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VW fix would have cost $335 per vehicle

Since the Volkswagen diesel kerfuffle began, Bosch, the world's largest auto supplier, has been hooked up to a bullhorn trying to make sure everyone knows its side of the story. Bosch supplied VW with the engine management testing software, including delivery and metering modules, that VW then used to skirt emissions laws in the US. Bosch told VW in 2007 that it was illegal to use the software in cars it planned to sell yet VW did it anyway, according to reports coming out in German newspapers Bild am Sonntag and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. That first warning came two years after VW started developing the small-displacement diesel, around the time that the two men pushing its development, then-brand chief Wolfgang Bernhard and engineer Rudolf Krebs, were telling their superiors that the engine needed AdBlue urea injection to pass US emissions. VW cost controllers wouldn't approve the AdBlue solution because it would add 300 euros ($335 US) to the cost of the vehicle. Bernhard and Krebs left the same year that Bosch advised VW about the software, two years before the engine went into production. That's when things get cloudy. A report in Automotive News says that when Martin Winterkorn took over in 2007 as head of the VW Group and brand, he asked Ulrich Hackenberg and Wolfgang Hatz to keep working on the engine, and "[the] engine then ended up in VW Group diesels" with that problematic software still intact. No one has yet pointed any fingers at this latter chain of command, but like a game of Clue, right now they're the professors in the library holding the candlesticks. Warnings didn't only come from the supplier: Frankfurter says VW's initial investigation has found that an engineer issued the same caution to the company in 2011. Neither Bosch nor VW would comment on the reports.

VW scandal, Alan Taylor on Vipers, and future cars | Autoblog Podcast #474

Episode #473 of the Autoblog Podcast is here. This week, Dan Roth chats with Sam Abuelsamid of Navigant Research about the just-announced deal pending between Volkswagen and the EPA, and Navigant's Transportation Outlook for 2025 to 2050. Alan Taylor, host of The Drive on ERN also visits the Podcast to talk about picking up his Viper ACR in Texas and driving it back to the West Coast. It all starts with the Autoblog Garage - check it out! Check out the rundown with times for topics, and thanks for listening! Autoblog Podcast #474 Topics VW/EPA deal Navigant Research Transportation Outlook Alan Taylor In The Autoblog Garage 2016 Lincoln MKX 2016 Volvo XC90 2016 Jeep Renegade Trailhawk Hosts: Dan Roth Guests: Sam Abuelsamid, Alan Taylor Rundown Intro & Garage - 00:00 VW/EPA - 25:51 Navigant Outlook - 38:47 Alan Taylor - 54:43 Total Duration: 01:13:11 Get The Podcast iTunes – Subscribe to the Autoblog Podcast in iTunes RSS – Add the Autoblog Podcast feed to your RSS aggregator MP3 – Download the MP3 directly Feedback Email – Podcast at Autoblog dot com Review the show in iTunes Podcasts Dodge Volkswagen

Volkswagen loses thousands of vehicles in Chinese explosion

Yesterday, a blazing, explosive fireball erupted from a port in the city of Tianjin, in China, lighting up the night sky and shattering windows with the force of 21 tons of TNT. Hundreds were injured and the death toll continues to rise, with the most recent reports claiming 50 were killed. While the human cost of this tragedy simply can't be overstated, it hasn't taken long for corporations to look into what the enormous explosion cost them. And for Volkswagen, the answer is quite a lot. According to our friends at Jalopnik, a Chinese source claims the German giant, which remains one of the PRC's most popular brands, lost thousands of vehicles. The automotive casualty sheet lists 1,065 Touaregs, 391 Beetles, 257 Tiguans, 114 Golfs, 84 Up! minicars, 39 SportVans, and 28 Magotans (a locally built version of the Passat). While those are the only vehicles listed, the Chinese source said over 2,700 vehicles were destroyed. For example, both Land Rover and Renault lost an unspecified number of Discovery SUVs and Koleos CUVs, respectively. The explosion also affected Toyota. Its research and design facility with joint-venture partner Sichuan FAW also suffered an unspecified amount of damage. You can check out the translated source article here. As Google Translate jobs go, though, this one is particularly bad, but it still offers some details of the automotive cost of this disaster.