Opinion: Cartel of cheats
VW’s emissions-cheating scandal pales beside what’s rocking the whole German car industry right now. The latest accusations concerning collusion among all major automakers come as a deep shock, says DW’s Henrik Böhme.
Last weekend, a new era was ushered in in the German automotive industry. Compared with what’s come to light now, VW’s dieselgate scandal looks like a joke. Although final evidence is still outstanding in this early stage of the German and EU anti-trust-authorities’ investigations, it’s already clear the accusations of large-scale collusion are a severe blow to Germany’s flagship industry.
Carmakers are now trying to rescue what cannot be rescued anymore. As if in a race meant to beat each other, Daimler and Volkswagen have sent letters of self-indictment to Bonn and Brussels, because those who help bust a cartel can hope to pay a smaller fine or no fine at all.
Whether it’s worse than Dieselgate remains to be seen, I’ll wait on more information. Dieselgate effectively shut down an entire portion of the car industry, not a small deal.
In this article, BMW says the collusion was about AdBlue tank size and nothing else. I suppose the tow articles address the same issue. I think in the US meetings like these would be illegal. When I worked in the steel mill, we were cautioned to walk away if we determined that other steelmaker employees were at the bar for fear that our company would be accused of colluding with our competitors. Open discussions at technical conferences were OK, just not unscheduled meetings not “open” to outsiders. Talking baseball didn’t count, just being there was enough to get busted.
What’s hysterical claptrap about information that all the auto makers in Germany got together to figure out how to trick the testing machinery used by countries to control pollution? Is pollution not important? Is cheating not important? Is the auto industry of Germany not important? It’s our air, all of us, yours too. You want to breathe in all that particulate junk, fine, but I don’t and neither do a lot of other people.
This is not the emissions testing problem, this is alleged collusion on parts design. All I’ve heard is that they agreed up front on the size of the DEF tanks, which proved to be too small.
Like I said, I’m waiting for facts on actual substantial problems.
The publication alleged the smaller tanks used means there is not a sufficient amount of the chemical to properly clean the exhaust gases
This doesn’t make any sense to me. A smaller tank just holds less of the product. It doesn’t limit the metering rate just the duration of supply. It’s like saying that a windshield washer tank is too small to effectively clean the windshield. No, you just have to fill it more often…
As best I can understand, they wanted to maximize the distance between fills, resulting in cutting down DEF use to meet that requirement. Sounds NUTS to me, too! I think that’s what FCA did to extend range of DEF fills in Ram pickups, and got caught.
Right, and that makes sense. It’s also strange to me that they seem to be able to make a coolant reservoir and windshield washer tank in just about ANY shape to fit the available space and hold a reasonable amount of product. Why is the Urea tank any different? I think this all boils down to specsmanship and attempting to minimize maintenance intervals to make their product more appealing to consumers. Would it be so terrible if you had to add urea at each fillup? You’re already stopped to fill something…My BIL diesel Ram has both fill tubes in the same general area…
I’m totally confused. Doesn’t a small tank simply mean more frequent refills?
From article on domestic diesel pickup trucks.
What happens to my truck if I run out of DEF?
The EPA requires all truckmakers to incorporate some type of staged warning system (some offer actual gauges) to let the driver know exactly how close to empty the system is. Whether a vehicle goes into a “limp home” or reduced engine power or limits the number of times you can turn the engine on will depend on the specific car or truck, but at some point it will not start. Simply put, you should treat your DEF tank the same way you treat your fuel tank; you don’t want to leave yourself stranded by ignoring the warnings.
That is one alternative. Another is that the AdBlue is metered in at a slower rate and incompletely reducing the pollution. The latter is likely hat happened.
@jtsanders has it: They supposedly discovered the tank was too small to meet some refill distance specification, so they decreased the feed rate (except when the vehicle could tell it was on a ‘test cycle’), increasing pollutants.
