2013 Volkswagen Jetta Se on 2040-cars

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West Virginia researcher describes how Volkswagen got caught

The cheating scandal engulfing the world's largest automaker started with a road trip. In the spring of 2014, researchers from West Virginia were evaluating the tailpipe emissions of diesel cars made for the American market by European manufacturers, something never before studied in the academic realm. Excited by the prospect of breaking new ground, the team of two professors and two students wanted to gather as much data as possible. "And being academics, we went a little overboard," said Arvind Thiruvengadam, one of the students. "Being academics, we went a little overboard." Overboard included driving the cars for more miles than they needed to test and verify results. Drivers put about 1,500 miles on each of the first two cars in the study, a Volkswagen Jetta and BMW X5, along California roadways. For their final car, a Volkswagen Passat, they wanted even more mileage. So they took the car on a road trip from Los Angeles to Seattle and back again, collecting data from more than 2,000 miles of testing. The road trip was Volkswagen's undoing. When the West Virginia team returned to Los Angeles, they were befuddled by the test results. In theory, the Passat should have spewed the lowest levels of pollutants among the three cars. Equipped with the more modern selective catalytic reduction technology, the team expected to find minimal levels of nitrogen oxide. But the car, which had been certified at a California Air Resources Board facility prior to the start of the road trip, had elevated levels of NOx that were 20 times the baseline levels established beforehand. The researchers, comprised of professors Gregory Thompson and Dan Carder and students Marc Besch and Thiruvengadam, knew their on-board equipment functioned properly because, early in their research, they had double-checked its accuracy after recording sky-high NOx readings from the Jetta that showed 30 times the level of its baseline testing at the CARB facility. It was particularly noteworthy because the Jetta contained the first-generation Lean NOx Trap technology, not the more efficient SCR, yet both produced large discrepancies. The BMW, on the other hand, performed as expected. Today, Thiruvengadam is careful to say the research team never suspected Volkswagen of cheating on emissions testing, nor did the researchers report such a finding. They merely reported their findings to CARB officials who then further investigated.

VW debuts Get Happy Super Bowl ad

Brace yourself for another tidal wave of Super Bowl commercials. Volkswagen has released its spot for this year's big game. Set to air during the second quarter, the Get Happy spot follows one jubilant office worker as he makes his way through the day, spreading joy wherever he goes. The source of his happiness? A Volkswagen Beetle, of course. Now, if you're wondering why a gaggle of white guys are running around on your screen with Jamaican accents, it will help to know the spot is part of a larger Get Happy campaign featuring Jimmy Cliff.
The first ad in the series featured the artist singing his rendition of "C'Mon, Get Happy," complete with a little help from some notorious unhappy YouTube stars. You can take a look at the new ad before it airs below, along with the complete press release for a little more background.

VW outsells GM in China for first time in 8 years

In case you didn't know, Volkswagen is hell-bent on becoming the largest automaker in the world. The German carmaker has inched closer to that goal, having outsold General Motors in China last quarter for the first time in eight years.
Volkswagen's sales in China, its largest marker, increased by 21 percent last quarter to 704,991 units. Those numbers almost tripled GM's third-quarter growth, and were enough to beat out the American automaker's 664,765 sales. GM, however, still leads in year-to-date sales in China by a slim margin of around 77,000 units. The Asian nation also happens to be GM's largest market, and according to the report in Automotive News, China's car market may grow to be larger than the US, Japan and Germany combined in three years' time.
About the news his company was bested in China by VW last quarter, GM CEO Dan Akerson is quoted saying, "It's not whether you're the biggest car manufacturer. It's whether you want to be the most profitable." It should be noted of these figures that GM includes truck figures, yet excludes Hong Kong and Macau from its Chinese sales numbers, while VW does just the opposite. Through September of this year, Volkswagen had 5 of the 10 best selling vehicles in China. GM boasted three of the cars on that list.