One Owner Tdi Diesel Only 30k Miles Perfect Carfax on 2040-cars

Auto blog

German carmakers recall 630,000 diesel vehicles in Europe

Mercedes, Opel, Porsche, and Volkswagen will recall over 630,000 cars in Europe, according to reports Friday. No diesel car has been able to get under the legal emissions limit in real-world driving, according to a German government investigation. While only Volkswagen Group has been using a specific "defeat device", other carmakers have been playing with their exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) systems. Depending of the manufacturer, the systems have been cut off at a certain temperature. In a specific test cycle the systems operate to fulfill the legal requirements, but in everyday use the limits are exceeded. According to the magazine Der Spiegel, the supplier Bosch is behind this programming and has provided it to all German automakers. The mentioned carmakers have announced recalls, but many other manufacturers are also mentioned by name in the report, including Alfa Romeo, Chevrolet, Dacia, Fiat, Ford, Hyundai, Jaguar, Jeep, Land Rover, Nissan, Renault, and Suzuki. PSA Group, which produces Peugeot, Citroen, and DS cars, declared yesterday that its offices were raided following an emissions investigation. Related Video: News Source: AutocarImage Credit: Getty Images Government/Legal Green Recalls Mercedes-Benz Porsche Volkswagen Opel Emissions Diesel Vehicles diesel emissions investigation

VW joins Daimler's protest of new A/C refrigerant as EU deadline for compliance passes

The case of Dupont and Honeywell's refrigerant R-1234yf is doing the exact opposite of keeping things cool. The two chemical companies have spent years and hundreds of millions of dollars developing R-1234yf to replace R-134a, the new refrigerant shown to be 99.7-percent kinder to the environment than the one it is meant to succeed. Part of that development has been years of testing by governments, outside safety agencies and automakers to approve the chemical for use in cars. It passed the protocols necessary for the European Union to declare that new and significantly revised cars from 2013 onward needed to use R-1234yf, and mandated that every car as of 2017 must use it.
Enter Daimler AG. The automaker created a head-on collision test with a B-Class at their Sindelfingen test track that would lead to the pressurized refrigerant being sprayed on the engine. The result in 20 out of 20 test was that the refrigerant burst into flames as soon as it hit the hot engine, while Daimler says that R-134a does not catch fire in the same test. Another unexpected result of the R-1234yf test was the release of hydrogen flouride, a chemical far more deadly to humans than hydrogen cyanide, emitted in such amounts that it that turned the windshield white as it began to eat into the glass.
Said a Daimler engineer in a Reuters piece, "It was scarcely believable. The most complicated lab tests conducted using the most sensitive measuring instruments around found nothing and all we do is drive a car around a couple of times, open a tiny hole in the refrigerant line and the next thing you know the car is on fire." So Daimler said it wouldn't use the refrigerant, and it recalled the cars it had already shipped with R-1234yf.

VW going turbo-only in 3 to 4 years

This really was a matter of when, rather than if. Volkswagen will apparently be the first manufacturer to phase out naturally aspirated engines in favor of turbocharging its full slate. VW is kind of responsible for ushering in this push towards small-displacement, turbocharged engines that's taken the industry by storm. When it dropped its direct-injection, 2.0-liter turbo in the 2005 GTI it demonstrated that strapping an iron long to an engine can enhance the powertrain as a whole. VW made fuel economy gains, while also giving a linear, non-laggy turbo experience that it has replicated, model-after-model, to this day.
Speaking with The Detroit News, Volkswagen's executive Vice President of Group Quality, Marc Trahan, told the paper that, "We only have one normally aspirated gas engine, and when we go to the next generation vehicle that it's in, it will be replaced. So three, four years maximum."
Really, it's hard to get teary-eyed about either of these engines going away. VW has access to smaller powerplants that could easily match the performance of the 2.5 five-cylinder and the 3.6 V6, while gobbling up less fuel and providing a better driving experience. What we are sad about is that a similar statement about the extinction of NA engines came from the Vice President of Powertrain Engineering at Ford, Joe Bakaj. We'd certainly get teary-eyed over a world without Ford's excellent 5.0-liter V8.