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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 Golf TDI circles US on less than $300 of diesel

$294.98. That's how much it cost the Volkswagen team to drive across all 48 contiguous states in the union. Which is pretty impressive, but it's only part of the story. In an effort to demonstrate just how economical a conventional diesel engine can be, VW sent a team out from its US headquarters in Herndon, VA, in a Golf TDI. Their mission was to visit all the Lower 48 on as little fuel as possible. Over the course of 16 days, they traveled 8,233.5 miles, burned through 101.43 gallons of fuel, and marked a frankly astonishing average of 81.17 miles per gallon. As a result, the team – made up of hypermiling automotive journalist Wayne Gerdes and electronics engineer Bob Winger – picked up a new Guinness World Record for the lowest fuel consumption achieved in a non-hybrid car across the 48 contiguous states. The previous record, it's worth noting, had also been set by VW and Gerdes, who piloted a 2013 Passat TDI at just a hair under 80 mpg. But here's the kicker: in raising the diesel economy bar even higher, the team also beat the record for the same achievement in a hybrid vehicle by over six mpg. So the next time someone tries to tell you a hybrid is more efficient than a diesel (at least on the highway), you can point them towards this record. Related Video: VOLKSWAGEN GOLF TDI® ROUNDS LOWER 48 STATES ON LESS THAN $300 OF CLEAN DIESEL, SETS GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS™ ACHIEVEMENT FOR FUEL ECONOMY Golf TDI® beats the GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS™ achievement for "lowest fuel consumption—48 U.S. contiguous States for a non-hybrid car" at a stellar 81.17 mpg Herndon, Va. — Volkswagen of America, Inc., is pleased to announce today that the 2015 Golf TDI® Clean Diesel, part of the family of vehicles that won the 2015 North American Car of the Year, has set a new GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS® achievement for the "lowest fuel consumption—48 U.S. contiguous States for a non-hybrid car" with a remarkable 81.17 mpg. Traveling 8,233.5 miles around America in 16 days on $294.98 of Shell® Diesel fuel, the Golf beat the previous mark of 77.99 mpg by more than 3 mpg, and also beat the hybrid vehicle record of 74.34 mpg by more than 6 mpg. "Covering 8,233.5 miles on just 101.43 gallons of Clean Diesel fuel is a remarkable accomplishment, and solid proof of the efficiency and fuel economy of Volkswagen's TDI® Clean Diesel vehicles," said Michael Horn, President and CEO, Volkswagen Group of America, Inc.

Volkswagen to 'refit' 11 million diesel vehicles [UPDATE]

UPDATE: This post has been updated with an official comment from Volkswagen of America. In response to its devastating diesel-emissions scandal, Volkswagen will ask some 11 million of its customers to report into dealerships to have their diesel-powered vehicles "refitted," Reuters is reporting. According to new CEO Matthais Muller, customers will be asked to report in "in the next few days" for the refit, although it's not entirely clear exactly what the 'refit' entails. Mueller apparently made the announcement during a closed-door meeting with 1,000 of the German company's top managers, although he didn't explain exactly how the emissions-cheating software would be sorted out, or what impact it would have on the performance of mileage of the company's diesel-powered products. It's expected that the refit work will cost VW $6.5 billion, Reuters claims. "We are facing a long trudge and a lot of hard work," Muller allegedly said. "We will only be able to make progress in steps and there will be setbacks." Autoblog reached out to Volkswagen of America to see when American consumers would be asked to report to dealers, what the refit involves, how long it's expected to take to repair all the cars in the US and globally, and what impact this fix will have on the performance and fuel economy of its diesel-powered cars and SUVs. Unfortunately and unsurprisingly, VWoA wasn't too forthcoming. "We don't comment on media speculation on internal meetings," Volkswagen of America spokesman Mark Gillies told Autoblog, adding, "We don't have any information on what the remedy might be at the moment, but we are working on it as a matter of the utmost urgency."