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Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) intends to sell electric cars for less than 20,000 euros ($22,836) and protect German jobs by converting three factories to make Tesla (TSLA.O) rivals, a source familiar with the plans said.
VW and other carmakers are struggling to adapt quickly enough to stringent rules introduced after the carmaker was found to have cheated diesel emissions tests, with its chief executive Herbert Diess warning last month that Germany's auto industry faces extinction.
Plans for VW's electric car, known as "MEB entry" and with a production volume of 200,000 vehicles, are due to be discussed at a supervisory board meeting on Nov. 16, the source said.
Fallout from cheating on diesel emissions tests continues. If German automakers, of which VW is the largest, switch to electric vehicles (EVs), will other car companies have to follow suit?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Friday November 09 2018, @05:34PM (7 children)
Yes, it could be described as a business model. But, looking at the bigger picture? The EPA and others set requirements that were nearly impossible to meet. Maybe not impossible, but nearly so. It wasn't just VW, but most of the diesel car makers who were cheating. Maybe all of them. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/25/business/diesel-emissions-volkswagen-bmw-mercedes.html [nytimes.com]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by mcgrew on Friday November 09 2018, @05:40PM (4 children)
I would be happy if all diesel vehicles disappeared tomorrow. Nasty damned things. I live on a very busy street and as soon as I walk outside, the first thing I usually smell is diesel exhaust. It's especially bad when the school buses are running. Actually, I'd lie to see all vehicles be electric, poorly tuned gas engines smell almost as bad as diesel. Then there are the vehicles with bad rings and/or valves that burn oil.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09 2018, @06:43PM
Taking donations to buy mcgrew a bumper sticker - https://www.zazzle.com/diesel_smoke_makes_me_horny_bumper_sticker-128898009265399595 [zazzle.com] If every member donates a dollar, we can buy him one for every bumper he owns!
(Score: 3, Informative) by tizan on Friday November 09 2018, @08:58PM (1 child)
VW damaged new diesel engines reputation.
In fact new diesel cars made after 2016 for the US market are cleaner particulate wise than most GDI gas engine cars !
e.g
https://phys.org/news/2017-07-diesel-gas.html [phys.org]
So ban gasoline engines first if diesels have to go !
Most vehicles with DEF meets EPA requirements easily...and in fact the requirements is going to ships in 2020...it is not hard to meet ! It is an argument for car makers to make more money quickly.
VW was claiming that they could have low NOx emission without DEF fluid...you can but at much lower HP power and worst gas consumption (as proven by their cheats).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 10 2018, @08:58PM
>> In fact new diesel cars made after 2016 for the US market are cleaner particulate wise than most GDI gas engine cars !
The GDI [wikia.com] vehicles are still cleaner than anything from NOD [wikia.com].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 10 2018, @06:22AM
Whereas I live in a very rural area, and have no problems with internal combustion engines or their exhaust, whatever the fuel source.
I think that's at the core of most non-city-dwellers resistance to EPA-style regulation. It's not that we like 'harming the environment', but when you take multiple-million human beings, give them each an automobile, then cram them in the space of something like Greater LA, you're going to have a much, much bigger problem than those same millions with the same automobiles, spread out over something the size of, say, north and south dakota. Emission-control systems come with inherent trade-offs that cause legitimate problems for a lot of use-cases, and having them designed for the LA valley and then rammed down our throats by Law when we're out in the middle of nowhere, is really rather frustrating.
tldr: context matters.
(Score: 5, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Friday November 09 2018, @06:39PM
The EPA and others set requirements that were nearly impossible to meet. Maybe not impossible, but nearly so.
Except that in cheat-mode they did pass these impossible tests. At the expense of mileage and power, of course, but they did meet them.
So, no, not impossible at all. In fact, they're so easy to pass they can do so at the flip of a switch.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09 2018, @09:54PM
Whaaaaa! The test was too hard so I cheated. That's okay, right? Whaaaaa! Look over there, they are cheating so I can too, right? Whaaaaa!