Thread: VW caught by the Yanks for breaking emission laws

As I understand it, the emissions that the software fudges the testing for are only at that low a level for the USA and possibly Europe. Certainly not Australia.

The situation in Australia is that the type approval for the engine was given on the basis of it passing a complete set of tests, which it now appears, has been only managed by software to modify the vehicle performance during testing.

This probably means that the whole set of tests is invalid, and will need to be repeated without this coding, and probably will require modifications to pass the tests (with reduced performance and fuel economy, and increased CO2 emissions). For Australia, I expect the only change required will be new software. My brother, owner of a diesel Passat in the USA, thinks the cost for his car will exceed $4,000 and involve a lot of new hardware, and result in much higher urea consumption.

But the other side of things is that VW Australia has for several years been selling cars, ostensibly meeting certain emission standards, knowing that they deliberately do not meet these standards.

I suspect that lying in your statements about the standard of the cars you are applying for approval for carries very severe penalties, and is almost certainly a serious criminal offence. There are virtually certain to be significant financial penalties, as well as the cost of recalling a lot of cars, and if the individuals responsible can be identified, then they will face significant gaol time. Quite possibly after serving time in Germany and the USA! Some courts may follow the idea that the directors are responsible and try and lock them up. Saves trying to track down just who was responsible.

John

Yeah, lying to get approval for a vehicle is going to attract significant penalties and goal time, I expect. Governments don't accept that - nor should they.

Both GM and Toybota lied about their faulty fuel systems and accelerators and both these faults caused the injury and deaths of many many people and both received fines much lower than what VW are facing,the only difference is they both manufacture vehicles in America were's VW's are imported. Pat

Originally Posted by DiscoMick

Yeah, lying to get approval for a vehicle is going to attract significant penalties and goal time, I expect. Governments don't accept that - nor should they.

And how is that different to Toybota lowering the average weight of passengers in regard to the 200 series to keep it under it's GVM or Mazda lying about the BT50's payload and towing ability that takes it over it's combined total mass as two examples?.Shouldn't they also suffer the same fate?. Pat

I suspect both governments and courts are likely to see deliberate circumvention of tests as something more serious than denying that faults were inadvertently incorporated in vehicles, or even being misleading about weights, towing capability etc.

John

Originally Posted by PAT303

And how is that different to Toybota lowering the average weight of passengers in regard to the 200 series to keep it under it's GVM or Mazda lying about the BT50's payload and towing ability that takes it over it's combined total mass as two examples?.Shouldn't they also suffer the same fate?. Pat

I wouldn't argue with you about the other issues you mentioned, but I don't think they are as clear as deliberate lying.
Saying that your vehicle meets an emissions standard, and then admitting it doesn't, is very clear-cut.

Don't forget its not just the government they've lied to, they've also lied to their 91,000 customers too by selling them something which we now know didn't meet the required standards for being roadworthy. We almost bought a Polo (before deciding on the Mazda 2) - we assumed the Polo met all required standards in Australia. Now we know it wouldn't have, so VW lied to us.

Originally Posted by Tombie

I really start to get annoyed with the media spin on this - "selling people faulty vehicles".

They're not "faulty" - they work just fine.. And no one that owns one is any the wiser..

They're "non compliant" that's all....

Agree

Originally Posted by DiscoMick

If they don't meet the emissions standards then they're faulty.

No, if its functioning as designed its not faulty. the problem is that it was never designed to meet the required standard.

Originally Posted by Tombie

I still regard them (VW with Defeat) as non-compliant rather than faulty... The vehicle functions for the user as intended..

yep it works exactly as designed its just the design is non compliant with the regs.



If it was a case of a "fault" then VW would be able to get out of it by claiming that it wasnt something they did deliberately but something that was out of their control therefore there was no willing deceit. Its pretty hard to wriggle out of it when it dozens of lines of code in a computer that all have to be written just right so that an exact set of conditions produces an exact set of results

Fix the second quote - it wasn't me