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Report: The Majority of TDIs May not be Worth Fixing

Now that US district Judge Charles M Breyer has approved Volkswagen’s TDI settlement, the question of what will happen to the cars that are bought back remains. It turns out that roughly 325,000 older diesel Volkswagens may be cheaper to scrap to than to fix.

That’s according to recent report from Green Car Reports, that argues that the oldest, worst polluting TDIs aren’t equipped with many of the physical parts that might make later model TDIs easy to fix.

The TDI Jettas, Golfs, Passats, and Beetles produced in 2015 came from the factory fitted with tanks for Diesel Emission Fluid that’s required in selective catalytic reduction exhaust after treatment (which reduces NOx). Besides the fact that the new EA288 TDI engines were the least polluting engines to begin with, this tank will likely make it easy and cheap to modify the 2015 TDIs into compliance. Same goes for the 2012-2014 Passat.

2015_jetta_tdi_4218-3

A range of Golfs, Beetles, and Jettas produced between 2009 and 2014, on the other hand, don’t have those tanks. On top of that, they were equipped with the most polluting engine, so fixing them might require fitting new parts.

Retrofitting the approximately 325,000 cars with parts they were never designed to have may turn out to be more expensive than just buying them back.

What happens remains to be seen, as an expected proposal for a fix to these very cars is coming up on November 11 (though the final deadline set at January 27, 2017).

1.6 TDI Motor ( EA 189 ): Strömungsgleichrichter (Einbau: Bild 1 von 6)

If, indeed, it turns out that just buying all the cars back is cheaper, VW will have a couple of options for what to do with them then, as per the agreement.

The manufacturer’s first option is to recycle the cars, by essentially parting them out.

The second option is to sell them abroad, where emissions regulations are less stringent. Although this sounds like a workaround, it may be less environmentally damaging to keep these polluting cars on the road, as the environmental toll of producing half a million new cars to replace the scrapped TDIs is great.

Finally, for the newer cars with a theoretically financially viable fix, the same two options apply, though they would have a third option: resell the cars in the US, presumably at a discount, with proper disclosure.

[source: Green Car Report]

The post Report: The Majority of TDIs May not be Worth Fixing appeared first on VWVortex.



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