Only that the landing would be so violent was Isaac Newton's teaching Prof. Dr. Martin Winterkorn probably not taught. He should have known it. The one who otherwise masters all ingenious laws and tricks.
The US environmental agency is investigating for deliberate non-compliance with the exhaust gas laws, the Department of Justice is under criminal law against the decision-makers of the group and provides evidence against criminal offenses. Buyers and injured parties have filed class actions, including the major shareholders, who see their damage not in the loss in value of the affected vehicles, but in the horrendously declining share price. Volkswagen lost a quarter of its value on the trading floor yesterday. A quarter! With a little bit of rounding up, you get a loss of 20 billion euros - some other large companies aren't worth that much at all. #wastegate - but violent.
But one after the other. What happened? VW has manipulated emissions tests in the United States. That is certain - and so the big Wiko himself admitted it on Sunday. But which tests exactly? Not the consumption values, no. We are used to the big trickery, nobody really cares how much the boxes use now, the main thing is that the certificate is green, there is a bold A ++ on the efficiency label and the CO2 breeze is lukewarm. It is about nitrogen oxides, i.e. the value that is not measured by consumption, but that fixes the exhaust gas class.
The European standard 6, or EU6 for short, currently applies in this country. For diesel engines, 80 milligrams of NOx per kilometer are stipulated as the maximum value during the NEDC procedure. For friends across the Atlantic, in the ULEV2 (ultra low emission vehicles phase 2) category, however, it is only 70 milligrams, and that also per mile. Converted to only 43,75 mg / km and thus only a good half of the value allowed by us. Why, of all people, who are otherwise squeamish about the environment, have such a sharp limit? Because nitrogen oxides mostly only occur in lean and correspondingly hot-burning engines - ergo sophisticated bred downsizing engines and just: diesel gensets. Both are more likely to be found in the USA: rarely. It doesn't matter if you tighten the limit thumbscrews because it doesn't affect the majority of the V8 petrol pickups anyway. The European, however, yes. Not only that 50% of our new registrations are diesel, no, the remaining half consists largely of those new, small, turbocharged engines that only aim to protect the environment.
So what to do? The engines are deliberately trained. Because a good horse only jumps as high as it has to jump. And because politicians set beautiful values and cycles, then exploit them publicly and proclaim progress for themselves - but without really controlling the result. Which might already question the usefulness of the measures.
Because: Developments cost a lot of money. Money that industry would rather earn than spend. In addition, developments are long-term - an engine series newly launched today must have earned a decade, otherwise it makes no sense. Political decisions, on the other hand, are rather: short-term, more like that - until the next election. So the problem should be apparent. If the politician then faces the question of whether he can promise his green friends the blue sky or whether he can continue to offer his liberal-conservative-social voters full employment and lavish tax revenues from labor hunger and tax payments from the auto industry, then the decision is made : light.
Of course, the whole thing is done discretely. People work, meet, eat and drink in the lobby. Then you find: compromises. Like the one that federal mother Merkel vetoed the introduction of the WLTP cycle in the Council of Europe, which still does not provide a realistic representation of the driving behavior of the car driver, but at least offers a better one than the ancient NEDC. Or the deduction of PHEVs and EVs via supercredits on the total consumption of the fleets. It's all mutual eye-wiping, but: nobody notices.
Well, with consumption as I said, it has been clear for a long time that it is more a joke than usable numbers. However, if the manufacturers are allowed to fill up their specially mixed super-light-running tires to the point of freezing, they can bring the track and camber to an absolute straight-ahead position, fill in light-running oils to the minimum, at the oil-pressure-drying minimum level, disconnect ancillaries such as comfort consumers, even correct body gap - then that's it for Otto-Normal (of course also: Diesel) drivers just very difficult to create. If there is also a special control of the injection, the bluff is perfect.
And nobody should think now, even if our valued colleagues like to shout “highly complex software algorithms” that such an application of the motors would be a challenge. The cycles are finally run on the test bench. The car is stationary, the wheels are turning. Every cell phone has an accelerometer on board these days and turns the picture the way we hold it. So even the most primitive car easily recognizes today: I don't drive, I stand. If you then accelerate painfully slowly, keep the pace exactly for a period of time x and then start again at a new speed, the mapping has long since switched to "Attention, trap!".
The Americans have now noticed that. They checked a few VW 2.0 TDIs on the reel and then on the real road. The results were devastating. In reality, they measured up to 40 times the NOx value. For a car that has met all standards on the roll. The drama is great, the manipulation scandal perfect. Yes, how and when the maximum was reached, the EPA is silent on that, but it would also be less headlines if it came out that it happened in the first one in burnout.
That - and yes, we know that an accusation without real evidence is not part of the good journalistic craft, but in this discussion it is difficult to distinguish good from bad anyway, if at all - manipulated, we can also say: shit, wherever possible, should be clear. And we don't just mean VW. The so-called test bench detections are so old hat that the outcry of the past few days is almost touchingly naive. We are still well aware of the days when test vehicles, for example, wanted to measure performance. Because, like some manufacturers may trick the exhaust gas composition, one had the feeling that the press was happy to be supplied with particularly powerful material. Because a fast car leads to good reporting. However, if you then became suspicious, got the thing to the test and wanted to see full performance, then there was nothing. 45 instead of the expected 400 hp. Precisely because the test car recognized: "Attention, trap!" - and simply did nothing at all offended. You couldn't do anything. Because the developer was sitting on the much longer lever.
Only: what does it look like now if the indictment threatens? Is the house of cards about to collapse?
Not that bad, actually. Because: the VWs that were tested and criticized by the EPA were not specially prepared test cars. They were dealer cars, randomly selected for the test, with no chance of preparation. In plain language: all series VWs in the US sales have deposited the little tax trick. Plain text II: Those who are able and have the shaken degree of self-discipline to drive in real life as the cycle specifies, which reaps: deepest consumption and cleanest exhaust gas.
The best example is the test published by the ICCT and the ADAC from the beginning of September. 30 vehicles were checked for NOx emissions. Once in the NEDC and once in the WLTP. The result is almost ridiculous. All vehicles met the limit values in the NEDC - however, only eight of the 30 also made it in the WLTP. Now you might think: well, well so far, anyway. But when you look at the numbers, it gets grotesque. The WLTP differs only marginally from the NEDC. There are fewer downtimes, the accelerations are significantly higher, but still far below the value with which you start from the traffic light in real life. And the top speed of 131,3 km / h demands just as little from the engine as the average speed of 46,5 km / h. In percentages, roughly and generously estimated deviations of 20, at most 25% of the NEDC should be expected. But the result of the measurement: Volvo 15 x higher than allowed, Renault 9 x higher, Hyundai 7 x higher, Audi and Opel each 3 x higher, Mercedes over and under. Only BMW stayed within the limit in the WLTP.
Again: 25% deviation would have been expected, not 1500%. So how can it be that there are such hair-raising mistakes? How is it that a BMW engine that can be fifteen (!) Times better from a similar displacement with the same technical layout and the same performance? Just: not at all. The software at BMW is probably simply a better one. And by that we don't mean the nasty, highly complex manipulation algorithm, but simply the meager savings vote close to what could be a test situation - or just a very economical driver.
The much bigger problem of the deviations does not lie in the software, but in the way of measurement as well as the respective measurement situation. The strikingly dramatic violations of limit values are snapshots. When accelerating on the mountain, for example. So wherever performance is required. And combustion inside an engine is one of the most dynamic processes that we have domesticated from nature in our favor. Of course we know roughly what is happening, we can simulate all sorts of things, but precisely: nobody can predict it 100%. Nobody can really predict the swirl, the mixing of the fuel and air molecules, which control the flame front, and predict the influence of heat nests. It's more: reactio. Not actio. It is easier if the driving is constant. Because the control loop then works and you have both clean exhaust gas and the desired output.
However, few people are aware of this connection. We have now also needed a few pages to tension the bow. It should therefore be clear why the explanations are not very popular. Least of all in politics. But this is exactly where they should be heard urgently. It is not enough to refer to a striking limit when it comes to saving the planet's climate policy and to reduce it publicly. Because, as you can see, this behavior by no means promotes competition and development, but rather the opposite.
It is certainly not an easy task to get back on the right lane. But after all the years of lazy compromises, the moment when everyone involved should sit down at the high point of the VW affair, #wastegate, has come. With reason and foresight. It would be almost tragic if the angry US mob and public opinion in this country managed to chase him out of office that the cleanest and most meticulous engineer in this industry, Prof. Dr. Martin Winterkorn, this - his, with all due respect, opinion - obvious cycle shit would be doomed.
That they are all in the dirt - what is to be expected given the above-mentioned deviations in the NEDC-WLTP comparison, and what is also underlined by the remarkable statement by Mercedes boss Boss Zetsche, who only commented that he "assumes that be." Company that complied with the law ”, but was apparently not really sure - is not an excuse. VW will face this affair, though not a threat to its existence, and it will rub off across the entire German industry, even if no one else is caught. "Made in Germany" no longer stands for quality, but simply for fraud.
One should therefore use this affair for a start. For the start of an era of real innovation. Not in one in which a fast-three-ton SUV is parked on the glitzy world of the IAA, whose € 150 chronograph can wind itself up and its 000-hp twelve-cylinder on paper (pure mockery!) Just 600+ liters consumed. Rather into an age in which ingenuity solves the problems of future mobility. And by that we do not mean autonomously driving connectivity swings, the commissioning of which alone would raise so many legal problems that our policy would not be able to solve even a fraction of them. Because she already drove the cart into the dirt with profane exhaust gas regulation ...
Side note: there are of course an infinite number of other questions to be answered on the subject. For example, why VW of all things got involved in such a game. Or whether the old Piëch has anything to do with it, given the proximity of the scandal to the IAA and the Supervisory Board meeting at which his opponent Winterkorn's contract is to be extended. Just so much: it was bad luck that it hit VW. The EPA also confirmed this, actually wanted to demonstrate cleanliness and instead came across the above-mentioned inconsistencies. And that the old man is behind everything is unlikely precisely because the EPA already started the investigations in May 2014 and since everything was still in perfect order between Wolfsburg and Salzburg. Should there still be a need for discussion on the topic: let us discuss it. Via email or on Facebook.