Your Bought-Back Volkswagen Has a Miserable (and Short) Life Ahead of It

by Steph Willems

June 30th, 2016 9:56 AM

your bought back volkswagen has a miserable and short life ahead of it

It’s like the Rapture, but for polluting German vehicles.

Starting this fall, owners of the 466,000 defeat device-equipped Volkswagen and Audi 2.0-liter TDI models still left on the road will head to their dealer, hand over their keys, sign a mountain of paperwork, and walk away with a fat check issued by the bean counters in Wolfburg.

So, what happens to your once-trustworthy diesel-powered steed after the buyback?

Not many owners will worry about the fate that awaits their TDI after it’s led behind the barn, but it’s still an interesting question. John Voelcker, writing for Green Car Reports, dove into the issue.

Volkswagen’s pricey settlement with U.S. owners (and state and federal governments and regulators) requires a minimum of 85 percent of the afflicted 2009–2016 model year TDIs to be bought back. Officially, according to a Volkswagen spokesperson, the automaker hasn’t decided what it plans to do with those 396,000 vehicles.

The settlement, which still needs official approval, spells out the do’s and don’ts:

All Eligible Vehicles returned to Settling Defendants through the Recall Program shall be rendered inoperable by removing the vehicle’s Engine Control Unit (“ECU”) and may be, to the extent possible, recycled to the extent permitted by law. No Eligible Vehicle that is rendered inoperable may subsequently be rendered operable except as allowed by and in compliance with subparagraph 7.2.3 below and Appendix B of this Consent Decree.

The vehicles can be salvaged and broken up for parts, so long as the ECU, diesel oxidation catalyst and diesel particulate filter don’t find a home in another vehicle.

Early speculation that some of the vehicles might find their way, intact and still dirty, to a country with less stringent pollution laws didn’t pan out. Not going to happen, says Volkswagen. Any exported vehicle still needs to undergo an Approved Emissions Modification to bring the vehicle into compliance with Environmental Protection Agency regulations.

U.S. owners can opt to keep their vehicle on the road by undergoing the same fix, but there’s a problem: there is no EPA-approved fix for the vehicles, and any fix for older models would be cumbersome and likely lead to reduced performance and fuel economy. In other words, it would diminish the two traits that made TDI models a hot commodity. The development period and a laborious testing regime would mean a long wait before the fix becomes available.

If the fix doesn’t satisfy the EPA’s concerns, then every older (pre-2015) model is bound for the scrap heap. Newer 2.0-liter models sport an exhaust after-treatment system (urea injection, which the older models magically didn’t need), which should be easier to develop a fix for.

#Diesel #Emissions #EPA #Volkswagen #VW #VwDieselScandal

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16 of 189 comments

NickS on Jun 30, 2016

As much as I would like to see all that embodied energy of an already built car not go to waste, converting them to gassers will be hugely cost prohibitive. Even if the cost of all the parts needed is somehow rationalized the cost of labor will have to be borne by someone. Even if the dealers give VW a disco on the labor there are tons of things to replace and adapt, not just the engine. Unless VW comes up with a specific engine and other parts that minimize the wide variety of parts it's going to be a nightmare. Various engine codes will have different ECU's, various trims will have different looms and controllers ... someone will need to take all these TDI combinations out in the wild and map them to a gas engined car, and most importantly the wiring harness -- that to me is a show-stopper. Some of the actuator and sensor lines might be convertible but it's going to require some serious engineering work to retrofit everything, add the ignition system wiring, etc. I've done engine swaps (gassers) and they were more or less straightforward CONCEPTUALLY but there was always something or other that didn't exactly bolt up or needed a hack. And those swaps didn't trigger some warranty or emissions legal framework. They could just part them out and/or sell them to salvage yards. VAG cars share many parts across models and brands. The only toxic part that needs to be withdrawn from any available channel is the ECUs with the cheat programming, plus LNTs and anything else that could not survive without a cheat ECU.

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- Arthur Dailey on Jun 30, 2016
  
  Did you swaps cost less or more than $6k? If less then it is financially not only viable but possibly profitable. And remember we are talking about hundreds of thousands of these, not just a one off. So once set-up the time and cost should be reduced due to efficiencies of scale. However VW management may well just wish to erase this fiasco.
  
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- NickS on Jul 01, 2016
  
  @Arthur Dailey Arthur, I never did a swap like the TDIs would need, just engines. I cannot fathom who would charge less than $6K in labor to rip out an entire diesel powertrain, the entire fuel and exhaust systems, and install new everything, and then adapt all the controllers etc. Perhaps only in a DIY setting where only the cost of parts is accounted for (usually the DIYer's time is ignored). And this is just labor. Cost of parts, cost of storing the cars, cost of whatever re-certification may be needed, this that and the other? Economies of scale? Who would pay the cost of moving all those TDIs to one special purpose retrofit factory? And I am not entirely certain who would pay and how much for a car with old bones and a brand new engine. Will it be sold with the old and possibly worn suspension or other broken interior or whatever each of these had when it was brought in? Some VeeDub enthusiast might, but they don't add up to the market VW would need. Even if each conversion was profitable, the margins would be so incredibly tiny, before you even consider the logistics headaches ... I really do not see them going to all this trouble for, ... what, a $200 profit per car?
  
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- Vulpine on Jul 01, 2016
  
  @NickS A factory rebuild line would eliminate 90% of your objections. You're assuming a one-person job to handle hundreds of thousands of cars. An assembly-line process would take a fraction of the time and costs would be reduced simply through the economy of scale. VW wouldn't need to recover ALL of the lost funds, but they could certainly recover a decent proportion. Let's say you, yourself had to buy a vehicle you knew you couldn't drive or re-sell as it is. Let's say you had to pay $10K for that vehicle. What would you do with it, just junk it for 50 bucks? You've just lost nearly all that money and you're simply out of pocket. However; you know that if you could re-build that car for a cost of $3K and re-sell that car legally for $8K, how much money have you really lost? Granted, you're not making a profit, but your loss is cut in half and everybody's happy.
  
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- Bumpy ii on Jul 03, 2016
  
  @Vulpine Switching the rebuild and sale amounts would be closer to the truth. You have at least twice the labor costs and twice the component costs that have to be borne by a vehicle sold for maybe 1/3 of new.
  
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- Vulpine on Jul 03, 2016
  
  @bumpy ii I disagree, bumpy; economies of scale make parts costs minimal while labor costs themselves would be half (or less) than reported labor prices at the average dealership. The resale value would be at least somewhat contingent of the year-model of the vehicle so you could not comprehensively state that their value would be ⅓ of new or less.
  
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Kabayo on Jun 30, 2016

What an incredible waste. Those vehicles should be sold for full market value in a country where they can operate legally. Only government can be this wasteful.

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- NickS on Jun 30, 2016
  
  By all means, let's legitimize illegal behavior AND prop up an ideology in one go. The facts show VW as the creator of that waste, but whatever, these days everyone is somehow entitled to their own facts.
  
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- VoGo on Jun 30, 2016
  
  @NickS TTAC seems to attract a rather large number of commenters who love to criticize the US government. If they hate America so much, I certainly won't force them to stay here.
  
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- Old Man Pants on Jun 30, 2016
  
  @VoGo "If they hate America so much, I certainly won’t force them to stay here." God, I miss Archie Bunker. Thanks for channeling.
  
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- JustPassinThru on Jun 30, 2016
  
  @NickS Is something wrong because the government says it is so. Or could it be that, as Oliver Wendell Holmes said, "The Law is an @ss"? Something is not wrong because it's illegal. Something, in a healthy society, is illegal because it's wrong. And in a sick or crumbling society, a lot of outlawed behavior is not only right but necessary.
  
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- JustPassinThru on Jun 30, 2016
  
  @VoGo "TTAC seems to attract a rather large number of commenters who love to criticize the US government. If they hate America so much, I certainly won’t force them to stay here" Yes. And I cannot understand why people who hate cars and hate freedom, come to a site that celebrates cars and the personal free-movement they allow.
  
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- DenverMike on Jul 01, 2016
  
  Sure it's a waste, except they're contraband. How do you think I feel when tons of Pot get burned by the Federalies??
  
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- JustPassinThru on Jul 01, 2016
  
  @DenverMike Pretty good. It's always a good day when the stuff that makes stupid people more stupid, is destroyed rather than sold on the street. In any event, I don't worry much about wasted POT. Unlike some people on some websites, my life doesn't revolve around getting high, staying high, promoting drug use and agitating for more handouts so I can stay high.
  
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- DenverMike on Jul 01, 2016
  
  @JustPassinThru There's all kinds of users. If you're only coming in contact with the stupid kind, or chronics/burnouts, maybe you just attract that.
  
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- Vulpine on Jul 01, 2016
  
  @JustPassinThru Polluting the air is wrong, therefore it is illegal. Where's the issue?
  
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