[Closed] Diesel group actions other than VAG's

Option 2

the evil Ford empire

.. whose van you bought...

This is not far off a scam - just a quick money grabbing scheme by lawyers. You decide if you want to be a part of that.

Possibly depends on why you bought a diesel - if you seriously bought it for the environmental benefits of a 'clean' diesel, then you really don't deserve any money back...if you bought it as it did more mpg than petrol equivalent then you are getting that benefit already so nothing to get compensated for...

just a quick money grabbing scheme by lawyers

this

at the moment this is massively speculative

That's how it looks. They seem to be on a fishing expedition, assuming that the companies will just pay for them to go away rather than spend years in court.

Shame its the owners that get the money, rather than the rest of us that have had to breathe in the fumes.

just a quick money grabbing scheme by lawyers

Yes, but it won't be quick.

VW were first caught in 2015, the Group Action is still rattling through the courts now and the earliest 'victims' could be compensated is 2022, if they are at all. AFAIK they have to prove damages, Dieselgate didn't directly affect the value of TDI VWs and frankly before it came to light, most people only cared about Co2 because that's what they were taxed on.

So far, VW have been found guilty of using cheat devices, Mercedes was found guilty of a lessor offence and fined. GM, Fiat Chrysler, Renault and Nissan have been accused. Ford hasn't. They are probably as guilty as all the others, most manufacturers were offering the same sort of engines with the same sort of performance / economy figures without the use of a DEF system which supposedly isn't possible, but from actual accusation to compensation will take 5 years or so.

Shame its the owners that get the money, rather than the rest of us that have had to breathe in the fumes.

This.

I wonder if a group action against the owners, for their lack of due diligence in accepting super-low pollution and super-good mileage without questioning it at purchase? 😉

It’s not the owners that will get the money it’s the lawyers and their financial backers. The way these claims work is that a group of investors agree to fund legal costs on return for a very high return if the court finds in favour of the claimants. The claimants typically don’t get very much - think 80 to 90% of the money awarded going to the investors and you won’t be far off.

So yes it is a scam, it just happens to be a legal one!

All extremely good points, and even writing my original post was coming to my own conclusion that opinion 2 was the valid one.

I wonder if a group action against the owners, for their lack of due diligence in accepting super-low pollution and super-good mileage without questioning it at purchase? 😉

Bring it on flower - I've got good solicitors, I'll see you in court! 🤣

the evil Ford empire
.. whose van you bought…

Mainly for dramatic effect. I really like the van, although Ford loose points for lagging seriously behind in their EV offerings. Not sure they have a single zero emission vehicle for purchase yet, the best that can be hoped for is an expensive hybrid.

Thing is, the VW thing really only affected American cars because the cheat showed lowered NO levels, which Americans are obsessed with, and not CO2, which they don’t give a rat’s ass about, because climate change is a hoax. The EU, on the other hand, encouraged diesels because of the lower emissions of CO2, and much better fuel economy, and so lots of people bought them.
So where’s the cheating in Europe? NO levels aren’t part of the testing, so I can’t see how these leeches can reasonably expect to get any money back; how can you cheat a non-existent engine test?

Not sure they have a single zero emission vehicle for purchase yet, the best that can be hoped for is an expensive hybrid.

Really? I saw an advert on telly last night for the Mustang Mach-e, which is a full EV, as far as I know, and we’ve got at least one Kuga plug-in hybrid, because I did the despatch checks on it this afternoon, it’s a 70-plate ex-Motability car.

PHEV doesn't count as zero emissions IMHO, it has only got 35 miles of electric range and I think the Mustang isn't on sale yet. I shall look.

Edit - Hmm, well it can be ordered from Ford and there's nothing obvious on their information that says about it being a pre-order so I may be wrong.

I looked into this once but there was a clause that said if the legal action failed then all of the claimants would be liable for the costs (which I assumed would be massive).

Chancing solicitors trying their luck.

Friend of mine works for a very large Ford dealer and he saw his first Mach-e on Monday but he had to go to a different branch as they only have the one so I'm going to suggest they aren't generally available yet.
I've never understood why owners should be compensated because I dont see any evidence that they have lost out on resale values.

I actually feel a bit sorry for VW because they have clearly been made an example of whilst all the other manufacturers have been let off the hook. None of them have a magic formula to get that level of engine efficiency so they must all be following the same development path.

So option 2 gets my vote.

They may be making more money out of re-selling your data back to other companies (possibly incuding Ford), rather than ever having any thought of actually suing them.

Ambulance chasers, and i for one wont be giving them a second thought.

If there are rules that have been circumvented, or cheated then there should be a fine or penalty system in place. Any money goes to the government to go in some nominal way to offsetting the cost of health damage caused by the cheat. Indeed the value of the fine could/should be measured against the damage. (where was i reading about micromorts yesterday?)

Mainly for dramatic effect. I really like the van, although Ford loose points for lagging seriously behind in their EV offerings.

they are lagging behind as no-one has any worthy EV offerings as the reasoning for EV and what is availble to everyone is no-where near what is claimed.

I actually feel a bit sorry for VW because they have clearly been made an example of whilst all the other manufacturers have been let off the hook.

not strictly true, everyone is on the hook, VW are just more high profile, and some others are being protected due to national pride, it wasn't even VW's fault or idea..

What you should be feeling sorry for is the way this whole saga has panned out and the fines being imposed. Those fines have set back developemnt in vehcile efficency and cleanliness by years. I've said this many times before, and thank fully there are some people with brains stepping up to the parapit now, but EV is not your silver bullet - without continued work on ICE you will end up having a greater environmental impact than saying no more ICE - people will continue to run poor performing cars for longer -much longer.. EV is far too expensive to have the effective "over-night" turn-off from ICE..

I wonder if a group action against the owners, for their lack of due diligence in accepting super-low pollution and super-good mileage without questioning it at purchase? 😉

Assume you perform your own independent emissions checks on any vehicle you are buying? 😉

I worked on the assumption that CO2 was the "bad bit", as that was what our and many other governments taxed on, as an attempt to reduce it.
The number of cars that come in 1g below a tax band threshold makes it obvious that they are built to pass the tests.

FWIW, I bought my 2013 2 litre audi TDI in 2017, knowing of the issue. Scrapping a 4 year old car would have been far worse environmentally than continuing to drive it.
And my long term goal is to coax it on until there is a diesel scrappage scheme with purchase of new EV.

Not sure they have a single zero emission vehicle for purchase yet

No such thing until they make hover cars...

In an urban environment and counting emissions harmful to health it seems about 50% is the best possible, maybe more if regenerative braking is mainly used but that would require huge infrastructure changes.

Next class action ... erm cars claiming to be zero emission ???

They'll all be at it in one way or another.

A well known motor manufacturer in the NE UK, was making cylinder heads for Mercedes (Smart cars). They had an injector in the exhaust port, that was built into it during the casting process. The purpose of this was to inject fresh air into the exhaust fumes, thus diluting what came out of the pipe at the end - but not actually making the fuel burn any cleaner. As it was cast into the head, and not a bolt on thing, it was within the "rules" . Production of these stopped abruptly when the VW thing kicked off.

The Fiat Air engines are a similar idea, I believe

So where’s the cheating in Europe? NO levels aren’t part of the testing, so I can’t see how these leeches can reasonably expect to get any money back; how can you cheat a non-existent engine test?

NO isn't legislated in any market - NOx (which is what the VW suit was about) is legislated in US, Europe, and every other market and is the number 1 pollutant for diesels that manufacturers will calibrate their eninges to reduce.

CO2 is not legislated in any market - there is no limit for it over the test cycle. However - certainly in the US - there are penalties if the overall aggregated CO2 of the vehicle s you sell are above a certain limit.

CO2 and NOx on a diesel are on a pretty much direct trade-off curve so the more you have of one the less of the other. This is what the VW cheat was - in real world it was reading off NOx for lower CO2.

As a side note to this.... Although there are certainly ways manufacturers 'push' the limits of what's allowed in testing to make CO2 (and hence fuel consumption) lower over the test cycle, it is a little unfair to call out manufacturers for advertising a certain fuel consumption that can't be met in real world - manufacturers legally MUST advertise the fuel consumption from the test cycle and can ONLY advertise the fuel consumption from the test cycle. This is exactly to stop cheating as it means fuel consumption is comparable across multiple manufacturers. Clearly the cycle isn't perfect and does t properly reflect real world,but it is not strictly the manufacturers fault for this...

They’ll all be at it in one way or another.

A well known motor manufacturer in the NE UK, was making cylinder heads for Mercedes (Smart cars). They had an injector in the exhaust port, that was built into it during the casting process. The purpose of this was to inject fresh air into the exhaust fumes, thus diluting what came out of the pipe at the end – but not actually making the fuel burn any cleaner. As it was cast into the head, and not a bolt on thing, it was within the “rules” . Production of these stopped abruptly when the VW thing kicked off.

The Fiat Air engines are a similar idea, I believe

Can you provide a link to where you saw this?

I would 99.99999999% (in fact, I'm going to say 100%) confident this is a secondary air system which a) have been around for decades, b) make emissions BETTER because they are used to activate the catalysts faster and c) even if it was for cheating it would make the tailpipe emissions and fuel consumption absolutely horrifically bad as the engine would be massively overfilling as the lambda sensors would be seeing this fresh air as the engine running lean; driveability would be appalling; the whole thing would be an absolute mess

They’ll all be at it in one way or another

(Sorry, last one...)

As someone who works in the industry and has worked with a lot of different manufacturers calibrating engines I can really assure you they aren't.

The amount of stress I've had and the amount of being shouted at by very stressed customers when it is proving difficult to got emissions targets in the emissions tests AND MUCH more, in real world conditions and the resulting very long working weeks, product launch delays, last minute hardware changes at massive cost to the manufacturer and all sorts of other things to make sure they are NOT cheating and emissions are as good as can be tells me I can be certain of this.

If there weren't these emission limits, how bad (environmentally) would the engines be and how much cheaper would cars be to buy? As much as it is causing stress for some, I suspect the impact is more positive for the environment (and therefore humans) than if the engines were left to run however they wanted and spouted out whatever they liked.

If there weren’t these emission limits, how bad (environmentally) would the engines be and how much cheaper would cars be to buy?

Emissions would be catastrophically bad - project I am currently working on, the engine out NOx emissions (so before any catalysts) are 700% higher than what comes out of the exhaust tailpipe (which is well below legal required). And that is with EGR active so if you removed that it would be probably s factor of 1000 higher than tailpipe if not more.