Massachusetts Sen. Edward Markey on Thursday sent a letter to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration asking the agency to re-evaluate millions of fuel economy credits awarded to the automaker by the agency for cheating diesel cars.
The letter, which was addressed to Administrator Mark Rosekind, outlined the automaker’s exceedingly fuel efficient fleet average from 2008, which now could be in jeopardy after the automaker admitted it cheated emissions tests and could impact those cars’ mileage.
“We’ve since learned that the term ‘clean diesel engine’ appears to have been an oxymoron when used to describe VW’s fleet. Some analyses have even concluded that the deaths of dozens of people may have been caused by the illegal air pollutant emissions VW’s defeat devices enabled,” Markey wrote.
The Detroit News first reported on Markey’s letter.
If rescinded, Volkswagen’s credits, which are fewer than many other automakers including General Motors, Toyota and even Subaru, wouldn’t be available to the automaker to trade for less-efficient future cars.
According to rules outlined by the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards, automakers are awarded credits by exceeding increasingly difficult fuel economy averages, and those credits are multiplied by the number of cars sold. Volkswagen earned roughly 34 million credits for its cars — not all diesel models — between 2008 and 2012. In comparison, Honda has roughly 100 million credits for its cars over the same time period and Toyota has roughly 470 million credits.
Automakers can hold those credits, apply them to future cars or sell them to other automakers. It’s not immediately clear if Volkswagen sold any of its credits to any other automaker.
Officials from NHTSA, the office of Sen. Markey nor Volkswagen commented on this story.
Between 2008-2011, Porsche North America paid more than $8 million in fines to CAFE for its cars’ non-compliance with newer CAFE regulations.
In Markey’s letter, the senator outlines Volkswagen’s defiance when new average fuel economy regulations were announced for 2017 and beyond, saying “VW was one of the only automobile manufacturers that opposed them, in part, because it felt that the new plan was ‘unfair’ to makers of clean diesel engines.
“In light of VW’s illegal use of defeat devices to circumvent emissions controls, it is my belief that NHTSA should immediately re-analyze and, as appropriate, reverse any CAFE benefits VW might have enjoyed as a result of illegal behavior,” Markey added.
Since CAFE was enacted by Congress in 1975, NHTSA has collected more than $873 million in fines from automakers. Volkswagen of America has never been fined for violating CAFE standards with its cars. In 2007, the brand was fined $4.5 million for violating CAFE standards with its light trucks, such as its Touareg.
Markey asked NHTSA to re-evaluate the automaker’s over-compliance, and if the agency had any plans to penalize the automaker further.
“If no such actions are planned, why not?” Markey asked in the letter.
Once they figure out the MPG penalty for each vehicle without the defeat software functioning, the math will be simple.
The MPG penalty is very likely to be close to zero. The same software routines that were running during emissions tests would have been running during mileage tests. That’s why TDI owners brag (or bragged) about beating EPA mileage numbers. Their cars were running leaner on the road than during tests.
For those just catching-up: leaner=hotter=more NOx.
Something just occurred to me.
One of the fixes that VW mentioned was “new injectors.” That either means urea injectors, in which case they probably would have said urea (or Adblue) specifically, or it means fuel injectors. If they are updating the fuel injectors, they will be installing more expensive multi-stream injectors (going from four to six streams, for instance). These decrease local hot spots in the combustion chamber and reduce NOx. They also improve combustion efficiency and gas mileage.
Will Sen. Edward Markey demand that the EPA issue additional credits if that’s the case? That would be genuinely funny. I will hazard a guess that he will just crawl back into his chambers and make himself very quiet for a while, at least on this topic. He will continue to pontificate on other topics that he doesn’t understand.
I seriously doubt the fuel economy is going to go up, if that potential existed they would have done that in the first place. A major reason that they cheated in the first place was to maximize real world MPG. So if a different injector would have increased MPG whether in testing or real world and made the vehicle emissions complaint they would have already been using it.
I do agree that the EPA MPG numbers are unlikely to change since those were derived from running in cheat mode. Real world will almost certainly suffer but the owners will be unlikely to recover anything for that. I don’t see awarding damages for no longer exceeding what was advertised.
Scoutdude, they may not have used the best injectors back in the day for reasons of cost and availability. The cost outlook has changed a lot, they have to get out of this mess somehow. I’m sure the availability is a lot better too, if they need 11 million sets of injectors, somebody will tool-up for that. It’s an eight figure order, not a five figure order to satisfy just the US market.
It would also make good PR: “we aren’t just fixing old cars, we’re making them better than they ever were.”
Throw-in some extended warranties and they could come out looking better than most people expected.
Obviously, one major issue is that they are well on their way to firing everybody at VW who even has a clue about diesel engineering.
Fact is injector technology has not moved significantly in the time since the last of the cheating vehicles that didn’t use SCR were produced a not that much since the first of the suspect models were produced. It would have cost way less to do it back then too. Doing it now will be quite disruptive as the capacity to produce that many more and still keep up with the new vehicle demand, will likely require some significant investment on the part of the supplier. At the minimum they will likely need to add another shift with all the costs of hiring those new workers or paying overtime to the existing workers.
No matter how you cut it, it would have cost them a lot less to play by the rules from the get go.
Scoutdude.
Hindsight is 20/20. Of course it would have been cheaper for VW to do right from the start, but they are way past that junction.
Diesel injector tech has improved a lot in the past 10 years. VW has already stated that their fix includes new injectors. I think it’s likely that an updated 2009 TDi will perform better than it did back in the day.
We aren’t talking about 10 years of improvement in injector tech we are talking about 2 years of improvement at the most. And there really hasn’t been a leap since the 2nd gen of HEUI diesel injectors long ago.
The fix to the 2009 will only cut real world MPG and power it will not improve it one bit.
The governmentz pick and choose who will suffer.
I love my TDI, but that’s what the people at Volkswagen. It’s unfortunate, because now the product line will suffer, but they brought it upon themselves.
Volkswagen chose to cheat. Unlike my co-competitors in H production, they weren’t even subtle about it. The bitching about government regulations is downright hilarious to those of us who were actually around and paying attention when they were enacted. Back then, there was universal snivelling about the death of performance cars, the end of driving for pleasure, government mandated bland cars, etc. Only, holy shit, you can now buy a reasonably priced performance car that, with the stereo running and the A/C on, will blow the doors off of most anything built when those regulations were enacted. You can buy a crate motor with a specific output that only purpose built race motors were able to achieve. So, yes, help! I’m being oppressed by… absolutely nothing.
Complain about the government until the cows come home. Just don’t blame regulation for making cars worse because that is provably bullshit.
You know, this article would be a lot more valuable if some effort had been put into finding out how much a credit is worth. Thirty four million credits – do they sell for one tenth of a cent each, or fifty million dollars each?
Mods!!! WTF?
Millions? With an “m”? Buah-HA-ha-HA-ha! For a minute there I thought it was serious.
Still waiting on the buyback offer, or credit on a new car….not an actual “number” in any news source.
Lots of bluster and conjecture about penalty, but no real numbers anywhere…..
All the discussions about VW pulling new tech out of a hat (or elsewhere) is moot. There isn’t a secret formula or change in chemistry. VW chose not to kit the motors with the same level that BMW/MB chose to do. We have been told they saved @ 300 Euro per car.
Retrofitting cars in the field (like, how are they going to SCR my existing TDi ? With dealership flat rate monkeys ? Doubtful. The dealers won’t be thrilled with 8 hour jobs paid at $50 per unit.
Buy my car back, or give me the option to buy a new one for a full 50% off.
VW is building capacity it very arguably doesn’t need while pruning investment in new products and tech that it clearly does need.
Well, whatever Asian transplant winds up w/ the facility, they’re apt to get a bargain price. The German union will be happy.
btw, this tiny local dealer, must be feeling better:
March 2015 NEW MILFORD, CT– After serving their customers for more than six decades, the owners of New Milford Volkswagen, one of the oldest Volkswagen dealerships in the U.S., will close at the end of the month.
Ted Orr, the dealership’s owner, said customers have been coming into the shop and calling all week after rumors of the closure began circulating through town.
“A lot of our customers, many of whom have bought cars from us for generations, have been very saddened by the news,” Orr said.
He explained that while the dealership is still healthy financially with less than $20,000 in debt on its books, Volkswagen revoked Orr’s line of credit on concerns the dealership could default on its payments after three years of failing to turn a profit.
“Because they’ve revoked our credit, we can’t buy cars,” he said. “If we can’t buy cars, then we can’t sell them.”
Orr said Volkswagen sales have been suffering in recent years because its product mix and marketing haven’t kept up with competing brands. He noted that sales in New England dropped nearly 30 percent last year, in part because of weak sales of the brand’s all-wheel drive offerings including the Touareg and the Tiguan — an important option in snowy climates.
Volkswagen’s U.S. sales fell 5.2 in February, the company reported Tuesday, as gains for the redesigned Golf failed to offset declines of all other VW models.
Erick Swindell, a New Milford resident, said Tuesday that he was “devastated” by the news. He and his wife have purchased 10 vehicles at the dealership since 1997.
“New Milford Volkswagen has the best people and service that I’ve ever encountered,” Swindell said. “They’ve always treated us like friends of the family. I can’t believe that Volkswagen is allowing a dealership that does right by its customers to go away. Frankly, I am mad at Volkswagen.”
The New Milford location first opened its doors in 1950, less than a year after Volkswagen started selling cars in the U.S. While Gensinger Volkswagen in New Jersey also opened in 1950 and claims to be the oldest dealership in the country, Orr notes that New Milford Volkswagen is still operating out of the original building that’s been used for 65 years to sell the nameplate.
I keep posting the same things surrounding these stories. In the interest of brevity, I’m just going to start posting the following:
VW is screwed. Possibly to the point of not surviving.