Talk:Volkswagen emissions scandal

Did CARB commission the initial study or did the ICCT?

The Introduction paragraph states that "In 2014, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) commissioned from the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) a study on emissions discrepancies between European and US models of vehicles, summing up the data on 15 vehicles from three sources."

It is stated later under European Discrepancies that "The independent body International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) commissioned a study in 2014 and obtained data on 15 vehicles from three sources."

This is ambiguous and the introduction paragraph is possibly incorrect. The CARB Wikipedia page has no mention of the organization commissioning the study, and other sources say that the issue was raised to them after the ICCT study was conducted. This article from the ICCT website also does not mention CARB's involvement in the initial study, only that the action taken by CARB and the EPA was a result of the study.

I propose the introductory paragraph be revised to remove CARB's involvement in the initial study, unless supporting sources can be produced. It's noted that CARB was involved in serving the notice alongside the EPA. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.9.187.46 (talk) 22:01, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

Expert tag removed

After deliberating, I chose to remove the expert tag from the Health consequences section because the rationale at Talk:Volkswagen_emissions_scandal/Archive_2#Emissions_expert_needed concerns mostly content that is not directly relevant to the article. Information about "what was unique about VW TDI diesel technology" belong elsewhere in the article. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 04:44, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

not only VW

Dieselgate encompasses multiple car manufacturers, not only VW, as the corresponding German WP Abgasskandal shows, but Audi, Skoda and Mercedes. Wuerzele (talk) 01:30, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Correct. It is mentioned in the article in section Volkswagen emissions scandal#Other manufacturers, which links to Diesel emissions scandal.  Stepho  talk  02:32, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Automakers have been doing dodgy things to pass tests for decades

The banal observation that this will happen in the future is just a summary of experience. eg Chrysler hood light detector, TUV engine power tests, and so on. It's not much of a predicition if it has already happened before. Greglocock (talk) 05:23, 1 June 2025 (UTC)

Pl let me know why my three paragraphs on "claim of prediction of emisson scanal"have been removed. The focus was not on cheating alone. When test standards got tougher, without technology tomeet them at current performance level, it promoted cheating during test.Here, only plain EGR was available then for meeting stricter NOX reduction and it brought down engine perforformance. An ideal situation inviting vehicicle manufacturer to manipulate test. The other Adigesi (talk) 08:40, 1 June 2025 (UTC)

To add to my reply, I am using this space. Sivakumar's observation is not a prediction of just cheating in the test. It is about series of standards tightening emission sandards without a technology to achieve it. The te. st was not manipulated.It was a real test to meet the test standards. The observation mentions this. It also says that the same product would not behave in the same way on road. As the only technology available to reduce NOx was to recirculate exhaust gas back to engine manifold. This has twin effect of reducing reducing peak engine teperature and reduce amount of Oxygen needed for firing. This twin effect reduce engine power and fuel efficiency. For the vehicle manufacturer this is more important to maintain. It is bcause of this Volkswagen did introduce defeat device deactivating emission on road. The observation refers to this. Meet standards in the test and give poor result in the field. The whole system is not cheating in the test. It s cheating outside different from other manipulations.The observation is not about general cheating but is particularly related to NOx emission May I rewrite the edit and resubmit once again. Adigesi (talk) 14:28, 1 June 2025 (UTC)

Cheating on emissions tests is a regularly recurring problem whenever emissions tests are made more stringent. It is because cheating is so common that the very concept of the defeat device was created to begin with. --Coolcaesar (talk) 19:44, 1 June 2025 (UTC)

Any system that depends on a test will have people cheating on the test. That's as old as humans themselves. I will give 2 anecdotes.

My wife was an English teacher in Hong Kong. To effectively teach English, she would give examples that were not on the syllabus. Parents would regularly complain to the principle that she was wasting the students time that would better be spent on learning exactly what was in the test for entry to university. The test was meant to find out if the students had learnt English. Instead the course was changed to fit the test. As a test to see if the students had learnt what was on the test, it was close to useless.

In the mid 2010's I was writing software for car/truck ECUs. Engineers are always looking for patterns in order to make the product better - it's what engineers do. Many times we were tempted to have the software look for the test pattern (which were always written down formally as a law or rule) vs spending 2 months fine tuning the ECU for each engine. We never did cheat because A) we knew we could do it for real (with effort) and B) if we got caught then the business would be dead. But it was always at the back of our minds.

In VW's case, they could pass the emissions tests if they wanted to - their engineers are as smart as anywhere else. Other manufacturers did pass the tests. But the penalties were A) the time and effort spent on it (not trivial but well-known in the industry) and B) a major loss of performance. It was the performance loss that was the big thing. Other manufacturers had slow diesel cars. VW had diesel cars that performed as well as petrol cars while having lower fuel costs. That was a huge advantage that helped them sell many more diesels than other manufactures. To repeat, passing the emissions tests was possible - but not at the same time as keeping performance to petrol car levels.  Stepho  talk  00:25, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

So I think the real reason we are here in Talk is the repeated inclusion of the unotable ref and peacockery about Arunachalam Sivakumar's claims that this is some predictive insight, whereas in fact it is obvious from history that it has happened before and will happen again. Greglocock (talk) 03:07, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for your thought provoking comments. Before I start replying I wish to state that you could have avoided words like banal and peacockery while commenting on my article, definitely not encouraging a person like me keen to contribute to Wikipedia.

The title of my submission is “Claim of early prediction of emission scandal” and not “Early Prediction of emission scandal”. Whether this is a prediction or not can be left to the reader’s interpretation. I believe Wikipedia does not allow any original work but only publishes factual content verifiable through references.

The task now is to find whether as per references, the prediction was made by Sivakumar and before what date he made it. The references need to be trustworthy and dependable. The photocopies are not accepted by Wikipedia as they are likely to be manipulated. The only way is to describe the image of individuals concerned which you call “peacockery”. Sivakumar has not sought publicity for his observation which he made in early1990s.

Collecting references from the period when there was no internet facility is quite difficult. Only a local language newspaper had the review in the Net. The book too is currently out print. I have a copy of the book but as scanned copy is not accepted as reference, it is of no use. The entire reference hinges on the speech Sivakumar made at IIT Madras n 2016.The video was made by IIT Madras (globally recognised technology Institute) and is still maintained by them.

It is mentioned that cheating was observed before and will happen in future too and there is nothing called prediction of cheating. “When an expert predicts cybercrimes of cheating will increase when government goes digitising everything fast without educating public and providing checks in time” is it not a prediction? Sivakumar has looked at the then prevailing situation of tightening emission controls without allowing for appropriate technology to meet the standards at current product performance level.

Or let us take today’s case of   Ukraine’s drones damaging Russian Airbases, more than 1000 Kms away. Drones have short range of flying, but can be operated through remote control. If an expert had stated a few months ago that, with the right technology, drones could be brought closer to target airbases and operated, wouldn't that be considered a prediction? As per newspapers, the drones were brought in trucks whose tops were opened and drones operated to hit targets from close range.

The great global recession of 2009 was due to the faults of banks, regulators, rating agencies and consumers in relation to mortgaging of houses in U.S.A.When all of them did it in big way economists predicted meltdown of economy. Earlier and even now such mistakes are made in small way. That does not prevent the credit given to economists for predicting the big let-down. In same way, there were minor deviations like ambient temperature switches to facilitate more fuel flow during cold weather conditions and Air conditioner or heater connected device to reduce emission control and avoid stalling. However Volkswagen case is the major one allowing more emission during entire running on road and foreseeing this is prediction according to me.

I have expressed my views and request you to inform me whether I can rewrite and submit again as edit, Thanks and with Best Wishes, Adigesi Adigesi (talk) 12:53, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

I would leave it out of the article. Predicting that sooner or later somebody would cheat on an emissions test is rather obvious and his prediction didn't change anything. In short, it adds nothing to the article.  Stepho  talk  22:11, 2 June 2025 (UTC)