GTPNewsWire
Contributing Writer
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This is the discussion thread for a recent post on GTPlanet:
This article was published by Joe Donaldson (@Joey D) on March 31st, 2018 in the Automotive News category.
Volkswagen Stores Nearly 300,000 Dieselgate Vehicles in a California Boneyard
- Thread starter GTPNewsWire
- 39 comments
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- 31,555
- Buckwheat City
- Dennisch
- 12,389
- Betelgeuse
- Beeblebrox_237
@Joey D The NPR article cites there being 21,000 cars at this facility, not 300,000. I wanted to double check and I counted 95 rows, each of which is 215 cars wide, which comes to 20,425 cars in the main bit not accounting for it not being totally full, so I'd guess there really are only* 21,000 cars there.
*Still a :censored:load, though.
*Still a :censored:load, though.
- 27
- DFW
Nice DC-10.
- 2,421
- Kentucky, USA
- James_Page
- PageyTheSquid
What a shame. I absolutely loved my '10 TDI Jetta and I would still be driving it to this day if VW didn't offer me a buyback I couldn't refuse. With a tune, exhaust and short shift kit it had great power, sounded great, was very reliable, was a joy to drive and got over 50mpg with ease. I put over 50K miles on it and VW offered me more than I bought it for, which led to me buying my '92 Cummins.
I still think about buying another one (if I had known they were on sale, I would've looked at a Passat TDI before I bought my wife her '17 Accord) but I think I've decided on a motorcycle for an efficient commuter.
I still think about buying another one (if I had known they were on sale, I would've looked at a Passat TDI before I bought my wife her '17 Accord) but I think I've decided on a motorcycle for an efficient commuter.
- 16,090
- Melbourne
- ScottPuss20
- CheetahsMeow
I thought they just kept aircraft here...
- 399
- Worcestershire
- F41-UK
Diesels are crappy. It's an engineering term, meaning a bit crap. I originally wrote "******", but you can see the problem there. They definitely have a place in trucks and commercials, but a small supermini that's going to spend its life bumbling around a city certainly isn't it. That's why Germany has ok'd some cities to ban them entirely from their centres.
Yes, there's definitely personal preference coming through, because, y'know, that's how these things work. I've personally never understood the number of people in the UK who go out and buy cars like Audi convertibles, which clearly place pose value and neighbour one-upmanship over everything else, then specify it with a diesel engine. Presumably so they can enjoy the awful noise and particulate emissions as they cruise around with the top down - often specced in white too, so the back of the car is always sooted up with diesel filth. Obviously, the government are partly to blame for their CO2 biased tax system, but people are paying more for a diesel engine (which has to be packed with expensive tech in order to meet emissions regs, (or a VW)) to burn a more expensive fuel to get a little more efficiency and, in my humble opinion, less joy. It's like when my dad paid thousands of pounds for a new car he liked less than his existing one and then tried to sell it as a good move because his VED was a little bit lower.
- 27,205
- United Kingdom
This neatly illustrates one of the problems with the Dieselgate thing if it's being pushed as an environmental imperative.
I'm not a fan of diesels as a rule and I do want cars to be cleaner, but taking a bunch of fuel-efficient cars off the road for people to almost certainly replace them with much less efficient vehicles (as in the US, I'd guess most vehicles are less efficient than a VW diesel - and the average vehicle probably produces more emissions, too) is something of a backward step.
As is (presumably) scrapping vehicles produced relatively recently which may not have had the chance to "work off" the energy produced in their manufacture. Usage still contributes the majority of a car's lifetime environmental impact (i.e. owning a vehicle build decades ago is not "greener" than a new, vastly more fuel-efficient car just because the new one required manufacturing energy) but when a car is a decade old or less and still probably has another decade of use to give, that also seems unwise.
- 29,716
- a baby, candy, it's like taking.
- TexRex72
Okay then...from an engineering perspective; what makes them "a bit crap?" Please elaborate.
I'm pretty ignorant when it comes to diesels, and my only experience with them involves the occasional driving of a large Ford truck powered by one, for the purposes of towing a boat or a horse trailer.
- 399
- Worcestershire
- F41-UK
Ok, they're crap for many uses. From my perspective...
They're great for towing things because they're torquey by their very nature, which makes them ideal for trucks and commercial vehicles where you want low revs and high torque, and can optimise them for that, putting driving enjoyment way down your list of priorities. Trucks are tuned to have a downward sloping torque curve so that if they hit a hill and the speed drops, they get an increase in torque to pull them up the hill, rather than it dropping off and forcing a down-change, unlike petrol engine torque curves which tend to slope up to a peak at the top end. Trains also make pretty good use of diesel engines because they can use a huge turbo to fire up the volumetric efficiency (= torque to shift a big old load), and run them consistently at their most efficient operating speed.
Unfortunately, the government (in the UK, different rules may apply in the US where fuel is comparatively cheap) started taxing cars based on CO2 outputs and diesel outputs are lower than petrol outputs, like-for-like, so people who don't under stand the differences realised they could pay a bit less tax if they had a diesel engine and started having them put into normal cars, even the little hatchbacks that they use to drop the kids at school and pop to the shops. The engines cost more, the fuel costs more, but you get more mpg and people rarely do the maths to work out if it's worth it for their actual car use.
Eventually, the regs to make them cleaner became more and more demanding, so they became expensive and complicated to inject fuel at higher pressures, burn cleaner and filter out some of the dirty emissions, while also being weirdly compromised by having to rev higher in order to hit a decent horsepower figure to keep the marketing teams happy (power is a product of torque and engine speed, and isn't as relevant as the torque in towing situations, but lb-ft and NM are alien concepts to car buyers, many of whom struggle with anything more technical than metallic paint - they just want 'more power'). So, making a diesel engine 'powerful' and clean is not a cheap thing to achieve, and working around the problem instead also turns out to be quite expensive, as VW have found.
Admittedly, some people have to drive a million miles a year on motorways all day and are quite happy not to derive any kind of entertainment from their driving if it saves them a bit of money, so in those situations, perhaps there's an argument for diesel. Putting a petrol engine in a big truck like your Ford would also be nonsense anywhere that fuel is expensive, so diesel is the obvious choice there. But while all of this is going on, petrol engines are lighter, cleaner, rev-happy and perfect for low-use city cars, hatchbacks and sports cars. For me, the enjoyment I derive from my car is not how it behaves when I'm driving in a straight line at a constant speed, so I like an engine that revs hard and makes a nice noise while it's doing it. The joy comes from changing down a gear (manual box, obvs) and hearing those revs rise.
Fun is good, diesel is bad. All IMHO, of course
- 783
- United States
- Tunerguy21
Which part of the middle east are you talking about? Levant? Iran? peninsula? Egypt?
Because in the Gulf States, the only Golf's i ever see on the roads are the GTI and the R models:
Not to mention that Volkswagen never sold the Diesel versions in the Gulf Market so VW owners didn't really get effected by Diesel Gate. Diesels are something you think of when you think of trucks and buses, not cars over here. Most of the passenger cars runs on Petrol and no one wants a diesel car. Perhaps in countries with much more expensive fuel, maybe.
----
I never been a fan of diesel cars and didn't really understood the appeal of them apart from maybe saving fuel but if i really want to save fuel, i would rather own something like a base model Nissan Sunny or Hyundai Accent running on petrol instead.
- 29,716
- a baby, candy, it's like taking.
- TexRex72
Fair enough. Can't say I agree with everything stated prior but I have no strong feelings either way about the subject matter.Fun is good, diesel is bad. All IMHO, of course
I gather you don't do much commuting.
- 783
- United States
- Tunerguy21
I gather you don't do much commuting.
I had no problem with it when I was in Virginia. Since coming to Rhode Island, I can't stand it, although that's a result of horrible roads and even worse drivers. Or is it horrible drivers and even worse roads?
Anyway, the way @Factor41 worded that just makes it seem like most people are fine with a mediocre driving experience, which I can see being somewhat it, but isn't it just that most people full-out hate driving? That's why I said it seems both correct and wrong at the same time, because while most people won't go out of their way to have an engaging drive, they're far from them being "happy" and not just settling for subpar, because they'd rather not drive period. Although I do suppose this goes a bit beyond what the thread is for.
- 399
- Worcestershire
- F41-UK
I'm not sure people "hate" driving as such, but most seem to have absolutely no interest in it, other than as a means of getting from one place to another without having to resort to public transport. That's why they seem to spend most of the time on their phones. Because they're not actively looking for an engaging driving experience, they just settle for whatever fits their perceived cheapest-possible-option motoring may be. In many cases, that's a diesel, even though it may actually work out cheaper for them to put a cheaper, lighter petrol engine in their low-use city car which would in many cases give them a more interesting drive.
I've been exposed to a wide range of diesel engines and – other than in trucks, trains and boats – there always seems to be a better alternative. It's no doubt very impressive what Audi achieved at Le Mans, but man, those cars dulled the experience - it was like watching the race with the noise turned down, so they get marked down for ruining motorsport too!
Indeed, isn't petrol virtually free in the Gulf states?! I remember reading an article in one of the car mags that was saying their photographer's Range Rover cost £110 to fill up in the UK, but £10 when they were on location over there!
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