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Unfortunately, such a draconian rule would hurt the owners of the cars more than VW. It would essentially force every car buyer to buy a new car.

Plus, there are plenty of cars on the road built before 2000 that have even worse emissions than these VWs. Would you propose taking those cars off the road as well?

Well, the potential EPA fine per-car is $37,500.

An amazing move would be for the EPA to force the cars off the road, and force VW to pay for the affected customers' new cars.

Or the EPA could force VW to release an update for the affected cars' ECU, and avoid sending a million perfectly serviceable cars to the landfill.

Which, I believe, is what is supposed to happen.

Any such update will be effectively optional, though, won't it? (I don't know, I don't own a car anymore and the last one I had used an ECU probably dumber than today's toasters.)

States with state inspection could plausibly require proof of some form that the update has been applied. States which use OBD-II diagnostics should generally already be capable of doing this by reading the CALID supplied by the ECU (it's part of the standard), so they could work off of that.

Hell, if we're lucky maybe the testing center can flash the update themselves right there on the test rig over OBD-II if the car doesn't have it. Would save everyone- the State, the consumer, even VW, a lot of heartache in handling a mandatory update.

Or a nice market for VW diesels might develop in non-inspecting states.

They already effectively are. Aftermarket ECUs that completely ignore emission standards are (and have been) widely available.

In Norway there has been talk from the DMV equivalent [1] that people who don't have their cars updated in the recall will have their registrations cancelled. So if you keep driving, the police will stop you. Automated license plate scanners and all that, I don't think many will skip it.

What's more likely is that if many people feel their cars are sluggish after the update, aftermarket diesel tuning will become (even more) popular.

[1] Source (in Norwegian): http://www.vg.no/forbruker/bil-baat-og-motor/dieselskandalen...

It could be quite easy to enforce through registration data and refusing to renew until proof of a fix is provided.

That only works if the issue can be resolved via ECU. The problem isn't just that the cars are reporting wrong data when being tested, but that the cars are producing more gasses than they are supposed to. If the update only fixes the software to report correctly, then the car will fail the emissions test. I rather doubt it's only a software fix that will solve the problem. Chances are there will need to be a hardware alteration to resolve the underlying issue. In that case, an update to the ECU wouldn't resolve the problem. You will need to bring your car to a dealer (Likely a VW-certified dealer) to have the solution applied as well as the software patch to make sure it is reporting correct data while undergoing emissions testing.

I believe the issue lies in the cars' ability to fallback to a lower-performance mode when the system recognizes that it's being tested. The low-performance mode passes the tests. The ECU update would require that the "emissions-passing low-performance mode" be engaged permanently. It's not that the cars can't pass emissions, it's that they choose not to.

> The problem isn't just that the cars are reporting wrong data when being tested, but that the cars are producing more gasses than they are supposed to.

Perhaps my understanding of testing processes is incorrect, but I was under the impression that testing relies on an external testing device, not the car's internal reporting. The cars passed not because they all told the same lie, but because they all behaved properly when they knew they were being watched.

Then you have a separate problem: All the people who already forked money over to Volvo will suddenly have their possession downgraded/crippled without compensation.

True, though Volvo != Volkswagen.

We're left with three options, each of which is unappealing to some group.

1) Leave affected VWs as-is. Fine VW as necessary. Cars will continue to pollute above the permitted amount.

2) Neuter affected VWs. Fine VW as necessary. Owners will suffer performance loss.

3) Neuter/recall affected VWs. Require VW to compensate owners the price of a replacement. Not sure how VW would fare with such a steep fine.

If they did that, VW would be sued by customers for not delivering the product they paid for. It has been shown that VW can't eat the charge that would result of even small numbers of customers doing that, and it has been shown that the German state is not willing to destroy VW.

So suddenly the fix is "intensive dialog with the authorities" instead of fixing the problem.

> Draconian? It depends on whether air quality matters or not. That is a fairly black and white thing - either it matters or it doesn't.

Nothing measured on an analog scale is black and white. Something is not "safe" or "dangerous" just because it is on one side or another of a semi-arbitrary limit.

"It depends on whether air quality matters or not. That is a fairly black and white thing"

On the contrary, I don't think it could be less of a "black or white thing". It sounds like you're making an argument that these cars are producing a material increase in overall NOx, causing a public health hazard. I haven't seen that argument anywhere else. Do you have data on what the net increase in NOx is? .1%, 1% and 100% would mean very different things.

I’ve read conflicting arguments (which range from pretty bad to incredibly bad)… The Guardian estimates 230-950 thousand tons of NOx per year for seven years, “equivalent to the emissions of all power stations, vehicles, industry, and agriculture in the United Kingdom over a one-year period.”

Not a percentage, which would be more useful, but even the lowball estimates indicate a measurable change in pollution levels.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/sep/22/vw-scandal-c...

That sounds a lot like punishing the consumer for being duped by VW.

On the bright side, VW is a very small portion of the market, and I suspect the cheating cars are not much worse than older cars that we allow on the road, which are held to less stringent standards. So while it's completely unacceptable behavior of VW, it's also not the end of the world if people keep driving them until VW issues the software update.

> On the bright side, VW is a very small portion of the market

In the US. In Europe Volkswagen accounts for 25% of new car registrations. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-17/volkswagen...

They weren't violating European NOx standards.

According to the article they were. They are implementing a fix for European cars because European standards are a bit more lax than the US ones but they still were violating European standards as well.

That said why does it make a difference? If anything, any manufacturer should be doing their best to reduce emissions as much as possible for the sake of the whole world. Just look at the situation currently happening in China. Would you like for your country to be having the same issue, be it France, Germany or the US?

We already "punish" people who are duped into buying stolen property (by confiscation of that property), so why should people duped by other illegal activity be treated differently?

In the case of stolen property, that's mostly because the property needs to be returned to the original owner. Zero sum and all that. You don't own the property because the thief who sold it to you did not have the rights to transfer to you; the rights are retained by the original owner.

Because this wasn't a guy fencing stuff off Craigslist, it was a multi-billion dollar global corruption that is operating in a highly regulated market. Consumer protection and all that. If someone is going to get hit in the nuts it's going to be VW and not the consumer. The cars will get fixed or VW will buy them back, but it's a ridiculous waste of resources to have police pulling over people driving VW's.

I am more willing to have the market punish VW long term, the owners of said cars already have suffered because of VWs actions but beyond any step the government can do public opinion has already shifted against VW and Audi.

If any punishment were to meted out I would assign a value similar to how insurance companies must when a vehicle is less than a year old is involved. There are loss of value rules already in place. Use those.

As for noticeable changes in pollution, that is laughable. You already see more significant changes to pollution just by the school year ending and all those buses being off road. Let alone in winter pollution goes up as more cars run rich to maintain operating temperatures.

We should not use government to punish innocent buyers. Government should be used to protect them

> It depends on whether air quality matters or not. That is a fairly black and white thing - either it matters or it doesn't.

If you really mean that you should only accept zero emission vehicles.

Even that is not enough. The vehicle itself may emit zero, but just moving on the roads with wheels on the ground will produce emissions, as tyres grind particles out of the road and turbulence lifts dust up in the air.

Emissions very definitely is not a black-and-white thing.

Let's be clear, every manufacturer was playing this "game". Yes VW played it harder than most and got caught out. The reality is there is no petrol/diesel manufacturer that has been found to be playing it absolutely down the middle.

When it comes to diesel emissions in the US, I think that's unfair. How many other diesel vehicles are sold in the US that do not include urea injection? Even "3/4" and "1-ton" trucks required it starting 5 years ago. Every other manufacturer I can think of used it. Including VW in some models.

I think VW may be the only manufacturer that sold diesels in the US, after 2010, that didn't include it. (Again, I'm not 100% on that.)

In light of that, while this may be a game "everyone" plays, it seems like VW was playing on a whole other level.

> If overnight a sizeable percentage of cars were no longer on the roads, would there be a noticeable increase in air quality?

We've already done this experiment a number of times. C.f. the hospitalization rates during the Atlanta Olympics.

How would you implement this?

How does a police officer know which car is an offending VW or not?

Where does it end? Vehicles that were build prior to tougher emission standards? What about gas engines that are just inefficient, like lawn mowers?

The police just don't have the resources to make these type of nuances decisions.

Note: I own a 2016 VW Golf R, and a 2003 Golf GTI.