Gadgetory

I'm Brian Cooley from CNET on cars answering some of your emails about high-tech cars and modern driving in just about all the ones we've received lately have to do with this VW emissions debacle some of our questions come in from Chris C in Chicago who says you know in the u.s. we kind of just seemed to hate Diesel's for some reason you think the media is just zooming in on the problem especially hard Kelvin's C says I know you like diesel engines he's referring to me and I do I'd love to hear your perspective on why VW would do this and what a repair would look like for VW diesel owners and Peter T says how about a discussion of old vs. new diesel technology that helped enable this scandal to happen in the first place this is an unprecedented issue in the auto industry sure we've had some big debacles before I mean look back at what's happened with Toyota gauge that was the unintended acceleration Hyundai and Ford had some issues with stated versus observed mpg that were pretty stark General Motors still working through an enormous recall on badly designed ignition switches Jeep had some unprotected rear fuel tanks that were a big problem and of course takata's massive recall of airbags that explode but all of those are in a different category than what volkswagen has done the revelation of some 11 million Volkswagen and Audi turbo diesel powered cars have technology to willfully and repeatedly skirt emissions standards is truly unprecedented specifically VW engineered the software in their engine ECU on these cars that's the engine electronic control unit to sense when it's hooked up to an emissions testing program and then to modify its own software parameters to meet low emission standards got it then when the car sensed it was disconnected from an emissions test it went to a different profile entirely that allowed it to get better performance but at vastly higher emissions 10 to 40 times the legal allowed rate and to do it actively when not connected to an emissions test is what is so evil about this not that many years ago engine control units weren't that sophisticated it would have been almost impossible for VW to engineer this kind of deceitful behavior I've had a lot of folks there wish it were those days right now they wouldn't have been able to step in it like they did instead they've taken a huge hit on many fronts it's cost them who knows how much in market value it's measured in billions of euros they've lost their CEO they've yet to even see likely billions in penalties from US regulators and they've got to figure out what to do with all those cars on the road somewhere from an expensive re-engineering and recall to possibly the largest buyback in automotive history and they've given diesel cars a black eye on the US market a market that was already kind of sketchy on them in the first place in all it's an amazing case of an automaker abusing the sophisticated power of modern electronic engine technology you