old diesels from centers of European cities was just silly (they passed their emissions after all so they can't be billowing smoke, right?), tha…

Looking at emissions standards in Europe, a truck from 24 years ago in Europe, assuming its gross vehicle weight is between 1760 kg and 3500 kg, would be allowed to emit 0.25g of PM/km. The same limit for something built since 2013 is 0.0045g of PM/km. We're talking multiple orders of magnitude improvement here.

As a sidenote, HO+NOx has gone from 1.7g/km to 0.350g/km in 2013 (and onto 0.215g/km since then, in 2016), which is often as significant when it comes to desires to reduce air pollution.

Re: Voltswagen of America

#446

Post by jonplackett »

melvinram wrote: post #418

Imagine telling someone in 2003 that this was going to happen. It would have been seen as a joke (as some are seeing it today) or something that absolutely wouldn't happen. If this is not a joke, this seems like the best indicator that Tesla is meeting it's mission to "accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy." Tip of the hat to Elon.

Just checking the calendar. Nope not April 1st yet!

Re: Voltswagen of America

#447

Post by gonehome »

iso1631 wrote: post #399
hinkley wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about 'rolling coal'?

Never heard of this before, I looked it up, but I still don't get it -- you're not getting more power, you're not getting better fuel efficiency, you're not getting a smoother ride, what's the point - you're literally burning money for no reason?

I've only ever seen it once when I was in an EV Uber (it was a Model S) behind a pickup truck in Baltimore and the pickup kept blasting us with massive amounts of black soot (presumably because we were in an EV).

There's a political element of "Truck Driving Republican" vs. "EV Driving Liberal" that powers some of this. I think Elon has been at last partially trying to reduce this polarization with how he behaves online to widen Tesla's appeal (though maybe I'm attributing too much intentionality here).

On the west coast I was tailed super aggressively by a pickup in my model 3 on 280 which was a little scary (blinding me with headlights, switching lanes to stay 1 inch behind me). I watched cameras after to see if I cut him off or something, but I didn't. It has made me more wary of pick up trucks in general though.

Re: Voltswagen of America

#449

Post by S_A_P »

Virtuesignaling of America is how I interpret this. How about General Electric Motors next? Voltvo? Big Mega Watts?

Im all for electrification where it makes sense, but this seems like a bad pun more than a good idea.

Re: Voltswagen of America

#450

Post by atleta »

earthboundkid wrote: post #161
sillyquiet wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans are pronouncing it perfectly correctly as most of us speak English and not German.

The worst part of English orthography is adopting the writing conventions of literally every other language in the world and then expecting people to pronounce the words "correctly." If you want English speakers to pronounce something a certain way, it should be written use our spelling system. There's no point in shaming people for not knowing literally every language. But that's basically the system we have now.

This is an interesting observation. As a non-native speaker I was surprised by how many German expressions are used in English (with the correct German spelling). Even when there is a perfect (or near perfect) English equivalent.

However, this is pretty different as VW is a brand name so you don't have much liberty in how you write it.

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