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Comment by Nelson69 | Hacker News Reader

Surly Porsche has their own quality assurance and compliance engineers though? And they're proper Teutonic Engineers, right? I mean, they're Porsche engineers... They'd just take an engine from their parent company and not see that it lives up to the Porsche marquee?

Maybe it's possible, but if it is, Porsche is really not the Porsche I think it is or want it to be.

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The A4, Q5, Q7, Touraeg, Phaeton, and a lot of other VW vehicles which used the same 3.0TDI have the exact same rated power, which suggests that the engine calibration probably was shared as well. So I think it's plausible that Porsche dropped the engine in, went through their usual drive testing and tuning, and never thought about the emissions since they were already handled on the VW side.

Porsche have a bit more go juice than a lot of the other stuff.

If they did a ECU remap (likely) coupled with some hw changes to the engine (maybe, maybe not), they would likely have at least suspected something.

Like, I can tune my Lancer Evo, with stock parts, to around 360 chp / 290 whp from 291 chp / 220 whp. This will put more strain on the parts, to nuke the little gas mileage, up the emissions (no CARB), and void the warranty on the drivetrain. In order to do that the ECU needs to be flash (by say cobbs tuning) and if there was a cheating thing they will need to be aware of it or else it'd be likely gone in the flash.

If I was to put on new parts and make it go even more... Then for sure you need a new tune to make it actually work properly.

The rated horsepower on the 3.0 TDI in the Cayenne is the exact same as in all of the other applications I listed - do you have any source that it had a different map installed? I'm kind of basing my whole theory on the concept that it didn't because the rated output is identical.

The thing has a 150 kW to 191 kW rating, granted on closer look it seems the Porsche one is shared across a lot of trims so maybe they didn't see it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Volkswagen_Group_diese...

guess audi is the one that could be in deeper trouble.

I wouldn't be surprised if Porsche customized the throttle mapping and/or transmission programming. ECU remapping would be a bigger job though

I have said this before and i'll say it again.

The legend of the prowess of German engineering is one of the longest-standing and most successful corporate marketing campaigns pulled of, right up there with DeBeers 3 month salary rule. Watch any Volkswagen ad, and you can see it in action.

Well, they're Porsche. I imagine "seeing if it lives up to the Porsche marquee" primarily involves flogging it to make sure it drives well.

Do you associate the Porsche brand with a dedication to fuel economy or low emissions?

The vehicles have to independently pass the emissions tests. Even if they have a a crate engine from some other supplier. All of the compliance engineers throughout all of VAG only test emissions to the EPA test rig? Even the ones at Porsche?

Nobody is going with Porsche for fuel economy but nobody is expecting to have their Porsche lose power due to a recall either. It's a premium badge, I expect them to dot more of the I's and cross more of the T's when I pay that extra $20-$40kk for a Porsche branded Touareg.

Sometimes the magic of branding is that they can get that extra cash for it for not a whole lot of actual extra engineering in return. Thus, profit!

Remember, we're talking about the diesels. The "Teutonic Porsche engineers" are working on the sports cars.

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