Been sitting on a story (like usual) for several days now. It first appeared in some of the less than mainstream Euro press, then got picked up by the Euro and world Main Stream Media (MSM), with attribution to the not so MSM ’cause neither VW or EPA will confirm or deny the story. The gist is that EPA will settle with VW if they commit to building electric cars at their Chattanooga plant.
Now if your corporation is on the hook for expensively making legal a half million diesel cars or even more expensively buying them back, and you already build an electric “compliance car”… This is a freakin’ bargain! Chattanooga is set up for flexible production, has excess capacity, and that capacity is in the process of being doubled. Just ship the assembly tooling over from Germany and slap together some E-Golfs in the unused corners of the plant. Granted, VW will probably lose money on every one they make like most “compliance cars”, but they’re only selling like three or four thousand a year…
And there is EPA’s problem- Electric car sales peaked in 2014 and have dropped to around 200,000 a year. That’s counting plug in hybrids too, for pure electrics like the E-Golf the numbers are even bleaker. But here’s EPA stuck with electric cars languishing in the market, and didn’t their boss promise a million electric cars by 2015? A quick press release on how they made sinner VW “get religion” and build electrics, a media event at the Chattanooga plant with VW looking all apologetic and EPA victorious, and then everybody gets drunk and forgets how easy they let VW off!
From the EPA that gave us unvented gas cans that leak way more gas when used then the old ones ever vented, would you expect anything less? And is the EPA that let GM and the diesel truck engine makers off with a slap on the wrist for previous emissions cheating about to “get tough”, and by doing so admit that they screwed themselves previously? Fat chance…
Then again, what if EPA sobers up before the deal is done and figures out that they’d better require some actual numbers of the alleged “dirty diesels” be replaced with electric cars, say a one for one ratio. And just to make it a deal the “dirty diesels” owners can’t refuse, the EPA tells the states not to renew the “dirty diesels” registrations. So EPA manages to make VW build and “sell” a half million electric cars, and most of them come with a $7,500 federal tax credit… Yup, they just screwed their own federal government out of three or four billion in taxes! Meanwhile, VW gets a bunch of state and federal grants to offset the losses they’re taking on each of these electric cars they have to make. Heck, if they play the government grants like Tesla does, they’ll make money on each of these electric cars nobody wants!
I doubt even that would move a half million electric cars and take the same half million “dirty diesels” off the road. And for damn good reason… I live 70 miles from the nearest VW dealer, and the “best case” range of an E-Golf is 83 miles. From what I’ve been reading on the E-Golf forums, range drops by around 30-40% in winter… to maybe 50 miles. Yup, just bringing home a new E-Golf and just about every electric car would involve an overnight trip. The route home from my nearest VW dealer has a motel at mile 10, and then no motels to mile 50, and with no charge points but for the usual 120 volt 15 amp outdoor outlets, charging’s gonna take all night… Looks like just bringing my E-Golf home will take three days!
Of course, EPA doesn’t think about these details, which probably explains why they’re such a screwed up agency. VW diesels always sold unusually well in rural areas what with the long commutes we have, and rural folks are natural gearheads and resourceful ones at that. Heck, I’ve seen multiple bidders show up for an auction with a dead 30 year old VW diesel in small print at the bottom of the sale bill. Now I’m on record offering to trade even up my ’13 Golf Sportswagen TDI for a new 300 or so HP AWD Golf R, but an electric… No way! But when the feds did cash for clunkers a few years back, they only required that the clunker be able to move under it’s own power. And certainly most dealers hungry for sales didn’t look to see if there were a couple folks pushing it or only the starter motor and not the real motor was functioning. If you strip off the emissions stuff the 140 HP motor from my ’13 will fit in and replace the 90 HP version of the same basic motor in my ’03, and a bunch of other better bits will fit too. Or maybe buy a gasser version of the same car with a blown engine and fix it with the “dirty diesel”… with the gas engine VIN, the DMV will be happy.
The EPA is run by “engineers” who largely wouldn’t know how to change the oil on a lawnmower, never mind move a train. Fortunately we’ve still got a lot of creative and resourceful folks in this country, and they’re hard at work doing DPF deletes and putting old engines in new trucks to keep rollin’. Seize affordable diesel cars and replace them with electrics… EPA, you don’t wanna go there!
But given EPA’s past ability to screw themselves, they probably will…
GearheadGrrrl 
Wow, someone doesn’t have a clear understanding of electric rebates, or VW electric cars in general…
First – no one gets cut a check when they buy an electric car. What happens is that you pay the FULL price of the car and the government allows you to write off “up to” a certain amount, depending on your income, etc. Maybe you’ll get to write off the full $7,500. Maybe less. Maybe nothing. If it’s a REBATE, you get money back. If it’s a tax CREDIT, you get “tax relief.”
Second, if the E-golf runs out of juice, has free towing to the next nearest VW dealership (which will most likely have a faster charger – which gives 80% in 30 minutes). They will also pay for the taxi home, etc. Within 70 miles from home (which applies to you) = free tow to ANY charger (if you live in a major or minor city there’s chargers everywhere now – even at local McDonald’s).
But other than that, great article!
Yup, I understand exactly how the program works- My fed tax liability is usually less than a thousand a year, so that’s be all the tax credit I’d probably get. As for the “free” VW towing and cab when the E-Golf dies, first off there’s no cab company between the dealer and another town 20 miles the other side of here. Plenty of flatbed tow trucks though… But from what I’ve read on the forums, VW has been welching on this promise. Couple of unpaid tow bills, and the local tow truck operators won’t even come out and look at a dead electric car! And gettin to my “local” VW dealership is no solution, ’cause it’s iffy if the E-Golf has the range to make it home anyway, and they don’t have a charger. In fact, the nearest charger to me is only a class 2 and it’s 50 miles away!
This is why electric cars just plain won’t work in most of America.
Ah – got it. Too bad about VW and not honoring roadside assistance. Funny that’s part of what they offered TDI owners as part of the goodwill package.
I agree with the notion that EVs just aren’t cut out for most people as a primary vehicle. Especially for those too far from a charger.
I believe most of these “compliance” vehicles are only for show – they aren’t really practical for most.
On another note – just read your profile and your love of BMW motorcycles. I have a soft spot for BMW tourers – my dad owned several up into his 70’s, until cancer took his ability to bend his knee fully. Unfortunately, he had to get ride of the bikes in favor of a Passat TDI (which he purchased after seeing mine).
Myself owning two TDIs and him getting one based on my experiences makes me feel even more invested in this whole diesel problem.
Wow Diana ………..Known you off and on since the mid eighty’s and never have a clue you had this much info stored up and available. And re: the EPA and diesel going’s on pertaining to the VW fiasco, Well I think you hit the nail on the head. Love this article and your ability to keep all this stuff sorted out and your interest in what VW has caused themselves.
Will follow along and try and pay attention , maybe I will learn something that will be of importance / help Good ideal or ? ?
You think the world is like you. You live 70 miles from the Walmart… Okay. 70% of america lives about 5 miles from a Walmart. Not that I ever shop there, but it’s 2.5 miles from my front door to the Walmart, and accessible via paved sidewalk.
The average american has about a 40 mile daily roundtrip commute, for which EV’s do great. Alasks and British Columbia isn’t a great idea for an EV but your truck won’t fit into my backyard either…
If the EPA strongarms VW into cranking out 500K EVs and to make them cheap enough, that may add some real critical mass to the market.
Now, if the EPA really wanted a first hash settlement, what they could do is require VW to pay for an All electric USPS fleet. Low speed, steady routes, fascist levels of routine maintenance….
That might be something.
Pat, like many electric car advocates, your credibility would improve if you checked your facts before you write in anger. I’m quite aware that worldwide, billions of folks are being forced off the land and into the cities. I’m actually only 20 miles from the nearest WalMart and an equally distasteful home improvement big box, Menards. And we’ve got a paved bike trail half the way there, with a paved shoulder on the state highway wide enough to drive a truck on the rest of the way.
In the real world a 40 mile commute is flirting with the drop dead range of a five year old electric car on a perfect day when no heat or air conditioning is required… That means for at least half of us an electric won’t work. Then there’s the problem of several hundred mile weekend trips, and most of us can’t afford a 2nd conventional car to do what the electric can’t, never mind have a 2nd parking space for it.
And BTW, my Ford Ranger pickup is about the same width as a Volt and not much longer. It can haul 1500 pounds, or a working load of 500 kilos with driver, tools, etc.. How much can your Volt haul?
The US EV market is down to about 100,000 units a year and it’s saturated, dumping 500,000 units on that market might well result in VW having to give the things away. Even then, the uptake would be so slow that they might have to scrap many of them. EVs barely survive in the market because of government regulations and subsidies, and that little party may be coming to an end.
The Postal Service fleet is an excellent application for electrics- The little “LLV” vans usually cover less than 10 miles a day and seldom wander farther than a couple miles from the Post Office where they’re based. The LLV van is in fact based on a VW, the little Grumman bodied van from the 80s built on a VW diesel powertrain. Grumman and VW built a couple hundred of them before Grumman got the LLV contract for over 100,000 units, the Postal Service wanted a slightly bigger body than the VW version had and of course a “made in america” GM powertrain, so Grumman upsized the VW van into the LLV. With the Postal Service’s demand for 10,000 vehicles a year as well as the usual orders from UPS, bakeries, etc. stretching Grumman’s capacity, the little VW van was dropped.
Thirty years later the Postal Service is looking for a replacement for the LLVs, and making the same stupid mistakes- They want something the size of a UPS truck. UPS needs bigger trucks because they handle heavier parcels and they’re depots are farther apart- for example UPS has only 3 depots in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul metroplex while the Postal Service has dozens. That’s an advantage for the Postal Service because they can use smaller vehicles and easily return to the neighborhood Post Office for lunch and to reload. Thus a recycled LLV body on a new electric powered chassis would be ideal for the Postal Service. But with the big three drooling over that long term 100,000+ vehicle Postal Service contract, fat chance VW or any other “foreign” manufacturer will win the contract, even with a conventional vehicle.
So I’d like to see the Postal Service go electric, but good luck on that…
“In the real world a 40 mile commute is flirting with the drop dead range of a five year old electric car ”
Good thing the new ones have 100-200 mile ranges. The 2016 Leaf has a 100 mile range and the Chevy Bolt has 200.
My Volt is a compact, it’s not meant to haul a lot of tools or crap. It’s okay with fluffy stuff,
but i don’t like to carry 4 people in it, it gets a little too much wallow.
Your ford ranger would never park in my back yard, too narrow..
The world is what the world is. The Volt works well for me, and the 300 million americans who live in Metropolitan areas.
Those shiny new electric cars will have half the advertised range when they’re five years old on a cold winter day. At ten years old, they’ll mostly be dead.
Thank you for being honest about the limitations of the Volt- When a car has trouble handling but four adults, that’s a warning sign. With that heavy battery pack adding so much dead weight, after a hundred thousand miles these electric cars will be scary with any more than two skinny passengers and a weeks groceries.
The Ranger is Ford’s compact pickup, and it’s about a foot narrower than the full size F150 and about the same width as a Volt.
Electric cars will work for a lot of fleets like the Postal Service and a few core city dwellers who probably don’t need a car anyways. but the couple hundred million americans who live in cities largely live in suburbs, where the commutes alone are often 20 to 30 miles one way. Then there’s the side trips on the way home from work that add another 10 to 40 miles while folks go shopping, to school, etc. before going home. Or the two earner household where before the electric even gets a chance to recharge the other wage earner takes off to work in it.
That’s what the world is really like. The mistake the electric car advocates are making is overselling the technology to people it won’t work for. There are enough folks that electrics will work for (core city commuters and fleets) to easily push electrics to over 10% market penetration… But the marketing is so bad that electrics are nowhere near cracking one percent penetration.
I’ll probably address that in a future post on “fixing VW”, as I think making VW switch to using more renewables makes more sense than massive fines, buybacks, etc.. But just dumping thousands of electric cars in VW dealership lots isn’t the solution, and would guarantee VW’s bankruptcy.
“Thank you for being honest about the limitations of the Volt- When a car has trouble handling but four adults, that’s a warning sign”
A volt is a compact car.it’s fit the Voltec drive train into the Chevy Cruze, most compact cars don’t do great with four adults.
Have you ever been with four adults in a Neon? It sucks dog Bollocks.
Have you ever tried running your Ford Ranger in central Boston?
Looks like it’s time for some Ranger 101… The Ranger is Ford’s compact pickup, currently sold everywhere but North America. It’s the width of a Volt, Neon, etc. and slightly longer and of course taller. As for the ability to haul four adults, I’ve lived a sheltered life driving VW Golfs for the last few decades- They’re built to haul 4 adults or a thousand pounds, because VW isn’t trying to upsell you to a bigger car. GM for one actually hobbled their small cars because they wanted you to be dissatisfied with your Vega or Chevette and trade it for a bigger and more profitable GM product.
Oh, and Boston- Did it with an International cabover and a 40′ trailer.