Used diesel demand drops in Germany over fear of software upgrades

Volkswagen TDI diesel vehicles owned by Phil Grate and family, Seattle, WashingtonDiesel-powered cars, long a staple on European roads, are starting to lose favor as million of dollars of inventory begins to pile up in used diesel models. The inventory, largely recent models certified under the superseded Euro-5 emission standards, has boomed recently over the possibility the cars will not meet future emission limits to be...

Audi diesel: another shoe drops as top VW Group execs implicated

2017 Audi RS 7It has been nearly two years since Volkswagen came clean and admitted its "clean diesel" engines were actually quite dirty. In 2015, a VW engineer admitted the TDI diesel cars sold in the U.S. since 2009 were outfitted with "defeat device" software that let them pass emission tests, only to emit far more nitrogen oxides in real-world use. Two...

Here’s how to comment on EPA proposal to loosen emission limits on cars

Chrome exhaust pipeOn August 10, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced it would reopen the Comment Period for the vehicle-emission standards for model years 2022 through 2025 it had finalized in January. The auto industry and its lobbyists had complained that the agency had moved too quickly, despite its issuance last summer of a voluminous Technical...

VW engineer gets 40 months in jail, $200K fine, for diesel cheating role

2015 Volkswagen Golf TDI SEFormer Volkswagen employee James Liang was sentenced in Detroit yesterday to serve 40 months in prison and pay a $200,000 fine for his role in the global Volkswagen diesel-emission cheating scandal. It was a stiffer sentence than expected for an engineer who helped to create software that controlled exhaust emissions only when Volkswagen and...

VW, Mercedes, Opel, Fiat launch buybacks of dirtiest diesels in Europe

2015 Volkswagen Golf TDI SEAlmost two years ago, the Volkswagen diesel emission scandal burst into public view, and nothing has been quite the same since then. The news that VW Group engineers had deliberately cheated on eight years of emission tests for the "clean diesels" sold by Volkswagen, Audi, and Porsche sent shockwaves around the world. Settling the criminal charges...

VW exec to plead guilty to diesel cheating charges after jail, house arrest

2015 Volkswagen Golf TDI SEIt has been almost two years since Volkswagen changed the prospects for diesel-powered cars when it admitted to eight years' worth of cheating on emissions tests for its so-called clean diesel vehicles. The effects of the German automaker's diesel scandal are still unfolding today, not only in the United States, but in Europe as well. Another...

Decline of oil: Bloomberg suggests what it could look like

Oil well (photo by John Hill)Predictions on the future of global energy vary greatly, but many analysts largely believe that peak demand for the oil industry is coming relatively soon. The world's largest oil companies, however, see it differently: they say their business will only continue to grow through the year 2040. Exxon and OPEC each believe more than 100 million...