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Comment by jplayer01 | Hacker News Reader

You do realize every other auto manufacturer is doing the exact same thing? VW has one of the biggest R&D divisions in the industry. If they couldn't do it, nobody else could either.

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> You do realize every other auto manufacturer is doing the exact same thing?

What makes you think that?

> VW has one of the biggest R&D divisions in the industry. If they couldn't do it, nobody else could either.

Do what? Make performant cars? Their gasoline (petrol) cars weren't implicated in this scandal. After the patch, the cars were still performing relatively well, losing about a second in the 0-60 time, and losing about 4mpg.

What I want to know is: why did they need to lose any performance or fuel economy at all?

Am I missing something? My understanding is that this was all because they couldn't meet emissions targets without using a certain amount of DEF. They calculated that to do that, the customer would have to refill the DEF tank "too soon" (meaning sooner than every regular service interval at the dealership, which is at least 10,000 miles).

So the simple fix is, in my mind: make the car use a lot more DEF so that it can generate the power and economy advertised, but the DEF tank will have to be refilled far more frequently (perhaps every 1000 miles, guessing). The driver will have to do it themselves obviously. And add some software code so that the car refuses to operate if the tank goes empty. If drivers can figure out that they need to put fuel (gas or diesel) in their car to make it go, and that it's going to die on the side of the road if they run that tank out, then they can do the same with a 2nd tank of fluid too.

This isn't apparent unless you read the article I linked, which is long. I don't expect you to.

The main violation appears to be emitting excess amounts of NO2, a pollutant, and some particulates.

My understanding (again, someone please correct me if I'm wrong or missing something) is that NOx emissions are mostly eliminated by injecting DEF (urea) into the exhaust stream, and also that NOx emissions are the big issue with dieselgate. And again, from what I read, the whole reason they didn't want to do it right was that consumers would have to refill the DEF tank too frequently, and that automakers thought people are too stupid for that and would run it dry, so they wanted it so that the dealership would refill it for them at their regular service interval, which is 10-20k miles. So as I said before, the fix should be easy, inject a lot more DEF, enough to actually eliminate the NOx per the standards, and just force consumers to refill the DEF far more frequently.

Looks like I was way less informed, thanks for the context!

It appears your analysis is right.

What would happen if the DEF was allowed to run empty?

The way they are now, I'm not sure. High NOx emissions I'm guessing, plus a warning light on the dashboard. But my proposal is to make the car stop operating if the tank is empty, just like it stops operating if your fuel tank is empty, and just make sure the dashboard light (or better yet some alphanumeric display or infotainment system display) gives ample warning to the driver that they need to refill it. I see Blue DEF sold in gas stations all the time, so it's not like it's hard to acquire.

And again, I'm not even sure I'm that well informed, I could very well be mistaken and over-simplifying things. If that's the case, I hope someone will correct me, but so far no one's said anything, but that's why I put that disclaimer in there several times.

This is how heavy truck diesels with DEF work, at least. Warning light at 10% full, flashing warning light at nearly empty, and if the tank runs completely empty, the vehicle is limited to 5mph until it's refilled.

It's not clear that they couldn't do it. The three possibilities are:

    1) They couldn't do it.
    2) Their margins would be thinner.
    3) Their competitors are cheating, and emissions controls reduce performance, 
       so everyone would buy the cheating competitor. 
       Also, everyone has dirt on everyone else.

This will be a big story all of the three cases.

No, you have no proof that everyone else is doing the same thing. Read the article: this is about diesel engines. Many automakers do not make diesel engines at all. Even if it's physically impossible for anyone to meet the diesel emissions laws without cheating, that still means many automakers don't have to cheat because they don't sell diesel-powered vehicles.

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