Not really that surprising - if true, anyone want to bet on Mercedes being next?! Or Porsche.. Will this end up being be the car equivalent of the Tour de France doping scandal
This isn't a CO2 issue (which is how UK road tax bands are calculated) Recalls will be a calibration flash, remember it passes with all the hardware the vehicle currently has fitted, just requires switching on in an off-cycle situation. Knock on might be a different service task at the interval, to top up Urea, or clean an EGR (two examples, not saying this is the case). More than likely the 'cheat' software gives poorer subjective drivability, good luck in a law suit against VW going in with that.
I assume its the fact that VW have been caught out lying & cheating, quite why that's such a big shock to people I have no idea, all big businesses do it to some extent.
What happens if they get scanned so they run in testing mode and then they owner went and got a remap. Does that not affect other makes/models that are tuned, or is it just for factory spec vehicles?
All depends on the remap, some will turn off EGR completely - which totally destroys the NOx emissions compliance.
Vehicle selected for in emission compliance will have to meet some sort of criteria to ensure they are being tested as they would in certification. Non factory approved modifications, such as remaps, have different check sums than the factory calibration, so that would rule such vehicles out.
^^^ I have seen that on social media lol. I should point out though, the picture above, it is were true would be a severe soot issue vs the NOx concern in the US VW was found to have breached. I have found out this NOx concern affects US vehicles with SCR (Selective Catalyst Reduction). As far as I am aware MK6 or other vehicles fitted with EA189 engines did not use SCR in the EU, however the ECU software is the same.
EA189 are the engines affected. Not the new EU6 EA288. USDM EA189 engines used SCR ( selective catalyst reduction). ECU firmware is pretty similar EU and USDM vehicles.
As Eddie has said The EA189 type engine is the one in the spot light, I recall has been flagged up what would be mk6 type common rail units from what I'm told but still no details from VW yet, given it does appear to be adblue I would guess UK cars will be recalled partly as piece of mind PR rather than lets fix the 500 cars that if really effects in the UK A remap in general doesn't alter the bare bones of the coding of the program thats running the engine, which runs things like the egr, dpf regeneration & various other self monitoring procedures lets wait and see what happens next