2008 Audi A4 3.2 Quattro Automatic 4-door Sedan on 2040-cars

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Which will Dieselgate hurt more, Volkswagen or US diesels?

The most damning response to the news Volkswagen skirted emissions regulations for its diesel models may have actually come from the Los Angeles Times. On Saturday, the Times published an editorial titled "Did Volkswagen cheat?" The answer was undoubtedly yes. When you can't drive down Santa Monica Boulevard without seeing an average of one VW TDI per block, the following words are pretty striking: "... Americans should be outraged at the company's cynical and deliberate efforts to violate one of this country's most important environmental laws." VW has successfully cultivated a strong, environmentally conscious reputation for its TDI Clean Diesel technology, especially in states where emissions are strictly controlled. A statement like that is like blood all over the opinion section of the Sunday paper. The effect on VW's business, even Germany's financial health, was already felt Monday when the company's shares plummeted 23 percent in morning trading. The statement on Sunday from VW CEO Dr. Martin Winterkorn says "trust" three times. That probably wasn't enough in nine sentences. Writers over the weekend have compared VW's crisis to one at General Motors 30 years ago, when it was the largest seller of diesel-powered passenger cars until warranty claims over an inadequate design and ill-informed technicians effectively pulled the plug on the technology at GM. In a sense, VW is in the same boat as GM because it has fired a huge blow into its own reputation and that of diesels in passenger cars. And just as automakers like Jaguar Land Rover, BMW and, ironically, GM, were getting comfortable with it again in the US. VW of America was already knee-deep in its other problems this year. Its core Jetta and Passat models are aging and it needs to wait more than a year for competitive SUVs that American buyers want. The TDIs were the only continuous bright spot in the line and on the sales charts. Even as fuel prices fell and buyers shunned hybrids, VW managed to succeed with diesels and show that Americans actually care about and accept the technology again. Fervent TDI supporters might actually lobby for that maximum $18 billion fine to VW. I've personally convinced a number of people to look at a TDI instead of a hybrid. Perhaps not so much for stop-and-go traffic, but I know buyers who liked the idea that a TDI drove like a normal car and wasn't packed with batteries.

2016 Technology of the Year Finalist: Audi Virtual Cockpit

The heart of most infotainment systems is a touchscreen in the center console. In many systems, some information can be sent to the gauge cluster in slightly redacted form – stripped-down navigation commands, basic audio info, that sort of thing. To get the full story, the driver has to take their eyes off the road and look to the middle of the dashboard. Audi's Virtual Cockpit, in essence, ditches the center screen and places all that information in the gauge cluster. The high-resolution TFT screen is just over a foot wide, and it has two main modes: Classic view, and Infotainment view. Classic looks like many other traditional TFT gauge clusters, with large traditional gauges and the ability to display a decent amount of information in the space in-between. Go into Infotainment view, and the gauges shrink and head to the lower corners, freeing up a much larger amount of real estate for, say, the nav system map. The gauges also get out of the way when utilizing the menu, entering a destination, or that sort of thing. The four main modes are standard stuff. Virtual Cockpit will show you navigation, media, phone, and trip computer information in large or small formats. You interact with Virtual Cockpit with a familiar MMI wheel-type controller in the center console, like in many other Audis, or with buttons and a scroll/push wheel on the left side of the steering wheel. Climate control functions are handed by physical controls cleverly integrated in the center three vents. It takes a lot of processing power to make all this work as well as it does, and that's handled by NVIDIA's Tegra 3 processor – a quad-core processor usually seen in tablets and smartphones. The system is quick and responsive, and we found the high-resolution screen to be impressively sharp. If there's a downside, it's that Virtual Cockpit doesn't leave an opportunity for a passenger to step in and, say, enter a destination or change the radio station without altering what's right in front of the driver. It could be inconvenient at best, distracting at worst, to have the nav system directions you're trying to follow suddenly be superseded by the audio menu. Adding a small secondary screen for the passenger could be one fix; a connected companion smartphone app another. In the meantime, it's an impressive implementation of a clever idea.

Audi S3 starts at $41,400, A3 Cabrio rings up at $35,600 and A3 TDI priced from $32,600

Audi has released the official pricing info for the all-new A3 TDI Sedan, A3 Cabriolet and the S3 Sedan, and the news appears pretty good all around. As usual, none of the following prices include Audi's unspecified-for-now destination charges.
The big news is the S3, complete with 292 horsepower, a six-speed dual-clutch transmission and Quattro all-wheel drive. Prices start at just $41,100, which is a decent savings over the more powerful, 355-hp Mercedes-Benz CLA45 AMG.
The new A3 TDI sedan, meanwhile, has a starting price of just $32,600. While you'll be certain to save some money on fuel, you'll be doing so without Quattro all-wheel drive. Still, the improved economy of the 2.0-liter, turbodiesel four-cylinder isn't priced too steeply, relative to the gas-powered A3's $29,900 starting price.