VW... you are stupid... ballsy but stupid... and also right.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-34325005


Shocked by the VW scandal, I decided to post this article.

I can't believe how stupid they here, how ballsy they were and ultimately how right they are.

Politicians, in their infinite stupidity think that the world will be better if the clean cars (gasoline engined) are less, and dirty cars (diesel engined) are more and more controlled by regulations that ultimately will kill the engine power making you pull it harder or buy a bigger engine.... ending in more pollution anyway.

There is a why to this: tax! More tax means more money for them... of course the idea of taxing a car that pollutes like a gasoline engine car, is to plant more trees and green areas to compensate... but that money is deviated... lets just say else where.

There is the other matter... by taxing gasoline cars, people flee to diesel ones, and that constitutes a bigger problem as diesel emissions include a lot of carbon particles... this is worse then gas, so the politicians add regulations and taxes to try to baffle the resulting pollution... no trees from taxes still, just more money.

So the game is: Make it as bad as possible and then tax on it and make fortunes.

In order to do that, every car, upon certification to a specific market will have pass a set of tests including the emissions test.

So far so good. We knew that already. The problem is that VW also knows that and ultimately thinks "I don't really care for stupid policies, and if you are making money on us, than I'll fool you".

So now for the news:
Every car that is fitted with ESP will not allow you to properly test it on a rolling dyno. The 2 front wheels spinning while the 2 rear wheels are stopped will immediately trigger EPS into thinking you are trying to accelerate on a slippery surface and dose the engine and apply the brakes... So to solve this issue every manufacturer has input into it's car's software a "test mode" that disables ESP actions.
Now if you are a manufacturer and you want to fool the emissions test, this presents an opportunity, however, if you are going to do that you must really conceal the crafts, as you will be stealing money from governments (the biggest "mafiosos" of them all)  in every car you sell from that point on.

VW did just that! they concealed a way to make their cars pollute 40 to 50 time less if a certain type of parameter was met.

This is not the problem. The problem is that if you are going down this road than you have to make it "look like a bug" in the software.

VW on the other hand coded a set of checks that produce a result...and that can be tracked.

Not that if it was a bug you would be out of trouble... it just makes it easier to explain in court, and that means that, out of the total 18billion fine, you could negotiate your way down to say... half that value!?

In the other words: your VW diesel that claims to produce x co gr/km actually produces 40 or 50 times as much. No worries, it still has that big power from a very small package and that is what you pay for actually.

So this is a big scandal not because it pollutes more, not because they are stealing from the government (and in turn helping you do the same... so now you have that instant karma feeling) but because they where stupid enough to do that in the clumsiest possible way.

Practical results form this stunt?
1 - VW will be fined... hard
2 - VW is stealing from govenrments everytime they sell a diesel car
3 - if you own a VW you have been and are stealing form your government every year when you pay your tax.
4 - VW will have to call back the cars and remap... so be careful! I have no idea how they are going to meet CO emissions while retaining the same power and consumption.
5 - VW stock is history.... sell... yesterday.

HONDA: you killed the brilliant K20A from the type-r and screwed-it-up with a turbo... instead you should have gone for full BTCC race tune to 300bhp NA and fit a jumbo catalytic converter that could be removed and replaced with a test pipe the minute one exits the sales stand. That would be legal, that would be efficient, that would still pollute less than any VW... and we would have loved it.