AUDI Fined 800 million Euros by German prosecutors, for 6 and 8 cylinder diesels

[Zak33]

"German prosecutors fine Audi 800 million euros for diesel violations"

FRANKFURT - German premium car brand Audi (NSUG.DE), a division of Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE), said it was fined 800 million euros (703.40 million pounds) on Tuesday for violations tied to heavily polluting six- and eight-cylinder diesel engines.

“Considering these special items the Audi Group will significantly undercut major financial key performance indicators forecasted for the fiscal year 2018,”

ie it's not going to make as much profit as it planned, and won't contest the fine

And of course this follows the 1 Billion Euro fine on VW levied in June '18

[shaithis]

and the people that bought the cars are stuck with them and their new tax bracket and Audi will probably pass some of this onto customers moving forward.....

The penalties should have been harsher and the money payed out to the people who purchased these cars prior to the public bombshell that they had been cheating emissions.

[DanceswithUnix]

and the people that bought the cars are stuck with them and their new tax bracket and Audi will probably pass some of this onto customers moving forward.....

The penalties should have been harsher and the money payed out to the people who purchased these cars prior to the public bombshell that they had been cheating emissions.

Because it is hard to pin down who becomes ill or dies from breathing in particulates and give them the money? VAG owners are not the hardest done by here.

[badass]

IIRC the original complaint was simply that when the cars detected they were on a testbed, they simply short shifted compared to what they would do elsewhere.

That's a very expensive dumb, arrogant decision where the fine could have been avoided simply by configuring their drive select efficiency setting that no one uses to do the same short shifting in real life. In fact, I think the biggest complaint from owners that were aware was exactly that. "Give me the dyno cheating setting so I can use it in the real world"

[watercooled]

and the people that bought the cars are stuck with them and their new tax bracket and Audi will probably pass some of this onto customers moving forward.....

The penalties should have been harsher and the money payed out to the people who purchased these cars prior to the public bombshell that they had been cheating emissions.

I didn't think this changed any tax brackets for already-registered cars? Tax bands depend on CO2 emissions, and this 'emissions cheating' isn't really about CO2.

"Give me the dyno cheating setting so I can use it in the real world"

I wonder what performance would be like though? I doubt there's a free lunch TBH. Some diesels seemingly have really weird (poor) ~1k rpm torque (very steep torque curve) which would make them pretty unpleasant to drive if it shifts too aggressively.

[philehidiot]

Cars are all rubbish anyway.

Well, all the ones I can afford are.

Besides, who cares if VW killed around 1200 people in Europe alone from their excess emissions in just Germany? (That's about 1/4 of the affected cars so they killed about 5000 people overall). It has only cost Europeans 1.9 BILLION Euros. Small change. They made a load of cash simply by making the engine run a little leaner for more power and more oxide of nitrogen emissions without any real development into increasing the BMEP like the South Koreans have done. If you can't do it properly, kill people. It's not a hard choice and really, it's not their fault. It's the fault of the regulators making the regulations so hard to work by that they had no choice but to cheat or end up making less profit. It's just not a choice. I'm sure those 5000 people are quite happy to have donated their lives to prop up the bank balances of VW shareholderes and to keep their board members in a job. I'm be delighted to donate my life to such a worthy goal.

This is a company so criminal their boss (Rupert Stadler) was imprisoned as they couldn't trust him not to tamper with evidence during the investigation. He has now been fired as apparently, it was hard to do his job from within a cell. And also he's probably guilty of crimes against humanity.

[Dashers]

The way I read between the lines was: if tuned to the test, real world emissions was actually higher because the test is so far from reality. In order to maintain those real-world economies and meet test guidelines, the ECU would change to adopt to the test. Best of both worlds, but not playing by the rules.

Frankly I think the whole thing is a joke. Who ever bought a 6 or 8 cylinder Audi with emissions and fuel economy in mind? The sub 2 litre turbo world maybe for fuel economy. Nobody ever buys diesel for the environment even if they buy the lower CO2 fallacy (lower CO2 but much higher other things).

[philehidiot]

(lower CO2 but much higher other things).

Not with the latest Euro spec. Certainly in the older diesels but the latest spec is very hard and very similar to petrol. Under Euro 6 NOx is limited to 0.08g/km in diesel and 0.06g/km in petrol - there used to be a massive difference but it's now hardly anything. CO is allowed to be 1g/km in petrol and half that from diesel. Particulate matter emissions are limited to 0.005g/km in both. When you also consider the number of petrol vehicles compared to diesel ones (along with size and type) then the actual NOx emissions are pretty much identical.

[DanceswithUnix]

The way I read between the lines was: if tuned to the test, real world emissions was actually higher because the test is so far from reality. In order to maintain those real-world economies and meet test guidelines, the ECU would change to adopt to the test. Best of both worlds, but not playing by the rules.

Frankly I think the whole thing is a joke. Who ever bought a 6 or 8 cylinder Audi with emissions and fuel economy in mind? The sub 2 litre turbo world maybe for fuel economy. Nobody ever buys diesel for the environment even if they buy the lower CO2 fallacy (lower CO2 but much higher other things).

Why are you reading between the lines when the lines are pretty clear? VAG couldn't meet the emissions standards, so they cheated. That isn't adapting to conditions, it was specifically programmed to recognise it was in a test lab and behave differently. Hearing how much better the likes of BMW were with a bug lump like the X5 shows how bad VW were here. And yes, no-one buys a big diesel engine with the environment in mind, which is precisely why these laws are put in place to protect public health else they would be spewing all sorts of muck into the air.

I was following an old VW camper van a while back and I had forgotten how much cars of that era tended to smell of petrol as well as belching out burnt oil. I don't miss that aspect of classic cars, modern emissions regs are good.

[badass]

I wonder what performance would be like though? I doubt there's a free lunch TBH. Some diesels seemingly have really weird (poor) ~1k rpm torque (very steep torque curve) which would make them pretty unpleasant to drive if it shifts too aggressively.

Absolutely. That's why it would be good to have that for the efficiency setting. I think all of the 6/8 cylinder Germans have drive select or similar where you select whether you want efficiency, comfort or performance. By choosing efficiency, you can accept that the engine will be sluggish to respond.

On the "seemingly poor ~1k RPM torque" thing, again absolutely. My 2.0 TDI 170 has shockingly bad torque below 1600 RPM and it only really gets decent after 1800 RPM. Still offensively laggy at any RPM. Really rubbish for pulling away at junctions unless you fancy excessively slipping the clutch. It's good on the motorway though (albeit belching stinky death out the back and making a horrible "I sound like a screwed petrol engine" noise out of the front)

[DanceswithUnix]

On the "seemingly poor ~1k RPM torque" thing, again absolutely. My 2.0 TDI 170 has shockingly bad torque below 1600 RPM and it only really gets decent after 1800 RPM. Still offensively laggy at any RPM. Really rubbish for pulling away at junctions unless you fancy excessively slipping the clutch. It's good on the motorway though (albeit belching stinky death out the back and making a horrible "I sound like a screwed petrol engine" noise out of the front)

Just in case... My diesel Alfa was like that at one point (1.9 multijet 170bhp so similar spec), I worked out the EGR valve was stuck open so the engine was recycling exhaust and starved of burnable oxygen until the turbo could overwhelm the smallish bypass hole in the valve. Was like a different car after I bought a new EGR valve (which was about £40 delivered and took under an hour to fit). Symptoms were lack of power at low revs and plenty of soot under hard acceleration.

Afterwards I found out it is always the solenoid in the valve gets gunged up with soot and with some careful drilling you can take it apart and clean it, I could even have saved myself the £40.

[badass]

Just in case... My diesel Alfa was like that at one point (1.9 multijet 170bhp so similar spec), I worked out the EGR valve was stuck open so the engine was recycling exhaust and starved of burnable oxygen until the turbo could overwhelm the smallish bypass hole in the valve. Was like a different car after I bought a new EGR valve (which was about £40 delivered and took under an hour to fit). Symptoms were lack of power at low revs and plenty of soot under hard acceleration.

Afterwards I found out it is always the solenoid in the valve gets gunged up with soot and with some careful drilling you can take it apart and clean it, I could even have saved myself the £40.

Sounds plausible, however the engine (the VW 2.0 TDi 170 PD) was known for being a bit rubbish. The TDI 140 PD is a much better drive. As supposedly is the dieselgate TDI 170 CR :-S

It's my fault. I couldn't stand the thought of having a car with less power than a rubber band powered by an asthmatic hamster in it's wheel. Even if everyone said it was the better engine.

Still, next time it's in for a service, I will ask the EGR question

[kalniel]

Nobody ever buys diesel for the environment even if they buy the lower CO2 fallacy (lower CO2 but much higher other things).

Well, to counter the absolute, I used to. Before I knew about other emissions I was primarily concerned with greenhouse gasses and conservation of fossil fuel, so I only bought diesels with which I could achieve 55+mpg.

I wonder what performance would be like though? I doubt there's a free lunch TBH. Some diesels seemingly have really weird (poor) ~1k rpm torque (very steep torque curve) which would make them pretty unpleasant to drive if it shifts too aggressively.

To be fair, so do turbo-petrols. It's just the turbo that causes this. My current 1.4tfsi (150ps) has worse turbo lag until 1.4k rpm than my old 2.0 tdi (140ps, PD) did, and the boost that comes in later is a bit of a pain on slippy pull-outs. It does rev a lot higher though - before I got used to the 2.0tdi I thought the gears were all too low as I'd run out of revs before I knew it and had to keep changing gear!

[Zak33]

the difference between a petrol and a diesel turbo is stark guys

A Diesel by it's very nature has a mammoth compression ratio which creates huge torque but meassively restricts high revs. The delay in turbo lag is simply that... the turbo hasn't spooled up yet and the lack of pull is simply because the exhaust gas is slowed by the turbo vains as it builds interia. But if you took the turbo away ... while the tickover torque would be superb, the lack of turbo grunt would be dire.

petrol though... half the compression ratio and in some cases even less than half because of the turbo pressure.... that by it' very nature lacks torque...and then you've got even more turbo lag.. so it's gonna be a brick when off-boost.

when a turbo spec is chosen for any engine it's a balance between low boost and ease of spooling up.. vs the lack of outright boost pressures at higher speeds.

Low boost, low lage and diesel creates a ferocious amount of tickover torque...and no revs.

[peterb]

the difference between a petrol and a diesel turbo is stark guys

A Diesel by it's very nature has a mammoth compression ratio which creates huge torque but meassively restricts high revs. The delay in turbo lag is simply that... the turbo hasn't spooled up yet and the lack of pull is simply because the exhaust gas is slowed by the turbo vains as it builds interia. But if you took the turbo away ... while the tickover torque would be superb, the lack of turbo grunt would be dire.

petrol though... half the compression ratio and in some cases even less than half because of the turbo pressure.... that by it' very nature lacks torque...and then you've got even more turbo lag.. so it's gonna be a brick when off-boost.

when a turbo spec is chosen for any engine it's a balance between low boost and ease of spooling up.. vs the lack of outright boost pressures at higher speeds.

Low boost, low lage and diesel creates a ferocious amount of tickover torque...and no revs.

Absolutely! My 3 litre turbo diesel has very low gearing in first and second just to get the revs up for good initial acceleration (but bounces off the rev limiter very easily). But no grunt really below about 1800 revs, but top gearing is such that you can pootle along at about 75 with the revs at 2000 and just accelerate away quite smoothly without having to change down. (USA readers who want to know what 'changing down' is - please post here for enlightenment )

[DanceswithUnix]

A Diesel by it's very nature has a mammoth compression ratio which creates huge torque but meassively restricts high revs.

Not so much any more, to try and avoid nox emissions the compression ratio has dropped a lot, the mjet diesel engine in my last car was 16.8:1 which is well down on old school diesels which were in the 20's. My current turbo petrol engine is about 9.8:1 but there is a big difference thanks to the higher red line of the petrol engine which for me makes the car nicer to drive.

But that compares to the old 3.0v6 petrol engine in my kit car, which despite only a 9.0:1 compression ratio feels like it can tow small moons. The gear selector failed once, so I manually stuck the car in 3rd and happily drive it around like that for the day just using the clutch