Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and how the tech are you? So it is time
Speaker 1: for a classic episode. This episode originally published back on
Speaker 1: October two thousand fifteen, and it's called the VW Scandal.
Speaker 1: So we're talking about the Volkswagen scandal, specifically the scandal
Speaker 1: involving Volkswagen installing a system on their cars to cheat
Speaker 1: emissions tests. Scott Benjamin joined me for this episode and
Speaker 1: as always, you know it was it was a pleasure
Speaker 1: having Scott on the show. His knowledge of the vehicular
Speaker 1: world that was incredibly helpful, and I hope you enjoy
Speaker 1: this discussion about the very risky and ultimately catastrophic decision
Speaker 1: that Volkswagen made when it came to trying to trick
Speaker 1: emissions tests. We are going to talk about the Volkswagen scandal.
Speaker 1: What happened, Uh, what the actual technical details are. Maybe
Speaker 1: get some information about diesel versus gasoline cars, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of get an understanding of what exactly happened and
Speaker 1: what will what what the fallout is looking like so
Speaker 1: far and spoiler alert, folks, this is an ongoing story.
Speaker 1: It's not like we have an end where we can
Speaker 1: say and then they were charged this much money and
Speaker 1: find no exactly because even now with the fixed information
Speaker 1: that we we now have that we just got a
Speaker 1: few days ago, there are still some unanswered questions in
Speaker 1: this In this fixed plan, they say they've got the plan,
Speaker 1: but they're not quite exactly telling us what they're gonna
Speaker 1: do with it. And only that, but they've also recently
Speaker 1: announced a a different missions possible subterfuge trick thing that's
Speaker 1: going to be in the two thousands, or was supposed
Speaker 1: to be in the two thousand sixteen models, which currently
Speaker 1: are not available here in the United States. They're quarantined
Speaker 1: at US ports. Right there's a hold on all sales
Speaker 1: of Volkswagen diesel vehicles from twenty sixteen, So while year
Speaker 1: twenty sixteens are being held back, you can't get one
Speaker 1: right now exactly. And I'll talk about what that particular
Speaker 1: possibly shady technology does. But before we get into that,
Speaker 1: one of the things I wanted to do is kind
Speaker 1: of lay the groundwork. I usually take the first part
Speaker 1: of any episode to kind of talk about what what
Speaker 1: were the conditions that led up to this point? And
Speaker 1: really to look at this one, I wanted to go
Speaker 1: way way way back, all right, because I wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about the conditions that led up to things like
Speaker 1: the Clean Air Act. So in order to do that,
Speaker 1: you have to look at the dependence upon the internal
Speaker 1: Austrian engine as the primary means of powering vehicles. Now, Scott,
Speaker 1: I know you are very well aware that electric vehicles
Speaker 1: proceeded internal combustion vehicles. Their electric cars were around before
Speaker 1: we had and internal combustion cars. Yes, yes, that's right.
Speaker 1: They were in fact very prevalent. I mean taxi taxi
Speaker 1: companies operated on all electric platforms in a certain point
Speaker 1: in history. You can look at photographs of New York
Speaker 1: and I don't know, we're talking to turn of the
Speaker 1: century stuff, the turn of the twentieth century, where you know,
Speaker 1: it's all every car that you see in the shot
Speaker 1: is all electric. Um. Yeah, there was a point when
Speaker 1: there were far more electric vehicles on the road than
Speaker 1: there were gasoline vehicles. And they were efficient, they were fast.
Speaker 1: One thing they were not was they didn't have incredibly
Speaker 1: long driving ranges. But at first that didn't really matter.
Speaker 1: And the reason it didn't matter is because with the
Speaker 1: development of the automobile also came the development of the
Speaker 1: road system in the United States. So here in the US,
Speaker 1: at least, the place you were most likely to encounter
Speaker 1: roads that were suitable for driving on were in cities,
Speaker 1: which meant that your driving range didn't have to be
Speaker 1: that far. You weren't doing miles and miles of driving
Speaker 1: every single day. You might be doing a few miles
Speaker 1: of driving, which was important for electric vehicles because there
Speaker 1: was no real way to recharge once you hit the road. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In fact, they had the uh, the the original idea.
Speaker 1: I guess you know where Tesla is getting his battery
Speaker 1: swap idea from. I'm sorry, Musca, I guess I always
Speaker 1: refer to him as Tesla, but that's not correct. Of course,
Speaker 1: I'm sure he would love that. Actually, while the Tesla,
Speaker 1: the Tesla models that are proposing that, you know, they'll
Speaker 1: be these battery swap situations where you can drive up
Speaker 1: and leave your old battery, pick up a brand new one.
Speaker 1: So that's a quick change, a relative quick change, and
Speaker 1: then you're on your way and you have to return
Speaker 1: for that battery. Uh, you know, it's like a rental
Speaker 1: almost you have to come back and get it. But uh,
Speaker 1: that idea is nothing brand new. Of course, these these
Speaker 1: old taxis that I'm talking about would drive into a
Speaker 1: station and they would swap the batter rasing their back
Speaker 1: out on the road to collect the next fair. It
Speaker 1: had as little downtime as possible, and they ran constantly
Speaker 1: around the clock. But you know they were constantly getting
Speaker 1: new batteries as well. Right, And if you look at
Speaker 1: the development of the roads. Once we got to a
Speaker 1: point where roads were being built out beyond the cities,
Speaker 1: where they were connecting different cities together, a lot of
Speaker 1: people had the desire to travel those roads. The roads
Speaker 1: were there by necessity, but now people were like, I
Speaker 1: have an opportunity to go places I couldn't go before.
Speaker 1: But the problem was the electric vehicles weren't the vehicles
Speaker 1: that could get them there, because if there was further
Speaker 1: away than say eighteen miles, you weren't going to reach
Speaker 1: your destination. So the internal combustion engine had an advantage
Speaker 1: over that, and that you could have fueling stations along
Speaker 1: the way. And the other huge advantage was because Henry
Speaker 1: Ford figured out how to do mass production and through
Speaker 1: mass production, they were able to dramatically reduce the price
Speaker 1: of a vehicle. So a an internal combustion engine car
Speaker 1: cost about a third of what an electric vehicle did.
Speaker 1: So you have this mass adoption of the internal combustion engine. Now,
Speaker 1: this is why the reason why I even lay that
Speaker 1: groundwork is as the United States in particular becomes a
Speaker 1: car culture, and as more and more people start driving
Speaker 1: vehicles that use internal combustion, you have more and more
Speaker 1: emissions from those vehicles, and it begins to accumulate over time.
Speaker 1: And depending upon the type of fuel you're using, if
Speaker 1: it's diesel, you get a lot of emissions that contribute
Speaker 1: to smog. And then we start seeing super smoggy cities
Speaker 1: in different parts of the country. And by the nineteen
Speaker 1: fifties and nineteen sixties, you had people concerned about the
Speaker 1: quality of air. True, and the cities are inherently bad
Speaker 1: about this because they containue, they capture all this, they
Speaker 1: get it all in place. And not only that, but
Speaker 1: you've also got some cities that geographically kind of hold
Speaker 1: on to that material it's expelled from these vehicles. Los
Speaker 1: Angeles is the classic example here in the United States,
Speaker 1: exactly right. Can look at some old photographs of smog
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles and you can't even see buildings. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's like a heavy, heavy fog that hung over
Speaker 1: the city and eventually blow away. It would it would
Speaker 1: go away, but um not long you know, not long
Speaker 1: after it blows out of there, it would come right
Speaker 1: back again because there are so many vehicles that were
Speaker 1: emitting so many um uh you know, bad things for
Speaker 1: the environment, but the noxious gases, right, yeah, stuff that
Speaker 1: was bad for the environment. It could cause health issues
Speaker 1: if if it was really like if it's a really
Speaker 1: smoggy day to this day, in certain cities, when it's
Speaker 1: really smoggy, you will hear warnings on the news like
Speaker 1: limit your amount of time outdoors, especially on hot days
Speaker 1: where it can be aggravated, because it can end up
Speaker 1: either causing or aggravating health issues. Sure, and you can
Speaker 1: see examples of this in China today it's really really heavy.
Speaker 1: I mean there's still um and in parts of Europe too,
Speaker 1: you know, exactly right, Yeah, there's you can look at
Speaker 1: modern day Beijing and see what you know, Los Angeles
Speaker 1: looked like several decades ago here in the States, right,
Speaker 1: so by the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties, different regions
Speaker 1: in the US we're looking at ways of improving air
Speaker 1: quality and limiting pollution. And it was really patchwork, you know,
Speaker 1: for a long time until about nineteen sixty seven. That's
Speaker 1: when the US Congress passed the Air Quality Act. Now
Speaker 1: this was the predecessor to the Clean Air Act. The
Speaker 1: Air Quality Act had a disadvantage in that it was
Speaker 1: meant to have kind of a centralized organization headed by
Speaker 1: the Secretary Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, to designate
Speaker 1: air quality regions around the United States, and then the
Speaker 1: states that those air quality regions were within, we're supposed
Speaker 1: to come up with a plan for pollution control. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, the federal government was saying, here are
Speaker 1: the areas we have to be worried about, all right, Georgia, California, Texas.
Speaker 1: You I take care of those places. And this lack
Speaker 1: of a cohesive approach meant that it was pretty much
Speaker 1: doomed to not meet its its goals. And in fact,
Speaker 1: after three years by they had fewer than thirty six
Speaker 1: regions defined, less than three dozen of the had had
Speaker 1: been defined at all, and no state had any sort
Speaker 1: of pollution control uh comprehensive plan. And so the solution
Speaker 1: then was to bring it all under the control of
Speaker 1: the U. S. Congress. Right, Yes, that was when the
Speaker 1: Congress ray convened and started to say, all right, well,
Speaker 1: this this plan was noble in its intention. We wanted
Speaker 1: to make sure we weren't imposing the federal will on
Speaker 1: the states. But it's not working. So that's where the
Speaker 1: Clean Air Acts to tie all this together so that
Speaker 1: you understand what's happening at that particular time. This is
Speaker 1: this is well, well you know the I guess the
Speaker 1: terment we're gonna throw around here a little bit today
Speaker 1: maybe as the cafe standards and cafe standards were an
Speaker 1: act did somewhere around nineteen seventy five. I think the
Speaker 1: regulations these are set of regulations that were enacted by Congress.
Speaker 1: And nineteen seventy five you're you're talking about like the
Speaker 1: tail end of the Arab oil embargo, so you know
Speaker 1: the fuel crisis. You know where um you see the
Speaker 1: lines of people and you know the no gas today
Speaker 1: ration ing and all the rationing with the odd even
Speaker 1: system and all that. Um, that is that's the environment
Speaker 1: that we're talking about. Yeah, so this was, um, you know,
Speaker 1: this was a serious situation for multiple reasons. Also in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy, that's when uh, you know, you had the
Speaker 1: introduction of Earth Day, so you had this growing support
Speaker 1: for a conservation and uh and and concern about the environment. Uh.
Speaker 1: In at the same time where you have things like
Speaker 1: the oil crisis. I mean, all this stuff is coming
Speaker 1: to a head. So it's all fueling this. And we were, well,
Speaker 1: we were starting to understand the effects on the human body,
Speaker 1: just just exactly what that that smog was doing to
Speaker 1: people that are walking around in the next cloud of
Speaker 1: of you know, just awful stock x in there and saying, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, it's weird. We're seeing a lot more people
Speaker 1: with asthma these days, that kind of stuff, or or
Speaker 1: bronchitis or things of that nature. Respiratory illnesses. We can't
Speaker 1: quite put our finger on exactly what's causing it, but
Speaker 1: it's happening frequently, and and and even if you were
Speaker 1: to argue that the pollution may not cause it, it it
Speaker 1: certainly exacerbated it. So uh. This ended up creating the
Speaker 1: Cleaner Act, which set the national standards for pollution emissions
Speaker 1: eventually and created a timeline for it, which had to
Speaker 1: be adjusted multiple times because, as it turned out, the
Speaker 1: standards were uh. The standards to make the engines operate
Speaker 1: in what had been determined to be a safe uh
Speaker 1: set of parameters meant that manufacturers couldn't find a way
Speaker 1: to meet that and also make a car that worked.
Speaker 1: So so those those UM, those goals kept getting pushed.
Speaker 1: There was there were UH they they started to look
Speaker 1: at pushing the deadline back in seven. They pushed it
Speaker 1: back again in um mainly because the technology to create
Speaker 1: something that was able to operate under these standards and
Speaker 1: do its job was not really an achievable goal for
Speaker 1: something that wouldn't cost an astronomical amount of money. And
Speaker 1: you know one thing that I don't think we've even
Speaker 1: mentioned yet is we say cafe standards. That means corporate
Speaker 1: average fuel economy, and that's across the line of vehicles,
Speaker 1: across the whole fleet of vehicles. It's not like one
Speaker 1: particular vehicle has to meet the standard. It has to
Speaker 1: be an average of all vehicles produced. And I know
Speaker 1: there's other there's other stuff that goes into this. There's
Speaker 1: there's a big vinn diagram that makes this all work.
Speaker 1: But um, the standards are very very, uh tough to meet.
Speaker 1: I mean they're they're they're a strict set of stet
Speaker 1: of standards. That especially the latest round, which was I'm
Speaker 1: announced and I think it was two thousand eight, all
Speaker 1: the way through the model year. And when manufacturers see
Speaker 1: the list of what they have to meet, the goals
Speaker 1: that they have to meet in order to be in
Speaker 1: compliance with this agreement to sign this agreement and say, yeah,
Speaker 1: we agreed to sell vehicles in the United States, we
Speaker 1: have to meet these goals. Uh, it is a steep
Speaker 1: set of standards. And I find it interesting that looking
Speaker 1: back now you know the agreement, the initial agreement in
Speaker 1: two thou eight, um, all those it was very stringent,
Speaker 1: very's very tough. Um. Thirteen major auto manufacturers signed that agreement,
Speaker 1: you know, a bit begrudgingly. You know that they say, well, okay,
Speaker 1: we can probably meet these but there's a lot of
Speaker 1: back and forth. Volkswagen and Mercedes Benz had the biggest
Speaker 1: objection to it. And I don't know if Volkswagen ever
Speaker 1: signed that agreement. I I don't know how. I've been
Speaker 1: looking all day trying to find out if they actually
Speaker 1: signed the agreement. But I can only find information that
Speaker 1: goes back into two two thousand eight where they say
Speaker 1: Volkswagen has as of now not signed this agree. Interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: one of those things where you can't find any definitive
Speaker 1: update about whether they did or did not sign up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And the reason was they said that it's UM and
Speaker 1: i'll just paraphrase this is because they said that UM
Speaker 1: it places an unfair fairly high burden on passenger cars well,
Speaker 1: allowing a greater flexibility to let's say a heavier light truck.
Speaker 1: So we're saying it's not exactly uh, the way that
Speaker 1: we'd like to see it happen. And it's penalizing to
Speaker 1: involve things, penalizing people that make UM passenger vehicles with
Speaker 1: diesel engines. It's not quite fair to them. It's white
Speaker 1: Mercedes and Volkswagen said, I don't know about this agreement.
Speaker 1: I don't think we're gonna sign it. And I will
Speaker 1: still dig into that and see if they actually ever did.
Speaker 1: But around two that was kind of the talk around
Speaker 1: the circles was why is not why is b W
Speaker 1: not signing this? And you know it's we'll get more
Speaker 1: into the diesel stuff in a minute to explain, you know,
Speaker 1: some of the issues that manufacturers run into. Scott Benjamin
Speaker 1: and I will be back to talk a bit more
Speaker 1: about the Volkswagen scandal after this quick break. The scandal
Speaker 1: is pretty awful. That being said, I also have at
Speaker 1: least some sympathy for the difficulty that engineers space to
Speaker 1: make things that are satisfying to drive, that operate within
Speaker 1: the the fuel economy and efficiency that is dictated by
Speaker 1: the government, as well as work within the emission standards. Okay,
Speaker 1: you just said the magic three there. That's the three things.
Speaker 1: It's it's fuel economy, performance and emissions and you can
Speaker 1: it's have you ever heard the phrase you can have
Speaker 1: it done quickly, you can have it done well, or
Speaker 1: you could have it done cheaply. You can pick two
Speaker 1: out of the three. Yeah, yeah, and you're never gonna
Speaker 1: find all three. R Well, somehow folks like I can
Speaker 1: managed to do all three with their diesel engines back
Speaker 1: in two thousand. Oh wow, it was magical too, as
Speaker 1: it turns out. But before we jump ahead to that
Speaker 1: a little bit more, just to kind of cover our bases, uh,
Speaker 1: the Environmental Protection Agency has given been given a lot
Speaker 1: of control as well. When it comes to the emission standards,
Speaker 1: they were able to establish the National Ambient air Quality
Speaker 1: Standards or in a a Q snacks. I gotta say,
Speaker 1: that's a new one to me. Yeah, that's the one
Speaker 1: that where the deadline had been extended a couple of times,
Speaker 1: like where where it was clear the states could not
Speaker 1: meet that deadline. So I mean, what do you do, Like,
Speaker 1: do you what's the well? I guess what's the fine?
Speaker 1: And how do you define how much each place pays?
Speaker 1: I mean based on what the offense is. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: measure that again. And and you know, because pollution also
Speaker 1: doesn't doesn't necessarily obeyed geography, right. You could have pollution
Speaker 1: that is produced in one place, but it's another place
Speaker 1: that's dealing with it. Uh. And in states where you
Speaker 1: have big cities that are close to the border, it
Speaker 1: may be that one city is actually producing the pollution,
Speaker 1: but the other city is the one that's really suffering
Speaker 1: from it. Dumping into rivers is a great example. You know,
Speaker 1: it's stuff like that where it flows downstream, Yeah exactly,
Speaker 1: or trucked into a different region. Just simple air pattern exactly.
Speaker 1: You know, weather patterns can push it so, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: they put the deadlines a couple of times. It made
Speaker 1: me think of like if you're if you're a parent
Speaker 1: of a kid and you say, I need you to
Speaker 1: pick up all these toys before five o'clock and you're
Speaker 1: coming there and it's all the toys aren't picked up,
Speaker 1: and you're thinking, well, all right, you need to pick
Speaker 1: up all these toys before six o'clock because you're like,
Speaker 1: I don't really want to punish you, but I really
Speaker 1: do want you to pick up these toys where it's done.
Speaker 1: But they've just thrown them in their brother's closet. Yeah, see,
Speaker 1: pushing it down the road. Yeah, for me, it was
Speaker 1: it was all just shoving it into the closet like
Speaker 1: that's that. If it's out of sight, that means it's clean. Um.
Speaker 1: So one of the things about the Clean Air Act
Speaker 1: is that it it did have standards for what kinds
Speaker 1: of emissions and how much how many you know, types
Speaker 1: of emissions could be created by a car. Carbon dioxide,
Speaker 1: by the way, non that list carbon dioxide, didn't. You know?
Speaker 1: That's the greenhouse gas and it's something that we're concerned about,
Speaker 1: but not on the list of the emissions that the
Speaker 1: Clean Air Act was concerned with. Instead, it was things
Speaker 1: like carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, and hydrocarbon emissions greenhouse gasses. Yeah,
Speaker 1: except for carbon dioxide. That was the only one that
Speaker 1: was kind of left out. But yeah, these are all
Speaker 1: greenhouse gasses. Yeah. And and diesel in particular is pretty
Speaker 1: bad about um nitrogen oxides, and that's the kind of
Speaker 1: stuff that contributes to smog uh formation. Yeah. You often
Speaker 1: see it written as like n O X or yes
Speaker 1: and people yea, yeah, hard knocks in that case. Uh
Speaker 1: So the standards of the emission centers themselves. When I
Speaker 1: say standard, it sounds like I could easily quote you,
Speaker 1: you know, here's how much uh nitrogen oxide the car
Speaker 1: is allowed to emit over a given amount of time.
Speaker 1: Not that simple. It all depends on the type of vehicle,
Speaker 1: like you were saying, between light trucks and passenger cars
Speaker 1: for example, or the age of the vehicle that that
Speaker 1: plays a factor as well. Um So, and also whether
Speaker 1: it's a gasoline powered vehicle or a diesel powered vehicle,
Speaker 1: because the emissions will be different depending upon those. So
Speaker 1: it's a little complicated, and I'm not going to be
Speaker 1: you know, spouting off specific numbers because it's just not
Speaker 1: there's no point to it. A different podcast. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's the that's the the incredibly tiny standards podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to get down to that, but play to
Speaker 1: go to sleep, yes evening, and I don't mind if
Speaker 1: you guys fall asleep to me. I don't do the
Speaker 1: listener mail thing anymore, so at least you're not gonna
Speaker 1: be woken up by a clason. Um So, like we said,
Speaker 1: the performance, the energy efficiency or fuel efficiency, I should say,
Speaker 1: and the emissions are those three things, and it is
Speaker 1: very hard to meet the expectations of all three of
Speaker 1: those at the same time because um As it turns out,
Speaker 1: a lot of the emissions control mechanisms have an effect
Speaker 1: on performance. Um they have an effect on and they
Speaker 1: can have an effect on fuel efficiency. For example, it's
Speaker 1: correlation is kind of a weird word, but there's an
Speaker 1: association between a very fuel efficient diesel engine and high
Speaker 1: production of nitrogen oxide. So you if you're an auto manufacturer,
Speaker 1: you have to make an engine to make your cargo,
Speaker 1: and you're using you know you want it to be
Speaker 1: a diesel powered engine. You have specific standards, you have
Speaker 1: to meet for fuel efficiency, that's one of the things
Speaker 1: you've got to you know, one of the boxes you
Speaker 1: have to check off. But you also have standards you
Speaker 1: have to meet for emissions. That's the other box you've
Speaker 1: got to check off. And in this relationship, as one
Speaker 1: goes up, the other goes down in the in the
Speaker 1: bad way, right Like, as one improves, the other one
Speaker 1: is getting worse. So how do you balance that out?
Speaker 1: Plus make sure that the car performs in such a
Speaker 1: way that it's not just drivable, but people want to
Speaker 1: drive that a consumer would actually want to drive that vehicle.
Speaker 1: Because when you start playing around with these three things
Speaker 1: that you've mentioned, Um, I'll argue that consumers are and
Speaker 1: I know that this is I guess maybe controversial, and
Speaker 1: that you know, some people say, no, that's what I
Speaker 1: care about most. He's always gonna be someone like that.
Speaker 1: But um I would say that most people care less
Speaker 1: about the actual emissions of the vehicle than they do
Speaker 1: about the fuel economy and the way that the car performs.
Speaker 1: Are fuels and dry, right, because the fuel efficiency is
Speaker 1: going to impact your wallet, right, you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: how much fuel you're gonna have to buy to get
Speaker 1: your car to go from place to place and performance
Speaker 1: obviously the way the car feels emissions. I would argue
Speaker 1: for most people, they want the emissions to be at
Speaker 1: a level that is acceptable for the region therein Well
Speaker 1: what I mean by that, and I don't I don't
Speaker 1: mean to you know, spark any kind of big controversy
Speaker 1: or anything. But what I'm saying is that when you
Speaker 1: buy a new vehicle off the lot, you assume that
Speaker 1: it's going to be compliant with current CAFE or not CAFE,
Speaker 1: but rather emission standards in that area and in the
Speaker 1: U S in general. It's going to pass. It's going
Speaker 1: to be a clean vehicle, and it wouldn't be sold
Speaker 1: as a new car otherwise it wouldn't be allowed to
Speaker 1: Well no, but I mean you pick up, you know,
Speaker 1: and a seven year old used cars, you take it
Speaker 1: in for the emissions test, you know, as most people
Speaker 1: have to do now around big cities at least, um,
Speaker 1: you know, yearly before you get the renewal of your
Speaker 1: tags or whatever. Um, there's always that chance that they're
Speaker 1: gonna say, sorry, you're just over on on this, and
Speaker 1: um here's the recommended fix. You've got thirty days to
Speaker 1: make that fix. Otherwise you're not allowed to drive this
Speaker 1: vehicle on Georgia Highways Georgia Rhodes and UH and And
Speaker 1: you know, I think there's limits to that too. You know,
Speaker 1: you can spend a certain dollar amount on the fixes
Speaker 1: that I think you're limited, Like you don't have to
Speaker 1: spend ten thousand dollars to get your car compliant with whatever,
Speaker 1: but but you might have to spend you know, a
Speaker 1: minimum or a maximum rather of three dollars or whatever
Speaker 1: it happens to be. I don't know the number, but
Speaker 1: they don't want you to go crazy, you know, to
Speaker 1: have to make to make the car twice as expensive
Speaker 1: as I find it's all very funny. I find the
Speaker 1: whole emissions game kind of funny. Well, yeah, because it's
Speaker 1: it's a balance between what is supposed to be environmentally responsible,
Speaker 1: what is supposed to cause the least amount of harmful
Speaker 1: effect on other people, but also not supposed to break
Speaker 1: the bank. Yeah I know, but but do you see
Speaker 1: what I mean? Though? And I find this funny and
Speaker 1: we can talk about this maybe in another podcast. I
Speaker 1: don't know, it seems to fit here a little bit,
Speaker 1: But it's funny that if the car doesn't pass, they say, well,
Speaker 1: you can spend three on it, and if it doesn't
Speaker 1: pass again, we'll just kind of give you okay for
Speaker 1: this year. It's like we're we're accepting that, you know,
Speaker 1: it's still not compliant with our with our rules and regulations.
Speaker 1: And then also your car can age out of this
Speaker 1: so that after ten years or fifteen years or whatever
Speaker 1: happens to me, I think it's ten, you don't have
Speaker 1: to have that car emissions tested anymore to get your tags.
Speaker 1: And that seems kind of stilly to me too, because
Speaker 1: at that point, most of that stuff on your cars
Speaker 1: where and out to the point where it's going to
Speaker 1: probably not pass anyways. Right, the emissions are gonna be alright,
Speaker 1: it's going to be beyond the emission standard. And those
Speaker 1: are the heavy polluters, those are the ones that you know,
Speaker 1: do admit more. So maybe they're thinking at that point
Speaker 1: that you're not driving it as heavily as I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm I really when I look at this
Speaker 1: from several different angles, the emissions testing thing, I it's
Speaker 1: really confusing. Well, I mean, and when we get into
Speaker 1: the Volkswagen stuff in particular, it gets a little confusing
Speaker 1: because ultimately you hear the news from the government saying,
Speaker 1: all right, if you own Volkswagen, don't worry, you're not
Speaker 1: We're not going to penalize you for that because it's
Speaker 1: not your fault. So you're like, well, but it's still
Speaker 1: producing the pollution. Let's say that. I'll say I drove
Speaker 1: a Fiat from I don't know, I'm gonna make this
Speaker 1: up ten years ago or seven years ago, so it
Speaker 1: still has to be emissions compliant. If that car doesn't pass,
Speaker 1: like I just said, if it doesn't pass emissions, you
Speaker 1: have thirty days to make the fixes. Otherwise you're not
Speaker 1: legally allowed to drive that car. So they're saying, we're
Speaker 1: giving all these Volkswagen vehicles that are on the road
Speaker 1: right now that we know will pass the test, but
Speaker 1: they're passing it. They're cheating, they're cheating, but we know
Speaker 1: that they're not compliant, but we're allowing you the time
Speaker 1: until Volkswagen comes back with a fix. So there's gonna
Speaker 1: be like this year or two years maybe where they
Speaker 1: know what's happening. And again another confusing all in this, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you know it's like they're giving a free pass. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and I have some sympathy for for the government
Speaker 1: side of this, because how do you deal with this otherwise?
Speaker 1: Do you just tell I mean, you can't go and
Speaker 1: confiscate everyone's vehicle. You can't take the keys from everybody's
Speaker 1: car and say this is part until comes up with fix. Congratulations,
Speaker 1: you've spent all that money on something that you can't use.
Speaker 1: You can't. Yeah, it's it's a it's a complicated situation.
Speaker 1: We've got more to say in this classic episode of
Speaker 1: tech Stuff after these quick messages, we talked about emissions.
Speaker 1: How do cars control emissions in the first place? Where
Speaker 1: the systems in a car, specifically a diesel engine car
Speaker 1: that are are designed in order to reduce emissions of
Speaker 1: this nitro nitrogen oxide in particular, but other stuff as well.
Speaker 1: And there are lots of things, um that are part
Speaker 1: of this. There is their combustion chambers that have been
Speaker 1: designed so that they can process the fuel better before
Speaker 1: it gets released, or burn it off in a way
Speaker 1: where you're not gonna have nitrogen oxide anymore as complete
Speaker 1: it burn as possible. Yeah, there are some that are
Speaker 1: designed to use catalysts that will make the nitrogen oxide
Speaker 1: break apart. So as you get nitrogen and oxygen, which
Speaker 1: that's there's no problem. There are Our atmosphere is primarily nitrogen. Sure,
Speaker 1: and you're talking right now, you're talking about after after
Speaker 1: it's gone through combustions, right, Yeah, there are some that
Speaker 1: are in the combustion phase too, like just the combustion
Speaker 1: chamber and fuel systems. Lube oil consumption can have an
Speaker 1: effect to if you if you design your car so
Speaker 1: that it's much more efficient with that or your engine
Speaker 1: I should say, if it's much more efficient than that.
Speaker 1: But there's also like particulate filters on the on the
Speaker 1: end of it, um, the catalysts which can break up
Speaker 1: the nitrogen oxide into nitrogen and oxygen. You're talking about
Speaker 1: the the urea injection systems, which further burns the soot,
Speaker 1: and so did the particular filters those are those are
Speaker 1: kind of neat particular filters are interesting to maybe because
Speaker 1: when I was with Chrysler doing U technical training, you know,
Speaker 1: the service people, um, the technicians there rather um we
Speaker 1: were talking about Dodge Ram pickup trucks that had a
Speaker 1: diesel particular filter that would regenerate itself. So some of
Speaker 1: these are single use where they fill up. And one
Speaker 1: of the byproducts of burning diesel fuel is soot. You
Speaker 1: get a lot, there's a lot of soot that's left over,
Speaker 1: and it's almost like an like an ash type product.
Speaker 1: And you don't see ash really coming out of the
Speaker 1: tailpipe of of diesel powered vehicles. So where does it
Speaker 1: all go. Well, goes to these big filters and they're
Speaker 1: called particular filters as you said, and the single use ones.
Speaker 1: That's pretty simple. I mean, the idea is that it
Speaker 1: just fills up and eventually if they get it emptied
Speaker 1: or replaced, kind of like a filter on a on
Speaker 1: a like an air conditioning system. That's relatively rare now
Speaker 1: I mean relatively there's still out there. But the ones
Speaker 1: that really you're interesting to me. And oh the other
Speaker 1: the other version of this would be the urea injection,
Speaker 1: which further burned allows it to be further burned. Um,
Speaker 1: and you have to refill that system every let's say,
Speaker 1: every ten thousand miles or I think every five thousand miles,
Speaker 1: and that's part of the fix will talk about. But um,
Speaker 1: the regenerative ones, these things heat up to something like
Speaker 1: you know, six hundred degrees celsius or twelve hundred degrees celsius.
Speaker 1: It gets really really hot, and it's it's hot enough
Speaker 1: to burn soot. And when it happens is very interesting.
Speaker 1: It happens on the highway when you're driving, because I mean,
Speaker 1: imagine something underneath your vehicle that heats up to the
Speaker 1: point where it's twelve hundred degrees celsius. If you were
Speaker 1: parked on you know, grass like dry grass somewhere, it
Speaker 1: would ignite the grass below an asphalt. You would melt it.
Speaker 1: If you're standing next to it, I mean it would
Speaker 1: it would burn your leg. And it's a it's a hot,
Speaker 1: hot thing. I mean that's that's twice the temperature of
Speaker 1: a of a pizza oven. Um, It's it's really really hot.
Speaker 1: And it was interesting to see how they developed a
Speaker 1: way to decide exactly when it happens. And it's all
Speaker 1: electronically controlled. It's all very precise in the way they
Speaker 1: do it. And it has to be, obviously, because if
Speaker 1: it if it weren't, it wouldn't be safe for anybody
Speaker 1: you put in your garage, and if it's still doing
Speaker 1: this regenerative thing, your house is up in flames. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's something we generally considered to be a bad thing.
Speaker 1: That would be so they had to be very careful
Speaker 1: about how they designed it, but also very precise. And
Speaker 1: that's and that shows you how um carefully they can
Speaker 1: decide when things happen electronically in your car. So just
Speaker 1: one example, I guess. Yeah, And so the the these
Speaker 1: systems are obviously the things that allow a diesel well
Speaker 1: really any any engine for cars, but we're specifically focused
Speaker 1: on diesel. These are the sort of things that allow
Speaker 1: diesel engines to operate within those emission standard parameters. But
Speaker 1: they do have an effect on fuel efficiency and on
Speaker 1: and really on performance. And so here's where we get
Speaker 1: into what Volkswagen did and where the scandal comes in.
Speaker 1: So you've mentioned emission testing. Yeah, that's something that if
Speaker 1: you are living in certain cities, you have to go
Speaker 1: through before you can go and get your tags renewed
Speaker 1: for the next year. I remember growing up in rural
Speaker 1: Georgia that was not a thing. I didn't know anything
Speaker 1: about it until I moved here to Atlanta and I
Speaker 1: saw these kind of tent like structures outside of usually
Speaker 1: you know, like a like a mechanics or something. You
Speaker 1: see and say emission testing bucks or whatever it is,
Speaker 1: and I kept thinking like, well, what's that for. And
Speaker 1: it wasn't until we didn't own a car at first,
Speaker 1: to me and my wife, and when we finally got
Speaker 1: one and we found out like, oh, okay, that makes
Speaker 1: sense because you're in a you're in a dense populated
Speaker 1: area where there are a lot of people, especially in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: which is a very car centric city, it makes sense
Speaker 1: for it to be there. But just I had never
Speaker 1: encountered it before. That's me every time it's your birthday
Speaker 1: because you're renewing your tags, so there's you know, a
Speaker 1: hundred bucks right there they have to pay out or whatever,
Speaker 1: and then they hit you with another twenty dollars for
Speaker 1: emissions if you car fits that certain parameter those know
Speaker 1: the year or whatever. You know, it's it all depends
Speaker 1: on like what year you bought the car and what
Speaker 1: model it was, and and how how old is it
Speaker 1: and all that kind of stuff. Um, I always feel
Speaker 1: like I need a degree to figure out whether or
Speaker 1: not you get get the emissions testing. You know, it's
Speaker 1: even more frustrated to me. I live. I live in
Speaker 1: an extreme northern part of this county that the Atlanta
Speaker 1: is in it's an odd shaped county, so it's way
Speaker 1: way far away. It's like thirty miles away, not I
Speaker 1: mean not even half a mile down the road is
Speaker 1: the next county where they don't do emission They don't
Speaker 1: do emissions testing, So I'm not even anywhere near the city,
Speaker 1: but i still have to do this emissions teston in
Speaker 1: the county. Yeah, exactly. Well, uh so what was going
Speaker 1: on with the Volkswagen one was that the car quote
Speaker 1: unquote new when it was being tested, and it would
Speaker 1: turn on all these emissions controls, essentially shutting out off
Speaker 1: emissions for the effectively shutting off emissions for the duration
Speaker 1: of the test, so that during the test phase, this
Speaker 1: clean diesel engine, which is the way it was marketed
Speaker 1: as clean diesel vehicles, was remarkable. It had performance, it
Speaker 1: had it was meeting the emission standard, it had fuel economy.
Speaker 1: This was a miracle machine. Yeah, and other manufacturers at
Speaker 1: the time we're kind of marveling and how Volkswagen had
Speaker 1: done it. Now, Volkswagen have been in the diesel game
Speaker 1: for a long time, so they thought, well, this is
Speaker 1: superior German engineering. They've got some kind of idea of
Speaker 1: how this works, and we just we just can't seem
Speaker 1: to get the performance angle out of this whole thing.
Speaker 1: You know, we can do the emissions, we can do
Speaker 1: the fuel economy. We can't do the performance where we
Speaker 1: can do It's that it's that old you can do
Speaker 1: you know, pick two of those things. But they were
Speaker 1: all scratching their heads like, well, how is Volkswagen doing this?
Speaker 1: And it turns out this this You hear the term
Speaker 1: defeat device, and a lot of people will picture a
Speaker 1: physical device you could hold in your hands, like something
Speaker 1: something you would shove inside the exhaust pipe or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this term defeat device is a little bit deceptive
Speaker 1: and that it's it's really just um, it's a software
Speaker 1: code and that's all it is. It's a very cleverly
Speaker 1: written line of so incredibly clever because you know, my
Speaker 1: first my first thought when I heard about the scandal
Speaker 1: that they had installed software that would defeat the emissions
Speaker 1: testing by by incorporating the emissions controls during the test
Speaker 1: and then turning them off afterwards, so you get that
Speaker 1: fuel efficiency and performance back, but you're emitting much more pollution.
Speaker 1: At that time, my first reaction was, I wonder if
Speaker 1: it's just when they connect the computer system. Like it
Speaker 1: it it uh, it detects when the computer system gets
Speaker 1: connected to it. No, it's way more subtle than that. Well,
Speaker 1: because there are other situations where you would use that,
Speaker 1: and we knew that. They knew that. You know, people
Speaker 1: have their own home diagnostic tools that can plug in.
Speaker 1: We're talking about the the O B D two ports,
Speaker 1: the diagnostic ports on the driver's side, and it's it's
Speaker 1: it goes far deeper than that because it takes into
Speaker 1: account the wheel speed, to account the position of the
Speaker 1: steering wheel. Everything is read. You know, your your car
Speaker 1: is talking all the time to other models, are talking
Speaker 1: to other modules and figuring out what's going on. And
Speaker 1: they determined that they knew exactly the the parameters that
Speaker 1: were set because these are government standards that are in
Speaker 1: place for a vehicle emissions test and they're the same everywhere.
Speaker 1: So it's very very easy to say, when this condition
Speaker 1: is met, then you do this, and when this has meant,
Speaker 1: you do that, and if these two things are met,
Speaker 1: then you do this. And it's so it's so simple
Speaker 1: for them to cheat this way. I don't know why
Speaker 1: other people haven't tried this in the past. If well,
Speaker 1: maybe they have as possible, but this was one where
Speaker 1: where it was found out. Yeah, it was. It's like
Speaker 1: you said, it's very simple. It's an if then right,
Speaker 1: if conditions are equivalent to a testing situation, then engage
Speaker 1: the emission controls like that. That's that's basic computer programming,
Speaker 1: is the if then statement. And they obviously we're oversimplifying
Speaker 1: for the purposes of this discussion, and but that's that's
Speaker 1: the basic model they followed, which is incredibly subversive and
Speaker 1: brilliant at the same time. Yeah, I mean there could
Speaker 1: I don't know how many parameters they've got here, but
Speaker 1: there could be ten different indicators that the vehicle is
Speaker 1: an emissions testing at deadpoint, and and then you react
Speaker 1: this way. But then once you unplug all that and
Speaker 1: you're on your way, we don't want that. We don't
Speaker 1: want to react that way because the driver will say,
Speaker 1: you know, I went in for emissions testing in the
Speaker 1: car feels like it's broken wrong, it's not responding the
Speaker 1: way it should. I'm not getting the fuel economy that
Speaker 1: I was getting before. Why do you guys do to
Speaker 1: my car? So one of the two thousand sixteen thing
Speaker 1: that I was mentioning before Volkswagen has revealed that it
Speaker 1: has an emission control system that might only engage during tests.
Speaker 1: I got the feeling like this the way it's been reported,
Speaker 1: it sounds like someone who's already been caught doing something
Speaker 1: wrong and then when they are directly asked, hey, did
Speaker 1: you also do this, like it might be well, not
Speaker 1: against the rules. It plays right into why would they
Speaker 1: build models any different than they did the twenty teens,
Speaker 1: because fourteens and all the way back to oh eight,
Speaker 1: because they knew what worked and they hadn't been caught
Speaker 1: at that point yet. They had already manufactured those cars. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the two thousand sixteen one has the additional element
Speaker 1: and that it heats up a pollution control catalyst. And
Speaker 1: that's the thing that I was talking about, you know,
Speaker 1: separting out the nitrogen and oxygen, the nitro engine oxide
Speaker 1: into nitrogen and oxygen. That's what the twenty sixteen models have. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they had installed lean Knox traps and in certain vehicles
Speaker 1: and in other vehicles, you know, like after two thousand
Speaker 1: twelve they installed something that called the selective catalytic reduction systems,
Speaker 1: and uh in you know, I guess that's the one
Speaker 1: with the liquid urea solution that was sprayed into it.
Speaker 1: So it's a it's a much more complex system than
Speaker 1: the Lean Knox traps. But um that that him self
Speaker 1: is gonna be a problem for Volkswagen because they have
Speaker 1: to deal with all these different vehicles in different ways.
Speaker 1: They need different things for the fix and I can
Speaker 1: outline that later. Yeah, just a quick example, if you
Speaker 1: if you look up the news that you hear that
Speaker 1: like some of the models of the Facade were had
Speaker 1: twenty times the the allotted you know, the allowable amount
Speaker 1: of emissions when it was in its normal driving operation
Speaker 1: and I'm outside of the emissions right, and the Jetta
Speaker 1: was even worse. It could be between fifteen and thirty
Speaker 1: five times. Some of them were up to forty times
Speaker 1: the allowed amount of emissions of nitrogen ox eyed here,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna guess that those are the ones that were
Speaker 1: just the lean the Lean Knox traps equipped ones, because
Speaker 1: that's kind of other manufacturers We're saying, how can you
Speaker 1: get these these standing Heck, can you meet these standards
Speaker 1: with just a Lean Knox trap. It's there's just no way.
Speaker 1: We can't. We can't do it. How are you doing it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: That was the magic. Where's the lepre con inside your
Speaker 1: engine that's allowing this to happen? So here's a fun fact.
Speaker 1: Uh did you did you run across the name of
Speaker 1: the engineer who who is credited as discovering this. He's
Speaker 1: got a perfect name, all right. So it's Volkswagen that
Speaker 1: has been called out on this. The name of the
Speaker 1: engineer U S engineer whose discovery essentially led to the
Speaker 1: unveiling of the scandal is John German. No way, really,
Speaker 1: he's He's German the engineer, but not a German engineer. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And this is a private agency, right yeah, Actually he was. Um,
Speaker 1: so he also works not just with engineering, but he
Speaker 1: works with a uh kind of an environmental protection sort
Speaker 1: of organization. But he's not with the US government. No, no,
Speaker 1: he was not. Uh And so originally, in fact, he
Speaker 1: handed that information over to the US government. So originally
Speaker 1: what he was doing was purely he didn't suspect Volkswagen
Speaker 1: of doing anything hinky. What he was doing was he
Speaker 1: was looking at the nitrogen oxide emissions NOx emissions in
Speaker 1: Europe and seeing how how out of control they were
Speaker 1: in certain regions, and then looking at the data for
Speaker 1: the United States and saying, well, I mean, obviously there's
Speaker 1: a difference between the number of diesel vehicles on the
Speaker 1: road in Europe and those in the US. He was saying,
Speaker 1: but he was saying, well, you know, there's there's something
Speaker 1: clearly happening over here in the US, like the Volkswagen
Speaker 1: cars are amazing. Uh, maybe we can look into the
Speaker 1: engineering of the Volkswagen cars and give advice to European
Speaker 1: automakers to help out Europe. So it was it was
Speaker 1: purely in an approach to help someone else out that
Speaker 1: he even started looking into this. But he's then essentially
Speaker 1: what he did was he was measuring these levels on
Speaker 1: the road as like a highway travel or city travel
Speaker 1: versus in a lab environment. Yes, he specifically started looking
Speaker 1: at how the cars were performing in various environments and
Speaker 1: discovered there were vast inconsistencies, so real world situations versus
Speaker 1: lab situations exactly as dramatically well in this case, well,
Speaker 1: extremely different in the case of Volkswagen in particular. Yes,
Speaker 1: and so at this point he's saying, uh, something is
Speaker 1: really about this, and was tempted to even perhaps call
Speaker 1: it a defeat device. At that stage, but he did not.
Speaker 1: He instead handed the data over to the e p
Speaker 1: A and as a courtesy, handed a report over to
Speaker 1: Volkswagen as well in two thousand fourteen. May two thousand fourteen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's been more than a year since this data
Speaker 1: got to Volkswagen, and Germans says the reason he sent
Speaker 1: it to Volkswagen was because perhaps it was legitimate oversight,
Speaker 1: something like maybe it was a fault in part of
Speaker 1: the engineering that could be addressed and fixed, that there
Speaker 1: might be an honest mistake here. And you know, he
Speaker 1: was giving them a huge benefit of the doubts. Sure,
Speaker 1: he might even be thinking that it's in this one
Speaker 1: particular line of vehicles, maybe there's a problem with that,
Speaker 1: or maybe it's a it's very it could be very
Speaker 1: very simple for you to change this. But he had
Speaker 1: no idea that this was the tip of the iceberg. Right,
Speaker 1: So the e p A starts looking into it, and
Speaker 1: it wasn't until September of this year, twenty fifteen that
Speaker 1: Volkswagen essentially came out and said, you got us, Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what, I Okay, they've known about it for
Speaker 1: a while. You you do have to give them some
Speaker 1: some credit, uh to come right out and say like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you you got us, You've got usparre and square out.
Speaker 1: They they said that due to some rogue software developers,
Speaker 1: like no one has come out to the point in
Speaker 1: Volkswagen to say this was a decision like they're not
Speaker 1: willing to say this decision goes all the way to
Speaker 1: the top. Yeah, it's more like someone lowered down made
Speaker 1: this decision without our our knowledge, and that's and we're
Speaker 1: suffering for. Although the top guy did step down. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: so I mean it's uh, it's it's definitely affected uh,
Speaker 1: their corporate structure as well. Yes, in the last month,
Speaker 1: it'll and it will continue to affect them heavily in
Speaker 1: the oncoming months. Yeah. Yeah, this is so far reaching.
Speaker 1: I mean I I sometimes sit around, like at my desk,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about like just the the sheer volume of
Speaker 1: vehicles not only here in the United States but worldwide
Speaker 1: vehicles or so, Yeah, we have what half a million
Speaker 1: here and it's a big deal here. I should imagine
Speaker 1: what it's like over there, What's what they're going through
Speaker 1: over there. But I just think about like the pure
Speaker 1: logistics of this whole thing. To be with some of
Speaker 1: the fixes that they're proposing and all that, and the
Speaker 1: time involved and the money involved, and you know, are
Speaker 1: they you know, the bigger questions are they going to
Speaker 1: come back from this? Are they gonna what's this gonna
Speaker 1: do to Diesel's reputation? Not only not only here but worldwide?
Speaker 1: I mean, everybody kind of bought into this. It's you know,
Speaker 1: we get a listen and we get listener mail all
Speaker 1: the time from listeners in Europe that prior to this,
Speaker 1: we're saying, why aren't you guys on Diesel like we
Speaker 1: are over here in Europe? Why aren't you Why aren't
Speaker 1: you doing that? And I mean it's one of those
Speaker 1: things where you look at it and you think it's
Speaker 1: a lie that we want to believe. Right. It's a
Speaker 1: convenient lie because it gives us the feeling that we're
Speaker 1: not contributing to pollution and we're getting the performance we
Speaker 1: want out of our vehicles and the fuel economy we
Speaker 1: want out of our vehicles. If you tell me that lie,
Speaker 1: I am probably inclined to believe it because it's to everyone.
Speaker 1: It seems to be to everyone's benefit until you strip
Speaker 1: away the lie and realize how much pollution is actually
Speaker 1: being dumped out there. A lot of people felt really
Speaker 1: good about driving you know, clean diesel engines. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's right there in the name clean Diesel. So people
Speaker 1: felt really good about going to VW and picking up
Speaker 1: a you know, t D I equipped engine, t D
Speaker 1: equipped vehicle and being happy about that, Like I'm doing
Speaker 1: my part. Yeah, Like I'm being responsible adult. I'm not
Speaker 1: getting one of those gas guzzlers that's eating up gasoline
Speaker 1: and pouring out tons of carbon monoxide out into the atmosphere.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah. And according to the Guardian, this is something
Speaker 1: you guys covered on Scott You were on an episode
Speaker 1: of Forward Thinking with Joe and Lauren while I was
Speaker 1: out on vacation and talked about this. But the Guardian
Speaker 1: estimated that it could have been around nine almost nine
Speaker 1: fifty thousand metric tons of nitrous oxide or nitrogen oxide
Speaker 1: emissions every year that this was this technology was out there.
Speaker 1: The numbers are just immense. I mean, it's it's all
Speaker 1: of this, this whole thing, And when you go back
Speaker 1: all the way to the two thousand eight model, you're
Speaker 1: you thinking that, well, this has been happening for seven years,
Speaker 1: for eight years now at this point, I guess model years. Um,
Speaker 1: it's just such a big, big problem. It's so enormous
Speaker 1: in all aspects. I really am having a hard time
Speaker 1: seeing how Volkswagen recovers from this. Right. And and as
Speaker 1: we pointed out earlier, if you already have one of
Speaker 1: these vehicles, then until there is a fix, you're going
Speaker 1: to continue to contribute to that that pollution. And it's
Speaker 1: not because you're a bad person. It's because the car itself,
Speaker 1: the way it's designed. That's that's just how it works.
Speaker 1: I mean to put it bluntly, you were sold a lie,
Speaker 1: and you bought that lie. But you know why. It
Speaker 1: wasn't your fault. The government bought that lie too, because
Speaker 1: because the wool was pulled over its eyes. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: just kind of come clean. I drive a Volkswagen, but
Speaker 1: it's not a diesel. I think I mentioned that in
Speaker 1: the Forward Thinking episode two. And I love it. I mean,
Speaker 1: I have it's a great engine, it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: It's a gasoline burning engine. So I'm not involved in
Speaker 1: all this. And I gotta say that when I when
Speaker 1: I see a Volkswagon on the road, now, I consciously
Speaker 1: look to the lower right corner of the back end
Speaker 1: of the vehicle, and I try to see if it's
Speaker 1: a t D I equipped and a t D equipped vehicle,
Speaker 1: and I just think, like, what is that person going
Speaker 1: through right now? They're dealing with you know, they bought
Speaker 1: a car that they thought was you know all the
Speaker 1: things we said, and it's not. Uh, they're going to
Speaker 1: have to deal with the dealership very soon about you know,
Speaker 1: what they're going to do to fix this and how
Speaker 1: they're gonna do it. Um, it depends on what make
Speaker 1: and model you have, what they're gonna do, how they're
Speaker 1: gonna handle it. Um. It's not gonna cost you anything
Speaker 1: except it is going to be very very inconvenient for
Speaker 1: you in the near future. And do you continue to
Speaker 1: trust that manufacturer with with those people? Buy another Volkswagen
Speaker 1: when all this is said and done. Yeah, when when
Speaker 1: the two thousand seventeen models, presumably assuming that Volkswagen is
Speaker 1: able to produce them, when they come out, would they
Speaker 1: buy a diesel engine two thousand seventeen Volkswagen And well,
Speaker 1: other people that maybe we're kind of on the fence
Speaker 1: about Volkswagon, you know, they were considering it up until
Speaker 1: this point, or maybe someone just narrowly missed buying one,
Speaker 1: or just bought one the day the thing that this
Speaker 1: scandal broke. What do they do? I mean, there's so
Speaker 1: many individual situations that I'm really curious about right now,
Speaker 1: and it ripples out so far. So we've heard the
Speaker 1: term that that they could be facing billions of dollars
Speaker 1: in fines, and in fact, early on in this story
Speaker 1: it was said that Volkswagen had already set aside like
Speaker 1: seven point three billion dollars for fines. Right now, the
Speaker 1: Guardian estimates that the amount of fines may accumulate to
Speaker 1: around eighteen billion dollars. Now that matches what I heard initially.
Speaker 1: The very first number I heard was like eighteen points
Speaker 1: seven billion dollars in d p A finds strictly here
Speaker 1: for the United States. Now, going beyond that, there's gonna
Speaker 1: be fines to pay elsewhere well, because they have agreements
Speaker 1: with European nations as well. So I don't know how
Speaker 1: you come back from something like this, I really don't.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can save, you can put money away,
Speaker 1: and they you know, they have profitable quarters. I'm sure
Speaker 1: that you know. I haven't looked at the numbers of
Speaker 1: how much they make per quarter up to this point.
Speaker 1: But there's no way they're squirreling all that. Wait, they're
Speaker 1: using it for new products. They're putting it back into
Speaker 1: the business. Of course, they desperately need another love Bug movie.
Speaker 1: That's gonna do it high. Yeah. Well, if you wonder
Speaker 1: now if Disney will ever show The love Bug ever
Speaker 1: again after this? Uh, that was not involved. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: are you trying to implicate Lindsay Lohan in this. I'm
Speaker 1: talking about the new one. I'm going back to the
Speaker 1: original Fred Murray because I loved the original. I love that.
Speaker 1: It was fantastic film. I love it. Scott and I
Speaker 1: have a few more things to say about the Volkswagen
Speaker 1: scandal after this commercial break. One of the other things
Speaker 1: I wanted to mention, though, if you're talking about the
Speaker 1: ripple effect, this gets super crazy. This could contribute to
Speaker 1: a severe economic downturn in Europe for multiple reasons. UM.
Speaker 1: One is that the confidence of a major European manufacturer
Speaker 1: has gone into sharp decline for obvious reasons UM, and
Speaker 1: it has prompted several strategists equity strategists over at Bloomberg
Speaker 1: to readjust what their predictions were for the stocks Europe
Speaker 1: six hundred index and they have adjusted it lower than
Speaker 1: what they had predicted. And because of Volkswagen's association with
Speaker 1: China as well and the Chinese markets which are very uncertain,
Speaker 1: this whole mess could get really ugly from an economic standpoint,
Speaker 1: which I'm not gonna get into because this is not
Speaker 1: an economics podcast and I am in no way qualified
Speaker 1: to talk about that that aspect of it. But it's
Speaker 1: kind of like when you start pulling back and pulling
Speaker 1: back and pulling back, you keep asking, am I am
Speaker 1: I back far enough? Am I seeing the full picture? Yet?
Speaker 1: You know? Just just to tell you that, this last weekend,
Speaker 1: I was out with a couple of friends, my wife
Speaker 1: and I, and uh, this couple that we were out
Speaker 1: with said that they were um buying Volkswagen stock right
Speaker 1: now because it's at a low point. And I was thinking,
Speaker 1: I don't know, is that a good move or is
Speaker 1: that a bad move? And I was thinking at the moment,
Speaker 1: I said, you know what, that's probably a good move
Speaker 1: because it's probably gonna come back. It's probably gonna rebound
Speaker 1: and everything's gonna be fine. But the more I hear
Speaker 1: about this, the last couple of weeks that I've been
Speaker 1: you know, studying this, and especially this last week when
Speaker 1: the enormity of this situation is really just finally hit
Speaker 1: me how big this is. I don't really know. I
Speaker 1: don't know if that is a good investment or not. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I can't say for sure. And the stock
Speaker 1: price went from like a hundred and sixty seven dollars
Speaker 1: before the announcement of the discovery of this cheating or
Speaker 1: at least the public unveiling that you know, this was
Speaker 1: a thing. Uh today, when I checked it earlier, it
Speaker 1: was a hundred and two dollars. So it does the
Speaker 1: smart money by right now? Or do you wait and see?
Speaker 1: Because if you're talking about a company that maybe facing
Speaker 1: up to eighteen billion dollars in fines and we don't
Speaker 1: know that that's the full extent yet, I would be
Speaker 1: nervous to put money in that because I would think
Speaker 1: like this company might fall a little further before it
Speaker 1: bottoms out. It's probably not not the bottom yet. I
Speaker 1: think we can both agree with that. I mean, and plus,
Speaker 1: you know these fixes that they've outlined just this last week, Uh,
Speaker 1: these don't begin until and some of some of them,
Speaker 1: it's like a three phase thing. Some of them don't
Speaker 1: begin until late This is this is a long term
Speaker 1: problem for Folkswagen. It's not something that's gonna go away overnight.
Speaker 1: And it if you haven't read about it or you
Speaker 1: don't know exactly what they're gonna do for the fix, Um,
Speaker 1: it's going to be very, very costly for them. In
Speaker 1: addition to the fines that we're talking about, which are
Speaker 1: already enormous, what they're proposing is ridiculously expensive for a
Speaker 1: company to do. And yeah, and it costs not just
Speaker 1: money but also put potentially in performance of your vehicle,
Speaker 1: which also means it's gonna cost and customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Speaker 1: I mean, the costs here go beyond a dollar amount,
Speaker 1: you know. Can I just can I just run through
Speaker 1: this real quick? Die and Tore I've mentioned about four
Speaker 1: times now, but I will quickly go through it, and
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what they're doing. And this is this
Speaker 1: is UM. The plan is laid out by my um,
Speaker 1: the current US CEO, Michael horne Um. He spent several
Speaker 1: hours testifying in front of a congressional panel just this
Speaker 1: last week, and it's all about the you know, the
Speaker 1: emission scandal, and uh, you know the senators that he
Speaker 1: was in front of, they were, you know, they're angry
Speaker 1: at him. They were incredulous, you know that that this
Speaker 1: this car maker would try to cheat the buy in
Speaker 1: public like this, and the U. S. Government and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, sidestep all these U these standards that they
Speaker 1: in place. And and the funny thing is, and I
Speaker 1: don't know that really say funny, but he's agreeing with
Speaker 1: them throughout this whole testimony. He's saying, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm angry at the manufacturer as well. Are you know
Speaker 1: my company angry it for doing this. I didn't know
Speaker 1: that this is all happening. Um, you know, I'm also upset.
Speaker 1: And so he has a bit of sympathy. I mean,
Speaker 1: he gets That's how he gains, I guess, is his
Speaker 1: sympathy with the people that are listening right, Um, believe
Speaker 1: it or not, you know, whether you want to or not.
Speaker 1: So there's like three different groups here, and I'll quickly
Speaker 1: go through it. I'm not going to list all the
Speaker 1: vehicles or anything like that, but um, basically it covers
Speaker 1: two different engine types and you can kind of group
Speaker 1: these into three groups and you'll understand when I read it,
Speaker 1: but it's an old the older engine is the E
Speaker 1: N engine and the new one is the E A
Speaker 1: to A eight engine. And the first group is it
Speaker 1: affects his sixty seven thousand vehicles. This is the smallest
Speaker 1: of the three groups here in the United States, and
Speaker 1: the fix is just an updated software fix. And so
Speaker 1: these are for you know, like the newer two six models,
Speaker 1: and these are the ones that have the new E
Speaker 1: A to eight eight engine. UM. Again, the easiest fix,
Speaker 1: and that's because they're fitted with a selective catallactic reduction
Speaker 1: system or ext after treatment system that I mentioned earlier. UM,
Speaker 1: but really they're only going to need a software fixed
Speaker 1: to become compliant. And then the next group, this is, uh,
Speaker 1: the the I guess in between group, you know, not
Speaker 1: not the biggest group that we'll get to last. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is justeen are through passat t d I and
Speaker 1: this one will require an updated software fix and a
Speaker 1: possible hardware modification. So these are cars that have both
Speaker 1: a lean Knox trap that we mentioned and an scr
Speaker 1: UREA system as well. And of course, you know the
Speaker 1: software hardware modifications that they're talking about, they're not really
Speaker 1: specifying what the hardware modifications will be for this specific vehicle.
Speaker 1: But nine vehicles are affected with that, so that's kind
Speaker 1: of like phase two and that's going to begin in
Speaker 1: mid That first one was early and as a side
Speaker 1: note on that first one that I mentioned, uh, they
Speaker 1: do know that you know, fuel economy will likely stay
Speaker 1: the same, but they said performance might be slightly affected.
Speaker 1: And that's bad news for people that own those vehicles
Speaker 1: sixteen you know, golf OUTI, Jetta. You know, those vehicles
Speaker 1: are the ones that affected. So they don't know what
Speaker 1: it's going to do to the pisat t D I well.
Speaker 1: And the worst part about that is saying that they
Speaker 1: could be slightly affected me it even if it wasn't perceptible.
Speaker 1: By saying that it's going to be slightly affected, then
Speaker 1: you know the drivers are going to at least I
Speaker 1: feel like there's a change in performance, even if it's
Speaker 1: not detectable on a meaningful scale. If you know, if
Speaker 1: you've heard that your vehicles performance might be slightly affected,
Speaker 1: that's enough to psychologically push you to believe that it
Speaker 1: doesn't feel well, you're gonna be sensitive to You're gonna
Speaker 1: be overly sensitive to that you're gonna you're gonna think
Speaker 1: that whatever you're feeling is not what you should be
Speaker 1: feeling in your car even but honestly, it's probably going
Speaker 1: to affect low end torque. It's gonna affect acceleration. And
Speaker 1: that's and that's the two things that you would really notice.
Speaker 1: That's the two things that make a car fund to drive.
Speaker 1: I mean, in most situations, you taking out top end
Speaker 1: speed because most people don't hit the top ends. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's very few opportunities to do. If this if this
Speaker 1: fix somehow affected the top end, like maybe dropped it
Speaker 1: down five or something. You know, from the top end,
Speaker 1: not many people would ever experience them. But when you
Speaker 1: remove acceleration from say a stoplight or trying to get
Speaker 1: on the freeway, Uh, that's going to affect your customer base.
Speaker 1: People are gonna say, we don't want it. So the
Speaker 1: last group, and this is the biggest one, this affects Now,
Speaker 1: this is a bad group to this affects two thousand
Speaker 1: nine through two thousand fourteen, jetted T D Eyes, Golf
Speaker 1: T D Eyes, Beetle T D eyes out e A
Speaker 1: three's So you know how many of these vehicles you
Speaker 1: see on the road. They're everywhere all these cars. These
Speaker 1: are the ones that have a Lean Knox trap only.
Speaker 1: So these are the ones that may require the most work.
Speaker 1: And it's the largest group. Yeah, so it's probably going
Speaker 1: to require a a well, of course, it will require software,
Speaker 1: you know switch, it's gonna require hardware modifications that are
Speaker 1: probably in flude, adding a complete um SCR system, you
Speaker 1: know that that the cleaning system that we talked about,
Speaker 1: the UREAS system, and they've even talked about for this group.
Speaker 1: This is how complex this would be. They said, it's
Speaker 1: gonna take you know, between five and ten hours to
Speaker 1: make this type of fix and per vehicle, which is
Speaker 1: an enormous cost to the to the manufacturer for the
Speaker 1: time of the technician to do that, plus the parts
Speaker 1: the park can imagine what that costs. So they're talking
Speaker 1: about for this specific group of vehicles, this last group
Speaker 1: that they won't even start touching until late It affects Oh,
Speaker 1: by the way, three thousand of the four hundred and
Speaker 1: some odd that I think it's fours here in the
Speaker 1: States of the Yeah, they're talking about UM offering, you know,
Speaker 1: like cash, cash back offers. They're talking about the entire
Speaker 1: vehicle buy backs, which is huge. I mean, there's been
Speaker 1: very few times in US history there it's happened, but
Speaker 1: very few times when the manufacturer says that car will
Speaker 1: no longer be on the road, we're buying back every
Speaker 1: one of them and they'll shredded or whatever they happen
Speaker 1: to do with them. I don't know what the plan
Speaker 1: would be for this, but if they do a car
Speaker 1: buy back situation, they're likely just going to destroy those vehicles.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, it's it's hard to even comprehend. Really, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't buy back the car and then fix it
Speaker 1: and then try to sell anything. So it only makes sense.
Speaker 1: It's logically making sense to me that they would buy
Speaker 1: them back and shred them in some way destroy them.
Speaker 1: So this is a do you see what I mean?
Speaker 1: It gets worse and worse all the time. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: more you look at it, the more you realize, Wait, no,
Speaker 1: I I don't have the full comprehension of everything that
Speaker 1: can happen. And as the story unfolds, will probably learn
Speaker 1: even more, like maybe we'll learn exactly where this decision
Speaker 1: was really made, and maybe it was a group of
Speaker 1: rogues software engineers who are just desperate to have Volkswagen
Speaker 1: engines appear to meet all of these specifications. Um, you
Speaker 1: don't just one more quick thing. I mean, sure, it's
Speaker 1: super quick, but think about the things. Think about the
Speaker 1: awards that this thing is one, because you know, it
Speaker 1: wins engine awards. Of course it wins. In two thousand eight,
Speaker 1: which is the first year that we're talking about, the
Speaker 1: v W Jetta t d I Clean Diesel won the
Speaker 1: Green Car the Year award at the l A Auto Show. Um.
Speaker 1: Now what do you do with that? Do you go
Speaker 1: back and do you remove that award? I mean yeah,
Speaker 1: I would imagine you have to strip the awards from
Speaker 1: the from the different models. Just this year, the Volkswagen Golf,
Speaker 1: now not not particularly the t d I, but the
Speaker 1: Volkswagen Golf was awarded the North American Car of the
Speaker 1: Year award at the UM at the Detroit Auto Show,
Speaker 1: the North American International Auto Show. UM. So this thing
Speaker 1: along the way, that's just two. It's won many awards
Speaker 1: along the way, and it has long been lauded as being, um,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of like the solution. This is this
Speaker 1: is what Diesel should be here in the United States
Speaker 1: or really worldwide. Yeah. Well, I mean, that was why
Speaker 1: German was looking into it in the first place. So
Speaker 1: I apologize for interrupting there. But the awards thing, I
Speaker 1: just had to get get that out there because they're
Speaker 1: they've been so heavily awarded for all these diesel engines
Speaker 1: that what do you do with all that? Now? It's
Speaker 1: again part of the big problem. I guess it goes
Speaker 1: back to that phrase, you know, if it seems too
Speaker 1: good to be true, it probably is right in there.
Speaker 1: Why didn't they look into it when it did seem
Speaker 1: too good to be true? Again, I think it's one
Speaker 1: of those things where, well you would either think, well,
Speaker 1: no company would be so bold as to as to
Speaker 1: try and fake their way through, because the consequences, as
Speaker 1: we see now, the consequences are so dire for any
Speaker 1: company that would attempt that, it seems unthinkable that they
Speaker 1: would try and do that. Yet, now, had they caught
Speaker 1: this in say two thousand nine or two uh, this
Speaker 1: would be dramatically different. It would be a much smaller
Speaker 1: number of vehicles are affected. It would be an easier
Speaker 1: thing for VW to fix and say like a Holly,
Speaker 1: you gott us such, or or even for them to
Speaker 1: say like it would be even more believable for them
Speaker 1: to say, uh, this this was something that was uh,
Speaker 1: you know, not intended, but we will fix it like
Speaker 1: you could. If it's if it's for a year, then
Speaker 1: you might say, well, the was something going on in
Speaker 1: the manufacturing process where uh, someone had this brilliant idea
Speaker 1: or they thought it was a brilliant idea and the
Speaker 1: implication wasn't completely realized within the company. You could at
Speaker 1: least plausibly make that point. But we're eight years into this,
Speaker 1: eight model years into this, it's a lot harder to
Speaker 1: make that plausible argument. It is. Yes, and and even
Speaker 1: this eighth model year that was scheduled to come in,
Speaker 1: as you said, has been embargoed because there's a hold
Speaker 1: on those vehicles. They're quarantined and they're not able to
Speaker 1: be sold here. So um, again, it's just a real
Speaker 1: head scratch all around. Why would they do this? Why
Speaker 1: why would a company allow this to happen? It is
Speaker 1: a little crazy. Now on on a related note, I
Speaker 1: have a thing to wrap this up with because obviously
Speaker 1: this is a story that's still going. So it maybe
Speaker 1: a couple of years before it maybe actually a decade
Speaker 1: or more before we really see the full extent of
Speaker 1: how the story plays out. But uh, I have a
Speaker 1: related thing to ask you because it was something I
Speaker 1: had not heard of before, but I imagine you probably have.
Speaker 1: Have you heard about the practice called chipping? Yes, okay,
Speaker 1: this was new to me. So chipping is essentially an
Speaker 1: aftermarket approach to do pretty much what Volkswagen did, except
Speaker 1: this time it's a customer doing it on purpose to
Speaker 1: their vehicle. Yeah, to gain performance gains, so um, okay,
Speaker 1: or sometimes just to be a jerk face game. Let's
Speaker 1: be honest and I'll have a story about that in
Speaker 1: a minute. Okay, Okay, Well, I don't know what. I
Speaker 1: don't know what you're gonna come at me with you,
Speaker 1: But um, a lot of people that I've known have
Speaker 1: chipped their vehicles or have replaced E C U or
Speaker 1: you know whatever that the flash upgrade or whatever the
Speaker 1: terminology was what they did. But there's a lot of
Speaker 1: different ways to do this. You can completely replace the
Speaker 1: the engine control unit and make your vehicle think that
Speaker 1: it's a different model year that has different performance specs,
Speaker 1: or it's a you can make your U S U
Speaker 1: S spec vehicle think that it's a European spec vehicle
Speaker 1: and that it it boosts the performance. You know, it
Speaker 1: allows a greater output you know, horsepower, tork, etcetera. Um,
Speaker 1: because you're not you're not electronically limiting your vehicle to
Speaker 1: whatever the standards are in the place that you are currently.
Speaker 1: So you're you're upping the manufacturers restrictions on your vehicle electronically. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then whether that's the top end restriction or it's
Speaker 1: a low end torque thing or shift points or whatever
Speaker 1: happens to be. Um, it's it's it's a common practice
Speaker 1: among tuners to do stuff like this of you know,
Speaker 1: smaller vehicles, you know, like performance import type vehicles or
Speaker 1: even big trucks. A lot of diesel guys do that.
Speaker 1: In fact, they're programmable to the point where they can,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of change things around frequently as much
Speaker 1: as they want toy with the numbers and you know,
Speaker 1: make it really good for pulling and for towing, or
Speaker 1: they can make it, uh you know, like performance games
Speaker 1: for diesel engines. You get crazy great performance numbers out
Speaker 1: of a diesel engine if you just have it chipped correctly,
Speaker 1: which you know, again you you're getting great performance at
Speaker 1: the expense of the legality of the emissions from your vehicle.
Speaker 1: And you know, see there's the thing is that you
Speaker 1: can go back with a scan tool and change that
Speaker 1: back to whatever you needed to be for the emissions.
Speaker 1: It's exactly the same thing that Volkswagen is doing, except
Speaker 1: on a more manual basis. Yes, yes, and other people.
Speaker 1: You know, if you're outside of that tenure window or whatever,
Speaker 1: you don't have to have emissions testing. Then you know,
Speaker 1: it's fun to make your Jeep Cherokee think that it's
Speaker 1: a cop car, right, and that can happen. You can
Speaker 1: do stuff like that. So one of the other things
Speaker 1: that you can end up doing with this. Okay, here's
Speaker 1: where we get to the jerk face part. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So sometimes when you chip a car of diesel powered
Speaker 1: vehicle and you activate it, one of the things that
Speaker 1: your vehicle might do when you pressed down on the accelerators,
Speaker 1: belch out an enormous cloud of black exhaust. So you're
Speaker 1: talking about rolling coal, rolling coal, coal, rolling or rolling coal.
Speaker 1: So Scott, I walk home. No, it is a three
Speaker 1: mile walk from from here to my house. And there's
Speaker 1: a point that I like to rest at. It's it's
Speaker 1: a little more than halfway to my house. And usually
Speaker 1: at that point, especially on a hot day, I like
Speaker 1: to sit down on a bench. It's outside of a
Speaker 1: lovely little flower shop in in uh the Kendler Park
Speaker 1: area of Atlanta, and I sit down and I rest
Speaker 1: for a few minutes before I continue on. It's it's lovely,
Speaker 1: you know. I I collect my thoughts, I relax, and
Speaker 1: then I get up to walk the rest of the way.
Speaker 1: There was a day not long ago, Scott although back
Speaker 1: when it was much hotter. When I sat down on
Speaker 1: that bench, got up, I'm ready to start walking. Well,
Speaker 1: it's at an intersection that's a four way stop, and
Speaker 1: it's a busy intersection with a four way stop, which
Speaker 1: is a little tricky for pedestrians because you have to
Speaker 1: make sure you have the attention of the drivers before
Speaker 1: you walk across. There's no light to time it with
Speaker 1: hazardous situation. Yeah. So there's a large red Diesel pick
Speaker 1: up to my left as I'm about to cross the
Speaker 1: street here and you can hear that loud knocking noise
Speaker 1: you know what's diesel. Yeah. So I am about to
Speaker 1: cross the street, but they decide they want to go.
Speaker 1: So not only do they go, But they flipped the
Speaker 1: switch and I am covered from head to toe in
Speaker 1: black exhaust as they turn right, so they turn in
Speaker 1: front of me, so because they were on my left,
Speaker 1: they turn right, so they go down the street I
Speaker 1: was about to cross and belch out that black smoke
Speaker 1: while cackling and driving down that jerk faces Yeah that
Speaker 1: you know what, that is a jerk face move. I agree.
Speaker 1: I agree that that whole that whole thing bothers a
Speaker 1: lot of people. I mean, other people say it's my
Speaker 1: right to do this, and I'm gonna do this no
Speaker 1: matter what you know. And uh, I guess you could
Speaker 1: say that, you know, people have been doing this for
Speaker 1: exhibition for a long time, Like you know, we go
Speaker 1: to a like a tractor poll event or something like that.
Speaker 1: You see all those vehicles are belting smoke like that,
Speaker 1: and they're doing it because it's a There is a
Speaker 1: performance gain when you do it as well. But the
Speaker 1: situation that you're talking about, they were doing it just
Speaker 1: simply to be it's an effective to to envelope you
Speaker 1: in this cloud of soot, and that's terribly dangerous for you.
Speaker 1: It's not nice on their part. It was dangerous for
Speaker 1: them to. Let's be honest, at that point, I was
Speaker 1: not happy that what it does, and just everybody knows,
Speaker 1: is when you flip that switch, it just dumps a
Speaker 1: bunch of extra fuel into the engine and then that
Speaker 1: unburned fuel can't quite get burned off the way it
Speaker 1: normally would. And you know, with all those exhaust scrubbers
Speaker 1: that we talked about, you know, the particular filters and
Speaker 1: all that, it bypasses all that, and then you end
Speaker 1: up with this cloud of smoke that looks like um,
Speaker 1: like it's coming out if you don't the little trains
Speaker 1: that burn cold, it looks like that. And that's what
Speaker 1: they call it. They call it rolling coal. And uh,
Speaker 1: just so you guys know, out there, out there and
Speaker 1: listener land. According to John Swanson of California's Air Resource Board,
Speaker 1: any modification to a pollution control system is illegal unless
Speaker 1: the manufacturer of that product had proven that the modification
Speaker 1: doesn't result in any adverse impact on the environment. Now, again,
Speaker 1: any place that I've seen this happen in real life
Speaker 1: was has been like an attractor pull up or something
Speaker 1: like that. But I've never seen anybody actually had this
Speaker 1: done to them outside of video clips. Yeah, I wish that. No,
Speaker 1: I don't know. That's the second guest say I've seen
Speaker 1: in traffic. I've seen some some uh you know, diesel
Speaker 1: trucks that are emitting quite a bit of smoke, but
Speaker 1: they're traveling at such a speed that I can't tell
Speaker 1: if they've done that. At a slow speed is very
Speaker 1: apparent what happens because it's a dramatic difference in the
Speaker 1: output of exhaust gases rather the cloud of smoke or
Speaker 1: whatever soot. Uh. I can't say for sure that I've
Speaker 1: never seen it happen in real life, but but I
Speaker 1: don't think so, not intentionally. Like you know, when they
Speaker 1: there's a big truck and a priest is following it,
Speaker 1: you know, they they flip the switch because I think
Speaker 1: that's funny. Or a walker A lot of times you'll
Speaker 1: see you can see videos of this where they go
Speaker 1: buy bikers or walkers or whatever, and with these mean
Speaker 1: spirited videos where they same to meated to you. It
Speaker 1: wouldn't surprise me if there's some video on YouTube where
Speaker 1: you see a an exhausted, sweaty bald podcaster coated in soot. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry to hear that happened to you. Man, that's terrible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as a as a pedestrian who already considers himself somewhat
Speaker 1: environmentally friendly, it was it was like it was like
Speaker 1: a cherry on top for my day at any rate. Yeah.
Speaker 1: By the way, Car Stuff has a podcast on Rolling Cole.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, Okay, yeah, go check that out. Guy, that's Dutch.
Speaker 1: It's a completely shameless plug because there's no shame to
Speaker 1: be had. Uh. Yeah, definitely check out Car Stuff guys. Scott,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming on the show and
Speaker 1: kind of talking about the scandal and the technology behind it. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is a little bit of a departure from our
Speaker 1: normal Tech Stuff episodes, but I thought it was really
Speaker 1: important to talk about because it's something that's been in
Speaker 1: the news. It does have to do with the tech
Speaker 1: and in the software of the car, and there's a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff we could have touched on. But this
Speaker 1: this show has gone pretty long, so I don't want
Speaker 1: to continue it on anymore. But I mean this also
Speaker 1: ties into other elements of why it's it's harder and
Speaker 1: harder to tell what's going on with your vehicle, at
Speaker 1: least to tell and be sure that that's really what's happening? Sure,
Speaker 1: I mean look at the false bill of sale that
Speaker 1: that all these VW owners were handed and it really
Speaker 1: kind of opened everybody's eyes to the fact or to
Speaker 1: the idea of what manufacturers could do to kind of
Speaker 1: toy with these things. Uh that how much control they
Speaker 1: have over every little situation that your car can be in.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's very very specific and it's very very
Speaker 1: devious what they did. But um, well they got away
Speaker 1: with it for about eight years. But too bad for them,
Speaker 1: they had caught. Yeah, it was the wrong time to
Speaker 1: get caught. If they were gonna get caught and and
Speaker 1: somehow escape this, it should have been earlier. They thought
Speaker 1: they were gonna get away with it forever. And that's
Speaker 1: one of those points where you realize, like you are
Speaker 1: all in I hope you enjoyed that classic episode and
Speaker 1: Scott's contribution to it. Uh, missy buddy, hope you're doing
Speaker 1: well out there. It was great to have him on
Speaker 1: the show and talk about this stuff, because you know,
Speaker 1: I obviously have my own perspective, my own point of view.
Speaker 1: I value having other people on the show to kind
Speaker 1: of balance that out, give me an alternative perspective and
Speaker 1: and alternative uh conclusions that perhaps I had not even
Speaker 1: thought about. So it's always great having guests on the show.
Speaker 1: If you would like to reach out and suggest future
Speaker 1: topics or maybe even future guests that I should have
Speaker 1: on tech Stuff, please do. There are a couple of
Speaker 1: different ways you can do that. One is you can
Speaker 1: download the I Heart Radio app, which is free to download,
Speaker 1: free to use, Navigate over to the text Stuff page
Speaker 1: on that app, use little microphone icon that will let
Speaker 1: you record a voice message up to thirty seconds in length,
Speaker 1: Or you can hop on over to Twitter send me
Speaker 1: a message. The handle for the show is tech Stuff
Speaker 1: hs W and I'll talk to you again really soon y.
Speaker 1: Text Stuff is an I heart Radio production. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.