There’s no evidence of any other manufacturer doing it at this point.
Two things have to happen:
Simply establishing #1 isn’t enough.
Latest newsbits:
This is still bad for owners. Say you want to trade in your VW diesel. Um, who’s going to want it? End of 2016? What if you want to get a new car before then?
BTW, VW sent out a promo offering $2000 off new (I think it was just new) VWs. Dunno if this was just to current owners or what. I do know I received a survey a few days ago which asked me specifically how this crisis has influenced my thoughts about VW…
I hope you were scathing.
My wife has a regular unleaded gas Jetta that we purchased last year. We both like that car a lot and I thought the diesel shenanigans wouldn’t influence my opinion on VW’s other cars, but it has. I know the Jetta is a good vehicle, but in the back of my mind I now wonder what other bullshit VW has done. I think I’m always going to be looking askance at the VW brand from now on.
Ditto. A Golf GTI was on my (longish) shortlist a while back before I got my new car. Now VW are dead to me.
I was driving behind a VW diesel the other day and couldn’t help but notice the brown exhaust coming out and wondering how much they are polluting way more than others.
I was pretty harsh, yeah. But I’d not give up on a GTI if I were you, unless you really can’t sleep with giving VW money. There are few cars out there with the combination of size, performance, and simply good “feel” as the GTI. I love small, manual-transmission cars, and can’t have rear-wheel drive practically where I live (northern Vermont, with terrible roads, hills, and bad winters). There are not a lot of cars anymore in the hot hatch category, and the GTI is a killer value in the base model.
But I did let them have it with both barrels pretty much.
Ya, as my old 2002 jetta is finally starting to show it’s age in terms of things staying to break, I’ve been considering finally getting a new car. VW was in the running, but I’m thinking I may go with a Subaru instead.
I’m no mechanic, but that sounds incredibly optimistic, given the numbers of cars involved.
Unless the solutions are simple. Flashing some software? Then yes. Replacing a bunch of hardware? In a car? Where everything is always hard to reach? Then, no way.
Gajillions of Subies up here; I had a 2004 WRX at one point, it was super fun. Trouble for me is, even though Subaru has vastly upped the interior quality, they still lag a bit behind in overall niceness inside, but much more importantly, the only Subaru I’d want is a WRX or WRX STI, and virtually every damn one of them up here is driven by a 20-something slacker with a backwards baseball cap who drives like a bad NASCAR driver on a three day drunk. So the image is, you show up in a WRX, you’re pigeonholed as a loser. Which is a terrible shame, because the car kicks ass. I live on a dirt road, and those things eat that stuff up.
I seem to recall Subaru making a fairly badass coup in the past few years, as some part of a collaborative effort with Toyota… There were actually two, one from each manufacturer, which were both basically the same car, but with a few tweaks.
Ah, yeah, it’s the BRZ, and the Toyota version is the Scion FR-S.
The FR-S/BRZ is a great looking car, no doubt about it. Performance is nowhere near its looks, though, from what I can see. It does have 200hp or so, which is fine, but from what I’ve read in car mags it is somewhat noisy, unrefined, and lacks handling finesse. The interiors, from what I can tell, also seem subpar for the price point. But the real reason I’ve not looked closely at it is rear wheel drive. I love RWD cars but not where I live. I don’t see many of these on the road up here for that reason. The good old boys (Yankee version) who like RWD cars still go for Challengers, Camaros, and Mustangs, and the Subaru weebos go for WRXs.
Question: It seems that a software fix will screw with performance and mileage. If that’s the case do owners HAVE to get them “fixed”? Many may not care about NOx. But if they don’t, the emissions test is moot.
I thought I read an idea somewhere that EPA might grandfather those cars with respect to emissions tests.
I suspect the answer may be “it’s complicated.” States all have different requirements I think, in addition to the Fed stuff? Dunno.
I can’t speak for every state, but in California they will. Assuming they want to register their cars, that is.
And some more to add to the list!
‘Four more carmakers join diesel emissions row’:
At this point it seems pretty much any diesel car might be a problem!?
I wonder whether the car makers will come together and accuse regulators of unrealistic requirements?
Nobody anywhere who has a connection to the industry is going to be surprised that real world driving conditions result in vastly different emissions results than regulated white coat lab testing environments. The regulatory requirements are just busted in this regard and they always have been (same thing goes for fuel efficiency testing where manufacturers use special tyres and super slippery synthetic engine/transmission oils, etc to boost results).
That none of the manufacturers are meeting the standards in real world conditions is not that surprising, but we have yet to see if any of the others were employing defeat devices and just outright cheating the system like VW has done.
Both are indeed a problem though.
Possibly, though ‘accuse’ is the wrong word. I mean, if they can’t be met right now, the regulations should at the very least still be aspirational targets, so perfectly reasonable. But if the standards genuinely can’t be met with the technology of today, they’ll come to the table to discuss properly and changes will be made or the result will have staggering implications for many aspects of world economies.
Though admittedly passenger, commercial and industrial standards differ, so you may just see withdrawal of diesel from the passenger market segment - which has apparently already been happening in parts of Europe anyway.