Barnsh wrote: ↑Tue Apr 16, 2019 2:05 pm
100%
End of the day they were lucky VW were caught just before the DS released with the ingenium.
Then changes were made and adblue usage increased enormously.
My conclusion is maybe they didn’t cheat in the end but the intention was certainly there, whether it was knowingly or oblivious to what Robert Bosch had fitted.
They certainly didn't request the cheat device items in the EDC17 to be removed off there own back.
It was more a case of VW news hits the media .... “sh#t we use that box too, get it sorted “ before release ....or as soon as. And while your at it “ release a statement saying we don’t use cheat devices”...
So all this time this probably wasn't a
bad exhaust design at all. On the contrary maybe it was a rather clever and elegant exhaust design that could have worked brilliantly had it been strapped to a hot, efficient, diesel engine producing less HC/PM, with an oxidation catalyst that actually worked - and SCR and LP EGR systems that were turned down for the most part so that they didn't interfere overly with the otherwise immaculate operation of the system. Without the vital contribution of the acoustic function on the ECU, though, out in the real world such a system would instantly start exhibiting several tell-tale malfunctions.
The blatant discrepancies in the marketing materials, the triple-speed accumulation of diesel in the oil, the "goodwill" oil services, the blocked DPFs, the missing service indicator, the lack of suitable servicing software (on the car or in the workshop), the absence of any training for mechanics, the high AdBlue usage, the poor fuel economy, the eventual elevation of the "safe" diesel dilution percentage and the immediate and sustained response from JLR and its dealers that everything was the fault of owners'
driving style.... you put all of that together and a different interpretation to the one you have described is extremely hard to conceive.
Companies with multi-billion pound R&D budgets simply do NOT make
design errors on this scale. This surely had to be the result of something that was forced on the company without warning - and presumably when it was too late to redesign an alternative solution. You said that the intention to cheat [the emissions tests] was "certainly there": I would not demur. If this is true, then there had to have been a different plan for these cars, i.e. at some point a (presumably, relatively small) group of people got their heads together to create a different scenario to the one that continues to be played out. Behind closed doors they hatched, as Baldrick would say, "a cunning plan".
In English Law a conspiracy to commit an offence carries the same penalty upon conviction as if the material offence had been commissioned. If we had got our heads together and devised a plan to steal a car from the local JLR dealership (whether or not we actually did anything about it), we could each go to jail for 10 years -
just for the planning!. Not many people know that.
See
Inchoate Offences published by the UK's Crown Prosecution Service.