Today, Volkswagen announced the “Dieselgate” scandal – VW’s cheating on emissions ratings – affects at least 11 million Volkswagen cars sold world-wide, and that the company is setting aside 6.5 billion euros, or about $7.3 billion — to cover the cost of fixing the cars to comply with pollution standards and…
VW’s inaccurate emissions tests for 2009-15 TDI Diesel passenger cars was not an “accident”, according to the EPA. It’s not like VW’s engineers misconfigured some testing equipment and accidentally came up with bogus numbers. You might do that one year, like Hyundai/Kia did, but a company like Volkswagen would not…
It’s been a tumultuous weekend for the Volkswagen Group. Last weeks announcement that the EPA and CARB are investigating the company over allegations that VW had fabricated TDI Diesel car emissions results has thrown a monkey wrench into the credibility of not only the VW Group but the whole system of validating emissions…
Back in 2009-10 the VW Group released a series of TDI Diesel vehicles with excellent emissions results. Those emissions were so good that at that time I wrote a piece saying VW’s TDI vehicles are not your grandfathers dirty diesel, and even raised the question whether VW would need hybrid vehicles…
Before the VW Group follows through on their promise of electric car leadership by 2018, VW has to face an EPA and California investigation over evasion of emissions laws. Within minutes of publishing my previous piece saying the VW Group may be in the opening stanza’s of an electric vehicle symphony,…
A couple years ago, the VW Group promised that by 2018ish VW would be a electric vehicle major player. With the Audi e-tron quattro concept electric SUV, and the Porsche Mission E, and the VW e-Golf, we may be seeing the opening stanza’s in what may become a fully electrified automotive…
Tonight was the second of the 2016 Republican Presidential Candidates debate. While I didn’t watch it in person, it appears the R’s were just as insane as one would expect. Bernie Sanders, a candidate on the Democrat side, live-tweeted the debate using the #DebateWithBernie hashtag. It was great – and…
Porsche is joining its sister company, Audi, in unveiling a concept car that’ll be called a “Tesla Killer” by the press. The Porsche Mission E, as it’s called, is aiming at the luxury sports car side of the Tesla Motors appeal. With the Mission E, Porsche is promising specs which…
A month ago Audi announced preliminary information on the Audi e-Tron Quattro concept car, an all-electric SUV with a 300ish mile electric range. The press went goo-goo thinking that Audi is launching a Tesla-killer, when in fact this car (if it goes to production) will be several years behind the…
Along with details on the 2016 Nissan Leaf, Nissan published a video showing us details of the battery pack factory in Smyrna Tennessee. This video happens to show construction of the new 30 kiloWatt-hour battery pack, which we know simply because of the shape of each module. And it happens to…
Syria’s fossil fuel resources are dwindling fast, making that country an unattractive place to fight a war over crude oil supplies. Yet, a war is being fought over the future of Syria, and a side effect of that war is the huge refugee crisis in Europe. Earlier I’ve made the case…
At a tactical level the high drama of the Refugee crisis in Europe is caused by many in Europe refusing to take in the refugees. It might simply be the cost of supporting refugees once they’ve arrived, or it might be racism. As I’ve written over the last couple days,…
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg spoke in Prague (a very beautiful city) today saying “What NATO as an organization is doing is to address the root causes of the migrant crisis.” That sounds cool, but reading on in the radio.cz report it’s clear that Stoltenberg’s idea of addressing root causes will…
Today, the competition for longer range electric cars just heated up Nissan announced details on the 2016 Nissan Leaf. Thanks to a 30 kiloWatt-hour battery pack in the 2016 Nissan Leaf SV and SL, the Leaf now has the longest EPA certified electric car rage, 107 miles, of anything short…
This week Toyota unveiled the 2016 Toyota Prius at a large press event in Las Vegas. The catch phrase pushed by Toyota, “Beyond Possible”, makes me wonder why Toyota is so stuck on Hybrids and not moving forward into the future with battery electric vehicles. Sticking with their tried-and-true puts Toyota not…
