In reply to Apis Mellifera:
Interesting. But insurance companies will probably jack up the cost, considerably, since the car will be hard to get parts for.
In reply to Apis Mellifera:
Interesting. But insurance companies will probably jack up the cost, considerably, since the car will be hard to get parts for.
In reply to Apis Mellifera:
Have you seen/heard any language about the plans for states with annual emissions testing? If kept by owners, will these vehicles be grandfathered in somehow, or made exempt? I'm not seeing any other way that the vehicles could remain legal in these areas.
alfadriver wrote: In reply to Apis Mellifera: Interesting. But insurance companies will probably jack up the cost, considerably, since the car will be hard to get parts for.
That may well be the case, though one would assume the parts market would be flooded. The call Monday was a DERA call and focused mainly on mitigation and you're right, NOx is the focus. Though States do have some freedom on how to spend the money they will receive as beneficiaries, it must be used for NOx reduction projects. I attempted to channel the money to underfunded areas such as ambient air monitoring, but that's not allowed. We're looking at things like road widening and electric hookups to reduce long haul truck idling aka hotelling at truck stops.
I have not heard what will happen to the cars, but it's a sure thing the engines will be destroyed and the unibody/VIN flagged. It would make sense to salvage the parts for use on gas cars.
You're right though, all it would take is for the insurance companies to make these cars uninsurable (and they can at their own whimsy - they're not under any obligation to provide insurance) and any owner that declined the VW offer would be in a bind. If it weren't for the pre August 25th ownership thing, I'd go buy a TDI right now a immediately sell it to VW. PS, I hit Craigslist and there are no target year/engine TDIs anywhere close to me.
The next phase will be the 3.0L TDIs, the Touareg along with Porsche and Audi's version. I don't know if there is an ownership date cutoff with those. EPA has not gone after the 3.0L YET, but they are already branded and VAG has preemptively recalled them, so you know another EPA settlement is coming soon.
STM317 wrote: In reply to Apis Mellifera: Have you seen/heard any language about the plans for states with annual emissions testing? If kept by owners, will these vehicles be grandfathered in somehow, or made exempt? I'm not seeing any other way that the vehicles could remain legal in these areas.
That may fall into a legal grey area whereas States shall not deny registration due to participation in the Settlement, but they may deny registration to any vehicle based on a failed emission test and could therefore deny them in a different, legal way. So we know these TDIs don't pass for NOx. It would be plausible that a State could circumvent the Settlement requirement and deny based on a yearly inspection. However, the target years are 2009-2016, so most of these vehicles should have had an annual emission test by now and presumably passed. The annual emission testing is generally not comprehensive and, I assume, would continue to not test for NOx or at least not be sensitive enough to catch it. If annual inspectors are testing for NOx and haven't flagged these cars by now, that tells you how reliable the tests are. The defeat device was discovered by a group of engineers at WVU conducting other, more rigorous tests.
To answer you question though, no I have not heard specifically, but you do present an interesting question.
In reply to Apis Mellifera:
The cars will pass an emissions test at the moment unless someone disabled the cheat code. The test are actually very reliable, and they test for NOx, the issue is they do it at low speed. These cars do not pollute at low speed.
In reply to MDJeepGuy:
This is true. I guess my implication is that for these vehicles to continue to pass emissions tests from here on out, the government would have to essentially allow vehicles that are known to pollute heavily to game the system, and that seems like it could get kind of sticky from a legal precedent standpoint as it basically makes a mockery of all of their tests.
So, do they continue to allow vehicles to test clean and be dirty in reality, do they ban the known vehicles, do they develop new testing methods and techniques that VWs cheat software wouldn't recognize (causing the VWs to fail emissions, and plenty of other makes/models too), or do they install some type of signal interceptor that fools VWs software into thinking it's not being tested (which would then cause just the cheating VWs to fail)? To me, the cleanest option from a legal and technical standpoint would be to ban them all together, but I'm curious to see how it plays out.
Interesting. I'm in the monitoring/emission inventory side and never knew the nuts and bolt of vehicle emission inspection. I do know ambient air monitors can be drifty. Vehicles don't get an emissions test in my state.
Regarding denial of registration, the settlement uses the language that vehicles shall not be denied "regardless of retrofit status". We don't know what that means yet, but could be an actual fix for the holdout vehicles or it could be that the defeat device will be turned off.
That's bull E36 M3, if they'll allow TDIs to remain on the road, by not taking the settlement. If any of my gas-burning vehicles has a bad O2 sensor or dirty air filter or whatever reason that causes it not to pass the state's tri-annual test, my registration gets suspended, until it's fixed, and then I have to pay a fine to reinstate it. 
In reply to RealMiniParker:
Problem is, while the TDIs don't actually meet the standard they were supposed to at build time, they'll still pass the test if things are in good shape (and they won't be any worse than VW made them).
In reply to rslifkin:
But only by blatantly cheating, no?
RealMiniParker wrote: In reply to rslifkin: But only by blatantly cheating, no?
Sorta. The cars generally don't get sniffer tested in the real world, just the plug-in test. So they're not cheating on that test (they're correctly reporting that everything is working as intended). The cheating was what allowed them to get certified as good in the first place when they were sniff tested during design, etc.
RealMiniParker wrote: That's bull E36 M3, if they'll allow TDIs to remain on the road, by not taking the settlement. If any of my gas-burning vehicles has a bad O2 sensor or dirty air filter or whatever reason that causes it not to pass the state's tri-annual test, my registration gets suspended, until it's fixed, and then I have to pay a fine to reinstate it.
The flip side to that is that most of what VW is paying for will reduce ambient NOx amounts more than they are polluting. So, theoretically, there's a balance.
I'm not a big fan of it, too- since the cars were not legal even when no lights are being show. Technically.
As long as VW does not support repairing them, and no aftermaket is around to support the upkeep, then it's not so bad. But form my personal OEM standpoint, VW should not benefit what so ever having non-legal cars on the market- so owners are totally on their own.
rslifkin wrote:RealMiniParker wrote: In reply to rslifkin: But only by blatantly cheating, no?Sorta. The cars generally don't get sniffer tested in the real world, just the plug-in test. So they're not cheating on that test (they're correctly reporting that everything is working as intended). The cheating was what allowed them to get certified as good in the first place when they were sniff tested during design, etc.
Technically, they are cheating all the time they are not on a chassis rolls, which makes the plug in test rather deceptive- it's not actually testing anything with regards to gas emissions. So they are failing even though they claim to be legal. (IIRC, the legal limit to turn the light on is 1.5-2x the certified standard, and VW admits that they are well higher than that)
It would be interesting to see state say a MIL light test is good enough, when it's part of the massive cheat system that's in the car.
In reply to alfadriver:
Doesn't the MIL test primarily serve to say "the car is working as intended from an emissions perspective"? In this case, however, "as intended" isn't compliant.
In reply to rslifkin:
Correct. So it's just part of the whole defeat device system since it's not on when the car is clearly not compliant. Which makes it curious that it would be acceptable....
In reply to alfadriver:
A lot of states don't have the equipment to do sniffer tests, so if they choose to let the TDIs be registered, there's not much they can do beyond the plug-in test.
In reply to rslifkin:
I understand that. But it's not a valid measure of the car- as admitted by VW. That's why it's curious to flat out accept it. If they are just going to let them stay on the road, there's no point in doing a pretend MIL light test. Who cares if a sensor says it's having a problem- it's not as if it can make it that much worse.
BTW, the states that have an intrusive test are the ones that have to, due to air quality problems.
rslifkin wrote: A lot of states don't have the equipment to do sniffer tests, so if they choose to let the TDIs be registered, there's not much they can do beyond the plug-in test.
MD has rollers and sniffers at every emissions inspection station that are used for pre-OBDII cars. Since it is already a "green" state it would be easy to change the regulations to require certain types of vehicles to get the sniffer test rather than the plug-in one.
In reply to Hal:
And these cars would pass that test. They do not pollute at low speeds.
Apis Mellifera wrote: The next phase will be the 3.0L TDIs, the Touareg along with Porsche and Audi's version. I don't know if there is an ownership date cutoff with those. EPA has not gone after the 3.0L YET, but they are already branded and VAG has preemptively recalled them, so you know another EPA settlement is coming soon.
In other words...
Step 1: Collect 3.0 TDI powered SUV's
Step 2: ?
Step 3: Profit
...Hmmm 
Hal wrote: MD has rollers and sniffers at every emissions inspection station that are used for pre-OBDII cars. Since it is already a "green" state it would be easy to change the regulations to require certain types of vehicles to get the sniffer test rather than the plug-in one.MDJeepGuy wrote: In reply to Hal: And these cars would pass that test. They do not pollute at low speeds.
It's been a while since I had a test that used one of those, but I recall you getting up to like 40mph equivalent on the rollers. It definitely wasn't just an idle, putter around test.
It always amazed me that they've basically mothballed the dyno roller tests since those were actually real tests, not just trusting the car's computer.
The discussion of states/ emissions/ etc is interesting, but I think it would be in appropriate for states to hold owners responsible for problems created by the manufacturer. The idea that the car was "never legal in the first place" is not applicable to the owners.
The purpose of emissions testing is to measure if a vehicle has deteriorated from the condition in which it was manufactured, and if the owners are therefore responsible for maintenance. The states have no method of testing the car's current emissions against the baseline (the output at the time of manufacture). That's not the owners fault.
The owners purchased the vehicles in good faith, and have not been neglig by in their maintenance, nor responsible for any decrease in performance (in any way that can be measured).
Of course, that's not how states think (nor hoe the EPA or any of its related state agencies think).
I suspect states will try to ban the vehicles, which will lead to a windfall for attorneys (because the state would LP be paid bushing owners, without the ability to show culpability).
Maybe opting out of the buyback should never have been an option. Then ALL the fault would have been laid on VW, and the cars which were illegal in the first place would have been removed from the road.
MDJeepGuy wrote: In reply to Hal: And these cars would pass that test. They do not pollute at low speeds.
It's not that they don't pollute at low speeds, they run a totally different calibration when the hood is up, only two wheels are spinning, and the steering wheel doesn't turn.
Otherwise, they are dirty.
My bro-in-law is getting a big check from VWOA for his 6M Jetta Sportwagen. He's keeping the all season floor mats, because he bought them as an accessory. Take that, VAG!
In reply to SVreX:
Owners of affected vehicles won't be completely blameless if they choose to not take the buyout. They absolutely shouldn't be punished in any way for their original purchase, but by denying a lucrative buyout they are making a choice to continue driving a known polluting vehicle and accept any of the consequences, known or not.
Also, we disagree about the purpose of states tests slightly. Yes, they check to make sure that the vehicle is operating as intended under the original certification, but if that certification came under false pretenses that changes things. I'd say that the broader goal of emissions testing at the state level is to remove vehicles that pollute more than allowed by their initial cert, and these vehicles would all fall into that category.
I don't know about individual states tests, but for the initial certification, the EPA does require accelerated lifetime tests to establish a baseline of emissions throughout a period of several hundred thousand miles of use. The emissions are expected to worsen slightly over time as equipment degrades, so the standard for a diesel vehicle with 400,000 miles may be a bit more relaxed than when it was brand new, but there are still standards at each stage that must be met. You can't sell a vehicle that legitimately meets standards when new, but proceeds to degrade to a point outside of that standard as time goes on.
You'll need to log in to post.
