Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio and how the tech are you? So it is time for a classic episode. This episode originally published back on October two thousand fifteen, and it's called the VW Scandal. So we're talking about the Volkswagen scandal, specifically the scandal involving Volkswagen installing a system on their cars to cheat emissions tests. Scott Benjamin joined me for this episode and as always, you know it was it was a pleasure having Scott on the show. His knowledge of the vehicular world that was incredibly helpful, and I hope you enjoy this discussion about the very risky and ultimately catastrophic decision that Volkswagen made when it came to trying to trick emissions tests. We are going to talk about the Volkswagen scandal. What happened, Uh, what the actual technical details are. Maybe get some information about diesel versus gasoline cars, you know, kind of get an understanding of what exactly happened and what will what what the fallout is looking like so far and spoiler alert, folks, this is an ongoing story. It's not like we have an end where we can say and then they were charged this much money and find no exactly because even now with the fixed information that we we now have that we just got a few days ago, there are still some unanswered questions in this In this fixed plan, they say they've got the plan, but they're not quite exactly telling us what they're gonna do with it. And only that, but they've also recently announced a a different missions possible subterfuge trick thing that's going to be in the two thousands, or was supposed to be in the two thousand sixteen models, which currently are not available here in the United States. They're quarantined at US ports. Right there's a hold on all sales of Volkswagen diesel vehicles from twenty sixteen, So while year twenty sixteens are being held back, you can't get one right now exactly. And I'll talk about what that particular possibly shady technology does. But before we get into that, one of the things I wanted to do is kind of lay the groundwork. I usually take the first part of any episode to kind of talk about what what were the conditions that led up to this point? And really to look at this one, I wanted to go way way way back, all right, because I wanted to talk about the conditions that led up to things like the Clean Air Act. So in order to do that, you have to look at the dependence upon the internal Austrian engine as the primary means of powering vehicles. Now, Scott, I know you are very well aware that electric vehicles proceeded internal combustion vehicles. Their electric cars were around before we had and internal combustion cars. Yes, yes, that's right. They were in fact very prevalent. I mean taxi taxi companies operated on all electric platforms in a certain point in history. You can look at photographs of New York and I don't know, we're talking to turn of the century stuff, the turn of the twentieth century, where you know, it's all every car that you see in the shot is all electric. Um. Yeah, there was a point when there were far more electric vehicles on the road than there were gasoline vehicles. And they were efficient, they were fast. One thing they were not was they didn't have incredibly long driving ranges. But at first that didn't really matter. And the reason it didn't matter is because with the development of the automobile also came the development of the road system in the United States. So here in the US, at least, the place you were most likely to encounter roads that were suitable for driving on were in cities, which meant that your driving range didn't have to be that far. You weren't doing miles and miles of driving every single day. You might be doing a few miles of driving, which was important for electric vehicles because there was no real way to recharge once you hit the road. Yeah. In fact, they had the uh, the the original idea. I guess you know where Tesla is getting his battery swap idea from. I'm sorry, Musca, I guess I always refer to him as Tesla, but that's not correct. Of course, I'm sure he would love that. Actually, while the Tesla, the Tesla models that are proposing that, you know, they'll be these battery swap situations where you can drive up and leave your old battery, pick up a brand new one. So that's a quick change, a relative quick change, and then you're on your way and you have to return for that battery. Uh, you know, it's like a rental almost you have to come back and get it. But uh, that idea is nothing brand new. Of course, these these old taxis that I'm talking about would drive into a station and they would swap the batter rasing their back out on the road to collect the next fair. It had as little downtime as possible, and they ran constantly around the clock. But you know they were constantly getting new batteries as well. Right, And if you look at the development of the roads. Once we got to a point where roads were being built out beyond the cities, where they were connecting different cities together, a lot of people had the desire to travel those roads. The roads were there by necessity, but now people were like, I have an opportunity to go places I couldn't go before. But the problem was the electric vehicles weren't the vehicles that could get them there, because if there was further away than say eighteen miles, you weren't going to reach your destination. So the internal combustion engine had an advantage over that, and that you could have fueling stations along the way. And the other huge advantage was because Henry Ford figured out how to do mass production and through mass production, they were able to dramatically reduce the price of a vehicle. So a an internal combustion engine car cost about a third of what an electric vehicle did. So you have this mass adoption of the internal combustion engine. Now, this is why the reason why I even lay that groundwork is as the United States in particular becomes a car culture, and as more and more people start driving vehicles that use internal combustion, you have more and more emissions from those vehicles, and it begins to accumulate over time. And depending upon the type of fuel you're using, if it's diesel, you get a lot of emissions that contribute to smog. And then we start seeing super smoggy cities in different parts of the country. And by the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties, you had people concerned about the quality of air. True, and the cities are inherently bad about this because they containue, they capture all this, they get it all in place. And not only that, but you've also got some cities that geographically kind of hold on to that material it's expelled from these vehicles. Los Angeles is the classic example here in the United States, exactly right. Can look at some old photographs of smog in Los Angeles and you can't even see buildings. So yeah, it's it's like a heavy, heavy fog that hung over the city and eventually blow away. It would it would go away, but um not long you know, not long after it blows out of there, it would come right back again because there are so many vehicles that were emitting so many um uh you know, bad things for the environment, but the noxious gases, right, yeah, stuff that was bad for the environment. It could cause health issues if if it was really like if it's a really smoggy day to this day, in certain cities, when it's really smoggy, you will hear warnings on the news like limit your amount of time outdoors, especially on hot days where it can be aggravated, because it can end up either causing or aggravating health issues. Sure, and you can see examples of this in China today it's really really heavy. I mean there's still um and in parts of Europe too, you know, exactly right, Yeah, there's you can look at modern day Beijing and see what you know, Los Angeles looked like several decades ago here in the States, right, so by the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties, different regions in the US we're looking at ways of improving air quality and limiting pollution. And it was really patchwork, you know, for a long time until about nineteen sixty seven. That's when the US Congress passed the Air Quality Act. Now this was the predecessor to the Clean Air Act. The Air Quality Act had a disadvantage in that it was meant to have kind of a centralized organization headed by the Secretary Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, to designate air quality regions around the United States, and then the states that those air quality regions were within, we're supposed to come up with a plan for pollution control. So, in other words, the federal government was saying, here are the areas we have to be worried about, all right, Georgia, California, Texas. You I take care of those places. And this lack of a cohesive approach meant that it was pretty much doomed to not meet its its goals. And in fact, after three years by they had fewer than thirty six regions defined, less than three dozen of the had had been defined at all, and no state had any sort of pollution control uh comprehensive plan. And so the solution then was to bring it all under the control of the U. S. Congress. Right, Yes, that was when the Congress ray convened and started to say, all right, well, this this plan was noble in its intention. We wanted to make sure we weren't imposing the federal will on the states. But it's not working. So that's where the Clean Air Acts to tie all this together so that you understand what's happening at that particular time. This is this is well, well you know the I guess the terment we're gonna throw around here a little bit today maybe as the cafe standards and cafe standards were an act did somewhere around nineteen seventy five. I think the regulations these are set of regulations that were enacted by Congress. And nineteen seventy five you're you're talking about like the tail end of the Arab oil embargo, so you know the fuel crisis. You know where um you see the lines of people and you know the no gas today ration ing and all the rationing with the odd even system and all that. Um, that is that's the environment that we're talking about. Yeah, so this was, um, you know, this was a serious situation for multiple reasons. Also in nineteen seventy, that's when uh, you know, you had the introduction of Earth Day, so you had this growing support for a conservation and uh and and concern about the environment. Uh. In at the same time where you have things like the oil crisis. I mean, all this stuff is coming to a head. So it's all fueling this. And we were, well, we were starting to understand the effects on the human body, just just exactly what that that smog was doing to people that are walking around in the next cloud of of you know, just awful stock x in there and saying, hey, you know, it's weird. We're seeing a lot more people with asthma these days, that kind of stuff, or or bronchitis or things of that nature. Respiratory illnesses. We can't quite put our finger on exactly what's causing it, but it's happening frequently, and and and even if you were to argue that the pollution may not cause it, it it certainly exacerbated it. So uh. This ended up creating the Cleaner Act, which set the national standards for pollution emissions eventually and created a timeline for it, which had to be adjusted multiple times because, as it turned out, the standards were uh. The standards to make the engines operate in what had been determined to be a safe uh set of parameters meant that manufacturers couldn't find a way to meet that and also make a car that worked. So so those those UM, those goals kept getting pushed. There was there were UH they they started to look at pushing the deadline back in seven. They pushed it back again in um mainly because the technology to create something that was able to operate under these standards and do its job was not really an achievable goal for something that wouldn't cost an astronomical amount of money. And you know one thing that I don't think we've even mentioned yet is we say cafe standards. That means corporate average fuel economy, and that's across the line of vehicles, across the whole fleet of vehicles. It's not like one particular vehicle has to meet the standard. It has to be an average of all vehicles produced. And I know there's other there's other stuff that goes into this. There's there's a big vinn diagram that makes this all work. But um, the standards are very very, uh tough to meet. I mean they're they're they're a strict set of stet of standards. That especially the latest round, which was I'm announced and I think it was two thousand eight, all the way through the model year. And when manufacturers see the list of what they have to meet, the goals that they have to meet in order to be in compliance with this agreement to sign this agreement and say, yeah, we agreed to sell vehicles in the United States, we have to meet these goals. Uh, it is a steep set of standards. And I find it interesting that looking back now you know the agreement, the initial agreement in two thou eight, um, all those it was very stringent, very's very tough. Um. Thirteen major auto manufacturers signed that agreement, you know, a bit begrudgingly. You know that they say, well, okay, we can probably meet these but there's a lot of back and forth. Volkswagen and Mercedes Benz had the biggest objection to it. And I don't know if Volkswagen ever signed that agreement. I I don't know how. I've been looking all day trying to find out if they actually signed the agreement. But I can only find information that goes back into two two thousand eight where they say Volkswagen has as of now not signed this agree. Interesting. Yeah, one of those things where you can't find any definitive update about whether they did or did not sign up. Yeah, And the reason was they said that it's UM and i'll just paraphrase this is because they said that UM it places an unfair fairly high burden on passenger cars well, allowing a greater flexibility to let's say a heavier light truck. So we're saying it's not exactly uh, the way that we'd like to see it happen. And it's penalizing to involve things, penalizing people that make UM passenger vehicles with diesel engines. It's not quite fair to them. It's white Mercedes and Volkswagen said, I don't know about this agreement. I don't think we're gonna sign it. And I will still dig into that and see if they actually ever did. But around two that was kind of the talk around the circles was why is not why is b W not signing this? And you know it's we'll get more into the diesel stuff in a minute to explain, you know, some of the issues that manufacturers run into. Scott Benjamin and I will be back to talk a bit more about the Volkswagen scandal after this quick break. The scandal is pretty awful. That being said, I also have at least some sympathy for the difficulty that engineers space to make things that are satisfying to drive, that operate within the the fuel economy and efficiency that is dictated by the government, as well as work within the emission standards. Okay, you just said the magic three there. That's the three things. It's it's fuel economy, performance and emissions and you can it's have you ever heard the phrase you can have it done quickly, you can have it done well, or you could have it done cheaply. You can pick two out of the three. Yeah, yeah, and you're never gonna find all three. R Well, somehow folks like I can managed to do all three with their diesel engines back in two thousand. Oh wow, it was magical too, as it turns out. But before we jump ahead to that a little bit more, just to kind of cover our bases, uh, the Environmental Protection Agency has given been given a lot of control as well. When it comes to the emission standards, they were able to establish the National Ambient air Quality Standards or in a a Q snacks. I gotta say, that's a new one to me. Yeah, that's the one that where the deadline had been extended a couple of times, like where where it was clear the states could not meet that deadline. So I mean, what do you do, Like, do you what's the well? I guess what's the fine? And how do you define how much each place pays? I mean based on what the offense is. Yeah, you measure that again. And and you know, because pollution also doesn't doesn't necessarily obeyed geography, right. You could have pollution that is produced in one place, but it's another place that's dealing with it. Uh. And in states where you have big cities that are close to the border, it may be that one city is actually producing the pollution, but the other city is the one that's really suffering from it. Dumping into rivers is a great example. You know, it's stuff like that where it flows downstream, Yeah exactly, or trucked into a different region. Just simple air pattern exactly. You know, weather patterns can push it so, uh, you know, they put the deadlines a couple of times. It made me think of like if you're if you're a parent of a kid and you say, I need you to pick up all these toys before five o'clock and you're coming there and it's all the toys aren't picked up, and you're thinking, well, all right, you need to pick up all these toys before six o'clock because you're like, I don't really want to punish you, but I really do want you to pick up these toys where it's done. But they've just thrown them in their brother's closet. Yeah, see, pushing it down the road. Yeah, for me, it was it was all just shoving it into the closet like that's that. If it's out of sight, that means it's clean. Um. So one of the things about the Clean Air Act is that it it did have standards for what kinds of emissions and how much how many you know, types of emissions could be created by a car. Carbon dioxide, by the way, non that list carbon dioxide, didn't. You know? That's the greenhouse gas and it's something that we're concerned about, but not on the list of the emissions that the Clean Air Act was concerned with. Instead, it was things like carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, and hydrocarbon emissions greenhouse gasses. Yeah, except for carbon dioxide. That was the only one that was kind of left out. But yeah, these are all greenhouse gasses. Yeah. And and diesel in particular is pretty bad about um nitrogen oxides, and that's the kind of stuff that contributes to smog uh formation. Yeah. You often see it written as like n O X or yes and people yea, yeah, hard knocks in that case. Uh So the standards of the emission centers themselves. When I say standard, it sounds like I could easily quote you, you know, here's how much uh nitrogen oxide the car is allowed to emit over a given amount of time. Not that simple. It all depends on the type of vehicle, like you were saying, between light trucks and passenger cars for example, or the age of the vehicle that that plays a factor as well. Um So, and also whether it's a gasoline powered vehicle or a diesel powered vehicle, because the emissions will be different depending upon those. So it's a little complicated, and I'm not going to be you know, spouting off specific numbers because it's just not there's no point to it. A different podcast. Yeah, that's that's the that's the the incredibly tiny standards podcast. I'm not going to get down to that, but play to go to sleep, yes evening, and I don't mind if you guys fall asleep to me. I don't do the listener mail thing anymore, so at least you're not gonna be woken up by a clason. Um So, like we said, the performance, the energy efficiency or fuel efficiency, I should say, and the emissions are those three things, and it is very hard to meet the expectations of all three of those at the same time because um As it turns out, a lot of the emissions control mechanisms have an effect on performance. Um they have an effect on and they can have an effect on fuel efficiency. For example, it's correlation is kind of a weird word, but there's an association between a very fuel efficient diesel engine and high production of nitrogen oxide. So you if you're an auto manufacturer, you have to make an engine to make your cargo, and you're using you know you want it to be a diesel powered engine. You have specific standards, you have to meet for fuel efficiency, that's one of the things you've got to you know, one of the boxes you have to check off. But you also have standards you have to meet for emissions. That's the other box you've got to check off. And in this relationship, as one goes up, the other goes down in the in the bad way, right Like, as one improves, the other one is getting worse. So how do you balance that out? Plus make sure that the car performs in such a way that it's not just drivable, but people want to drive that a consumer would actually want to drive that vehicle. Because when you start playing around with these three things that you've mentioned, Um, I'll argue that consumers are and I know that this is I guess maybe controversial, and that you know, some people say, no, that's what I care about most. He's always gonna be someone like that. But um I would say that most people care less about the actual emissions of the vehicle than they do about the fuel economy and the way that the car performs. Are fuels and dry, right, because the fuel efficiency is going to impact your wallet, right, you know, it's it's how much fuel you're gonna have to buy to get your car to go from place to place and performance obviously the way the car feels emissions. I would argue for most people, they want the emissions to be at a level that is acceptable for the region therein Well what I mean by that, and I don't I don't mean to you know, spark any kind of big controversy or anything. But what I'm saying is that when you buy a new vehicle off the lot, you assume that it's going to be compliant with current CAFE or not CAFE, but rather emission standards in that area and in the U S in general. It's going to pass. It's going to be a clean vehicle, and it wouldn't be sold as a new car otherwise it wouldn't be allowed to Well no, but I mean you pick up, you know, and a seven year old used cars, you take it in for the emissions test, you know, as most people have to do now around big cities at least, um, you know, yearly before you get the renewal of your tags or whatever. Um, there's always that chance that they're gonna say, sorry, you're just over on on this, and um here's the recommended fix. You've got thirty days to make that fix. Otherwise you're not allowed to drive this vehicle on Georgia Highways Georgia Rhodes and UH and And you know, I think there's limits to that too. You know, you can spend a certain dollar amount on the fixes that I think you're limited, Like you don't have to spend ten thousand dollars to get your car compliant with whatever, but but you might have to spend you know, a minimum or a maximum rather of three dollars or whatever it happens to be. I don't know the number, but they don't want you to go crazy, you know, to have to make to make the car twice as expensive as I find it's all very funny. I find the whole emissions game kind of funny. Well, yeah, because it's it's a balance between what is supposed to be environmentally responsible, what is supposed to cause the least amount of harmful effect on other people, but also not supposed to break the bank. Yeah I know, but but do you see what I mean? Though? And I find this funny and we can talk about this maybe in another podcast. I don't know, it seems to fit here a little bit, But it's funny that if the car doesn't pass, they say, well, you can spend three on it, and if it doesn't pass again, we'll just kind of give you okay for this year. It's like we're we're accepting that, you know, it's still not compliant with our with our rules and regulations. And then also your car can age out of this so that after ten years or fifteen years or whatever happens to me, I think it's ten, you don't have to have that car emissions tested anymore to get your tags. And that seems kind of stilly to me too, because at that point, most of that stuff on your cars where and out to the point where it's going to probably not pass anyways. Right, the emissions are gonna be alright, it's going to be beyond the emission standard. And those are the heavy polluters, those are the ones that you know, do admit more. So maybe they're thinking at that point that you're not driving it as heavily as I don't know. I mean, I'm I really when I look at this from several different angles, the emissions testing thing, I it's really confusing. Well, I mean, and when we get into the Volkswagen stuff in particular, it gets a little confusing because ultimately you hear the news from the government saying, all right, if you own Volkswagen, don't worry, you're not We're not going to penalize you for that because it's not your fault. So you're like, well, but it's still producing the pollution. Let's say that. I'll say I drove a Fiat from I don't know, I'm gonna make this up ten years ago or seven years ago, so it still has to be emissions compliant. If that car doesn't pass, like I just said, if it doesn't pass emissions, you have thirty days to make the fixes. Otherwise you're not legally allowed to drive that car. So they're saying, we're giving all these Volkswagen vehicles that are on the road right now that we know will pass the test, but they're passing it. They're cheating, they're cheating, but we know that they're not compliant, but we're allowing you the time until Volkswagen comes back with a fix. So there's gonna be like this year or two years maybe where they know what's happening. And again another confusing all in this, Yeah, because you know it's like they're giving a free pass. Yeah, and and I have some sympathy for for the government side of this, because how do you deal with this otherwise? Do you just tell I mean, you can't go and confiscate everyone's vehicle. You can't take the keys from everybody's car and say this is part until comes up with fix. Congratulations, you've spent all that money on something that you can't use. You can't. Yeah, it's it's a it's a complicated situation. We've got more to say in this classic episode of tech Stuff after these quick messages, we talked about emissions. How do cars control emissions in the first place? Where the systems in a car, specifically a diesel engine car that are are designed in order to reduce emissions of this nitro nitrogen oxide in particular, but other stuff as well. And there are lots of things, um that are part of this. There is their combustion chambers that have been designed so that they can process the fuel better before it gets released, or burn it off in a way where you're not gonna have nitrogen oxide anymore as complete it burn as possible. Yeah, there are some that are designed to use catalysts that will make the nitrogen oxide break apart. So as you get nitrogen and oxygen, which that's there's no problem. There are Our atmosphere is primarily nitrogen. Sure, and you're talking right now, you're talking about after after it's gone through combustions, right, Yeah, there are some that are in the combustion phase too, like just the combustion chamber and fuel systems. Lube oil consumption can have an effect to if you if you design your car so that it's much more efficient with that or your engine I should say, if it's much more efficient than that. But there's also like particulate filters on the on the end of it, um, the catalysts which can break up the nitrogen oxide into nitrogen and oxygen. You're talking about the the urea injection systems, which further burns the soot, and so did the particular filters those are those are kind of neat particular filters are interesting to maybe because when I was with Chrysler doing U technical training, you know, the service people, um, the technicians there rather um we were talking about Dodge Ram pickup trucks that had a diesel particular filter that would regenerate itself. So some of these are single use where they fill up. And one of the byproducts of burning diesel fuel is soot. You get a lot, there's a lot of soot that's left over, and it's almost like an like an ash type product. And you don't see ash really coming out of the tailpipe of of diesel powered vehicles. So where does it all go. Well, goes to these big filters and they're called particular filters as you said, and the single use ones. That's pretty simple. I mean, the idea is that it just fills up and eventually if they get it emptied or replaced, kind of like a filter on a on a like an air conditioning system. That's relatively rare now I mean relatively there's still out there. But the ones that really you're interesting to me. And oh the other the other version of this would be the urea injection, which further burned allows it to be further burned. Um, and you have to refill that system every let's say, every ten thousand miles or I think every five thousand miles, and that's part of the fix will talk about. But um, the regenerative ones, these things heat up to something like you know, six hundred degrees celsius or twelve hundred degrees celsius. It gets really really hot, and it's it's hot enough to burn soot. And when it happens is very interesting. It happens on the highway when you're driving, because I mean, imagine something underneath your vehicle that heats up to the point where it's twelve hundred degrees celsius. If you were parked on you know, grass like dry grass somewhere, it would ignite the grass below an asphalt. You would melt it. If you're standing next to it, I mean it would it would burn your leg. And it's a it's a hot, hot thing. I mean that's that's twice the temperature of a of a pizza oven. Um, It's it's really really hot. And it was interesting to see how they developed a way to decide exactly when it happens. And it's all electronically controlled. It's all very precise in the way they do it. And it has to be, obviously, because if it if it weren't, it wouldn't be safe for anybody you put in your garage, and if it's still doing this regenerative thing, your house is up in flames. Yeah, it's something we generally considered to be a bad thing. That would be so they had to be very careful about how they designed it, but also very precise. And that's and that shows you how um carefully they can decide when things happen electronically in your car. So just one example, I guess. Yeah, And so the the these systems are obviously the things that allow a diesel well really any any engine for cars, but we're specifically focused on diesel. These are the sort of things that allow diesel engines to operate within those emission standard parameters. But they do have an effect on fuel efficiency and on and really on performance. And so here's where we get into what Volkswagen did and where the scandal comes in. So you've mentioned emission testing. Yeah, that's something that if you are living in certain cities, you have to go through before you can go and get your tags renewed for the next year. I remember growing up in rural Georgia that was not a thing. I didn't know anything about it until I moved here to Atlanta and I saw these kind of tent like structures outside of usually you know, like a like a mechanics or something. You see and say emission testing bucks or whatever it is, and I kept thinking like, well, what's that for. And it wasn't until we didn't own a car at first, to me and my wife, and when we finally got one and we found out like, oh, okay, that makes sense because you're in a you're in a dense populated area where there are a lot of people, especially in Atlanta, which is a very car centric city, it makes sense for it to be there. But just I had never encountered it before. That's me every time it's your birthday because you're renewing your tags, so there's you know, a hundred bucks right there they have to pay out or whatever, and then they hit you with another twenty dollars for emissions if you car fits that certain parameter those know the year or whatever. You know, it's it all depends on like what year you bought the car and what model it was, and and how how old is it and all that kind of stuff. Um, I always feel like I need a degree to figure out whether or not you get get the emissions testing. You know, it's even more frustrated to me. I live. I live in an extreme northern part of this county that the Atlanta is in it's an odd shaped county, so it's way way far away. It's like thirty miles away, not I mean not even half a mile down the road is the next county where they don't do emission They don't do emissions testing, So I'm not even anywhere near the city, but i still have to do this emissions teston in the county. Yeah, exactly. Well, uh so what was going on with the Volkswagen one was that the car quote unquote new when it was being tested, and it would turn on all these emissions controls, essentially shutting out off emissions for the effectively shutting off emissions for the duration of the test, so that during the test phase, this clean diesel engine, which is the way it was marketed as clean diesel vehicles, was remarkable. It had performance, it had it was meeting the emission standard, it had fuel economy. This was a miracle machine. Yeah, and other manufacturers at the time we're kind of marveling and how Volkswagen had done it. Now, Volkswagen have been in the diesel game for a long time, so they thought, well, this is superior German engineering. They've got some kind of idea of how this works, and we just we just can't seem to get the performance angle out of this whole thing. You know, we can do the emissions, we can do the fuel economy. We can't do the performance where we can do It's that it's that old you can do you know, pick two of those things. But they were all scratching their heads like, well, how is Volkswagen doing this? And it turns out this this You hear the term defeat device, and a lot of people will picture a physical device you could hold in your hands, like something something you would shove inside the exhaust pipe or something. Yeah, so this term defeat device is a little bit deceptive and that it's it's really just um, it's a software code and that's all it is. It's a very cleverly written line of so incredibly clever because you know, my first my first thought when I heard about the scandal that they had installed software that would defeat the emissions testing by by incorporating the emissions controls during the test and then turning them off afterwards, so you get that fuel efficiency and performance back, but you're emitting much more pollution. At that time, my first reaction was, I wonder if it's just when they connect the computer system. Like it it it uh, it detects when the computer system gets connected to it. No, it's way more subtle than that. Well, because there are other situations where you would use that, and we knew that. They knew that. You know, people have their own home diagnostic tools that can plug in. We're talking about the the O B D two ports, the diagnostic ports on the driver's side, and it's it's it goes far deeper than that because it takes into account the wheel speed, to account the position of the steering wheel. Everything is read. You know, your your car is talking all the time to other models, are talking to other modules and figuring out what's going on. And they determined that they knew exactly the the parameters that were set because these are government standards that are in place for a vehicle emissions test and they're the same everywhere. So it's very very easy to say, when this condition is met, then you do this, and when this has meant, you do that, and if these two things are met, then you do this. And it's so it's so simple for them to cheat this way. I don't know why other people haven't tried this in the past. If well, maybe they have as possible, but this was one where where it was found out. Yeah, it was. It's like you said, it's very simple. It's an if then right, if conditions are equivalent to a testing situation, then engage the emission controls like that. That's that's basic computer programming, is the if then statement. And they obviously we're oversimplifying for the purposes of this discussion, and but that's that's the basic model they followed, which is incredibly subversive and brilliant at the same time. Yeah, I mean there could I don't know how many parameters they've got here, but there could be ten different indicators that the vehicle is an emissions testing at deadpoint, and and then you react this way. But then once you unplug all that and you're on your way, we don't want that. We don't want to react that way because the driver will say, you know, I went in for emissions testing in the car feels like it's broken wrong, it's not responding the way it should. I'm not getting the fuel economy that I was getting before. Why do you guys do to my car? So one of the two thousand sixteen thing that I was mentioning before Volkswagen has revealed that it has an emission control system that might only engage during tests. I got the feeling like this the way it's been reported, it sounds like someone who's already been caught doing something wrong and then when they are directly asked, hey, did you also do this, like it might be well, not against the rules. It plays right into why would they build models any different than they did the twenty teens, because fourteens and all the way back to oh eight, because they knew what worked and they hadn't been caught at that point yet. They had already manufactured those cars. Yeah, and the two thousand sixteen one has the additional element and that it heats up a pollution control catalyst. And that's the thing that I was talking about, you know, separting out the nitrogen and oxygen, the nitro engine oxide into nitrogen and oxygen. That's what the twenty sixteen models have. Yeah, they had installed lean Knox traps and in certain vehicles and in other vehicles, you know, like after two thousand twelve they installed something that called the selective catalytic reduction systems, and uh in you know, I guess that's the one with the liquid urea solution that was sprayed into it. So it's a it's a much more complex system than the Lean Knox traps. But um that that him self is gonna be a problem for Volkswagen because they have to deal with all these different vehicles in different ways. They need different things for the fix and I can outline that later. Yeah, just a quick example, if you if you look up the news that you hear that like some of the models of the Facade were had twenty times the the allotted you know, the allowable amount of emissions when it was in its normal driving operation and I'm outside of the emissions right, and the Jetta was even worse. It could be between fifteen and thirty five times. Some of them were up to forty times the allowed amount of emissions of nitrogen ox eyed here, I'm gonna guess that those are the ones that were just the lean the Lean Knox traps equipped ones, because that's kind of other manufacturers We're saying, how can you get these these standing Heck, can you meet these standards with just a Lean Knox trap. It's there's just no way. We can't. We can't do it. How are you doing it? Yeah? That was the magic. Where's the lepre con inside your engine that's allowing this to happen? So here's a fun fact. Uh did you did you run across the name of the engineer who who is credited as discovering this. He's got a perfect name, all right. So it's Volkswagen that has been called out on this. The name of the engineer U S engineer whose discovery essentially led to the unveiling of the scandal is John German. No way, really, he's He's German the engineer, but not a German engineer. Yeah. And this is a private agency, right yeah, Actually he was. Um, so he also works not just with engineering, but he works with a uh kind of an environmental protection sort of organization. But he's not with the US government. No, no, he was not. Uh And so originally, in fact, he handed that information over to the US government. So originally what he was doing was purely he didn't suspect Volkswagen of doing anything hinky. What he was doing was he was looking at the nitrogen oxide emissions NOx emissions in Europe and seeing how how out of control they were in certain regions, and then looking at the data for the United States and saying, well, I mean, obviously there's a difference between the number of diesel vehicles on the road in Europe and those in the US. He was saying, but he was saying, well, you know, there's there's something clearly happening over here in the US, like the Volkswagen cars are amazing. Uh, maybe we can look into the engineering of the Volkswagen cars and give advice to European automakers to help out Europe. So it was it was purely in an approach to help someone else out that he even started looking into this. But he's then essentially what he did was he was measuring these levels on the road as like a highway travel or city travel versus in a lab environment. Yes, he specifically started looking at how the cars were performing in various environments and discovered there were vast inconsistencies, so real world situations versus lab situations exactly as dramatically well in this case, well, extremely different in the case of Volkswagen in particular. Yes, and so at this point he's saying, uh, something is really about this, and was tempted to even perhaps call it a defeat device. At that stage, but he did not. He instead handed the data over to the e p A and as a courtesy, handed a report over to Volkswagen as well in two thousand fourteen. May two thousand fourteen. Yeah, so it's been more than a year since this data got to Volkswagen, and Germans says the reason he sent it to Volkswagen was because perhaps it was legitimate oversight, something like maybe it was a fault in part of the engineering that could be addressed and fixed, that there might be an honest mistake here. And you know, he was giving them a huge benefit of the doubts. Sure, he might even be thinking that it's in this one particular line of vehicles, maybe there's a problem with that, or maybe it's a it's very it could be very very simple for you to change this. But he had no idea that this was the tip of the iceberg. Right, So the e p A starts looking into it, and it wasn't until September of this year, twenty fifteen that Volkswagen essentially came out and said, you got us, Oh yeah, you know what, I Okay, they've known about it for a while. You you do have to give them some some credit, uh to come right out and say like, yeah, you you got us, You've got usparre and square out. They they said that due to some rogue software developers, like no one has come out to the point in Volkswagen to say this was a decision like they're not willing to say this decision goes all the way to the top. Yeah, it's more like someone lowered down made this decision without our our knowledge, and that's and we're suffering for. Although the top guy did step down. Yes, yeah, so I mean it's uh, it's it's definitely affected uh, their corporate structure as well. Yes, in the last month, it'll and it will continue to affect them heavily in the oncoming months. Yeah. Yeah, this is so far reaching. I mean I I sometimes sit around, like at my desk, I'm thinking about like just the the sheer volume of vehicles not only here in the United States but worldwide vehicles or so, Yeah, we have what half a million here and it's a big deal here. I should imagine what it's like over there, What's what they're going through over there. But I just think about like the pure logistics of this whole thing. To be with some of the fixes that they're proposing and all that, and the time involved and the money involved, and you know, are they you know, the bigger questions are they going to come back from this? Are they gonna what's this gonna do to Diesel's reputation? Not only not only here but worldwide? I mean, everybody kind of bought into this. It's you know, we get a listen and we get listener mail all the time from listeners in Europe that prior to this, we're saying, why aren't you guys on Diesel like we are over here in Europe? Why aren't you Why aren't you doing that? And I mean it's one of those things where you look at it and you think it's a lie that we want to believe. Right. It's a convenient lie because it gives us the feeling that we're not contributing to pollution and we're getting the performance we want out of our vehicles and the fuel economy we want out of our vehicles. If you tell me that lie, I am probably inclined to believe it because it's to everyone. It seems to be to everyone's benefit until you strip away the lie and realize how much pollution is actually being dumped out there. A lot of people felt really good about driving you know, clean diesel engines. I mean, it's right there in the name clean Diesel. So people felt really good about going to VW and picking up a you know, t D I equipped engine, t D equipped vehicle and being happy about that, Like I'm doing my part. Yeah, Like I'm being responsible adult. I'm not getting one of those gas guzzlers that's eating up gasoline and pouring out tons of carbon monoxide out into the atmosphere. Uh yeah. And according to the Guardian, this is something you guys covered on Scott You were on an episode of Forward Thinking with Joe and Lauren while I was out on vacation and talked about this. But the Guardian estimated that it could have been around nine almost nine fifty thousand metric tons of nitrous oxide or nitrogen oxide emissions every year that this was this technology was out there. The numbers are just immense. I mean, it's it's all of this, this whole thing, And when you go back all the way to the two thousand eight model, you're you thinking that, well, this has been happening for seven years, for eight years now at this point, I guess model years. Um, it's just such a big, big problem. It's so enormous in all aspects. I really am having a hard time seeing how Volkswagen recovers from this. Right. And and as we pointed out earlier, if you already have one of these vehicles, then until there is a fix, you're going to continue to contribute to that that pollution. And it's not because you're a bad person. It's because the car itself, the way it's designed. That's that's just how it works. I mean to put it bluntly, you were sold a lie, and you bought that lie. But you know why. It wasn't your fault. The government bought that lie too, because because the wool was pulled over its eyes. Yeah, I just kind of come clean. I drive a Volkswagen, but it's not a diesel. I think I mentioned that in the Forward Thinking episode two. And I love it. I mean, I have it's a great engine, it's a lot of fun. It's a gasoline burning engine. So I'm not involved in all this. And I gotta say that when I when I see a Volkswagon on the road, now, I consciously look to the lower right corner of the back end of the vehicle, and I try to see if it's a t D I equipped and a t D equipped vehicle, and I just think, like, what is that person going through right now? They're dealing with you know, they bought a car that they thought was you know all the things we said, and it's not. Uh, they're going to have to deal with the dealership very soon about you know, what they're going to do to fix this and how they're gonna do it. Um, it depends on what make and model you have, what they're gonna do, how they're gonna handle it. Um. It's not gonna cost you anything except it is going to be very very inconvenient for you in the near future. And do you continue to trust that manufacturer with with those people? Buy another Volkswagen when all this is said and done. Yeah, when when the two thousand seventeen models, presumably assuming that Volkswagen is able to produce them, when they come out, would they buy a diesel engine two thousand seventeen Volkswagen And well, other people that maybe we're kind of on the fence about Volkswagon, you know, they were considering it up until this point, or maybe someone just narrowly missed buying one, or just bought one the day the thing that this scandal broke. What do they do? I mean, there's so many individual situations that I'm really curious about right now, and it ripples out so far. So we've heard the term that that they could be facing billions of dollars in fines, and in fact, early on in this story it was said that Volkswagen had already set aside like seven point three billion dollars for fines. Right now, the Guardian estimates that the amount of fines may accumulate to around eighteen billion dollars. Now that matches what I heard initially. The very first number I heard was like eighteen points seven billion dollars in d p A finds strictly here for the United States. Now, going beyond that, there's gonna be fines to pay elsewhere well, because they have agreements with European nations as well. So I don't know how you come back from something like this, I really don't. I mean, you can save, you can put money away, and they you know, they have profitable quarters. I'm sure that you know. I haven't looked at the numbers of how much they make per quarter up to this point. But there's no way they're squirreling all that. Wait, they're using it for new products. They're putting it back into the business. Of course, they desperately need another love Bug movie. That's gonna do it high. Yeah. Well, if you wonder now if Disney will ever show The love Bug ever again after this? Uh, that was not involved. No, no, no, are you trying to implicate Lindsay Lohan in this. I'm talking about the new one. I'm going back to the original Fred Murray because I loved the original. I love that. It was fantastic film. I love it. Scott and I have a few more things to say about the Volkswagen scandal after this commercial break. One of the other things I wanted to mention, though, if you're talking about the ripple effect, this gets super crazy. This could contribute to a severe economic downturn in Europe for multiple reasons. UM. One is that the confidence of a major European manufacturer has gone into sharp decline for obvious reasons UM, and it has prompted several strategists equity strategists over at Bloomberg to readjust what their predictions were for the stocks Europe six hundred index and they have adjusted it lower than what they had predicted. And because of Volkswagen's association with China as well and the Chinese markets which are very uncertain, this whole mess could get really ugly from an economic standpoint, which I'm not gonna get into because this is not an economics podcast and I am in no way qualified to talk about that that aspect of it. But it's kind of like when you start pulling back and pulling back and pulling back, you keep asking, am I am I back far enough? Am I seeing the full picture? Yet? You know? Just just to tell you that, this last weekend, I was out with a couple of friends, my wife and I, and uh, this couple that we were out with said that they were um buying Volkswagen stock right now because it's at a low point. And I was thinking, I don't know, is that a good move or is that a bad move? And I was thinking at the moment, I said, you know what, that's probably a good move because it's probably gonna come back. It's probably gonna rebound and everything's gonna be fine. But the more I hear about this, the last couple of weeks that I've been you know, studying this, and especially this last week when the enormity of this situation is really just finally hit me how big this is. I don't really know. I don't know if that is a good investment or not. Yeah, I mean, I can't say for sure. And the stock price went from like a hundred and sixty seven dollars before the announcement of the discovery of this cheating or at least the public unveiling that you know, this was a thing. Uh today, when I checked it earlier, it was a hundred and two dollars. So it does the smart money by right now? Or do you wait and see? Because if you're talking about a company that maybe facing up to eighteen billion dollars in fines and we don't know that that's the full extent yet, I would be nervous to put money in that because I would think like this company might fall a little further before it bottoms out. It's probably not not the bottom yet. I think we can both agree with that. I mean, and plus, you know these fixes that they've outlined just this last week, Uh, these don't begin until and some of some of them, it's like a three phase thing. Some of them don't begin until late This is this is a long term problem for Folkswagen. It's not something that's gonna go away overnight. And it if you haven't read about it or you don't know exactly what they're gonna do for the fix, Um, it's going to be very, very costly for them. In addition to the fines that we're talking about, which are already enormous, what they're proposing is ridiculously expensive for a company to do. And yeah, and it costs not just money but also put potentially in performance of your vehicle, which also means it's gonna cost and customer satisfaction and loyalty. I mean, the costs here go beyond a dollar amount, you know. Can I just can I just run through this real quick? Die and Tore I've mentioned about four times now, but I will quickly go through it, and I'll tell you what they're doing. And this is this is UM. The plan is laid out by my um, the current US CEO, Michael horne Um. He spent several hours testifying in front of a congressional panel just this last week, and it's all about the you know, the emission scandal, and uh, you know the senators that he was in front of, they were, you know, they're angry at him. They were incredulous, you know that that this this car maker would try to cheat the buy in public like this, and the U. S. Government and uh, you know, sidestep all these U these standards that they in place. And and the funny thing is, and I don't know that really say funny, but he's agreeing with them throughout this whole testimony. He's saying, you know what, I'm angry at the manufacturer as well. Are you know my company angry it for doing this. I didn't know that this is all happening. Um, you know, I'm also upset. And so he has a bit of sympathy. I mean, he gets That's how he gains, I guess, is his sympathy with the people that are listening right, Um, believe it or not, you know, whether you want to or not. So there's like three different groups here, and I'll quickly go through it. I'm not going to list all the vehicles or anything like that, but um, basically it covers two different engine types and you can kind of group these into three groups and you'll understand when I read it, but it's an old the older engine is the E N engine and the new one is the E A to A eight engine. And the first group is it affects his sixty seven thousand vehicles. This is the smallest of the three groups here in the United States, and the fix is just an updated software fix. And so these are for you know, like the newer two six models, and these are the ones that have the new E A to eight eight engine. UM. Again, the easiest fix, and that's because they're fitted with a selective catallactic reduction system or ext after treatment system that I mentioned earlier. UM, but really they're only going to need a software fixed to become compliant. And then the next group, this is, uh, the the I guess in between group, you know, not not the biggest group that we'll get to last. Uh. This is justeen are through passat t d I and this one will require an updated software fix and a possible hardware modification. So these are cars that have both a lean Knox trap that we mentioned and an scr UREA system as well. And of course, you know the software hardware modifications that they're talking about, they're not really specifying what the hardware modifications will be for this specific vehicle. But nine vehicles are affected with that, so that's kind of like phase two and that's going to begin in mid That first one was early and as a side note on that first one that I mentioned, uh, they do know that you know, fuel economy will likely stay the same, but they said performance might be slightly affected. And that's bad news for people that own those vehicles sixteen you know, golf OUTI, Jetta. You know, those vehicles are the ones that affected. So they don't know what it's going to do to the pisat t D I well. And the worst part about that is saying that they could be slightly affected me it even if it wasn't perceptible. By saying that it's going to be slightly affected, then you know the drivers are going to at least I feel like there's a change in performance, even if it's not detectable on a meaningful scale. If you know, if you've heard that your vehicles performance might be slightly affected, that's enough to psychologically push you to believe that it doesn't feel well, you're gonna be sensitive to You're gonna be overly sensitive to that you're gonna you're gonna think that whatever you're feeling is not what you should be feeling in your car even but honestly, it's probably going to affect low end torque. It's gonna affect acceleration. And that's and that's the two things that you would really notice. That's the two things that make a car fund to drive. I mean, in most situations, you taking out top end speed because most people don't hit the top ends. Well, yeah, there's very few opportunities to do. If this if this fix somehow affected the top end, like maybe dropped it down five or something. You know, from the top end, not many people would ever experience them. But when you remove acceleration from say a stoplight or trying to get on the freeway, Uh, that's going to affect your customer base. People are gonna say, we don't want it. So the last group, and this is the biggest one, this affects Now, this is a bad group to this affects two thousand nine through two thousand fourteen, jetted T D Eyes, Golf T D Eyes, Beetle T D eyes out e A three's So you know how many of these vehicles you see on the road. They're everywhere all these cars. These are the ones that have a Lean Knox trap only. So these are the ones that may require the most work. And it's the largest group. Yeah, so it's probably going to require a a well, of course, it will require software, you know switch, it's gonna require hardware modifications that are probably in flude, adding a complete um SCR system, you know that that the cleaning system that we talked about, the UREAS system, and they've even talked about for this group. This is how complex this would be. They said, it's gonna take you know, between five and ten hours to make this type of fix and per vehicle, which is an enormous cost to the to the manufacturer for the time of the technician to do that, plus the parts the park can imagine what that costs. So they're talking about for this specific group of vehicles, this last group that they won't even start touching until late It affects Oh, by the way, three thousand of the four hundred and some odd that I think it's fours here in the States of the Yeah, they're talking about UM offering, you know, like cash, cash back offers. They're talking about the entire vehicle buy backs, which is huge. I mean, there's been very few times in US history there it's happened, but very few times when the manufacturer says that car will no longer be on the road, we're buying back every one of them and they'll shredded or whatever they happen to do with them. I don't know what the plan would be for this, but if they do a car buy back situation, they're likely just going to destroy those vehicles. It's yeah, it's it's hard to even comprehend. Really, Yeah, you wouldn't buy back the car and then fix it and then try to sell anything. So it only makes sense. It's logically making sense to me that they would buy them back and shred them in some way destroy them. So this is a do you see what I mean? It gets worse and worse all the time. Yeah. The more you look at it, the more you realize, Wait, no, I I don't have the full comprehension of everything that can happen. And as the story unfolds, will probably learn even more, like maybe we'll learn exactly where this decision was really made, and maybe it was a group of rogues software engineers who are just desperate to have Volkswagen engines appear to meet all of these specifications. Um, you don't just one more quick thing. I mean, sure, it's super quick, but think about the things. Think about the awards that this thing is one, because you know, it wins engine awards. Of course it wins. In two thousand eight, which is the first year that we're talking about, the v W Jetta t d I Clean Diesel won the Green Car the Year award at the l A Auto Show. Um. Now what do you do with that? Do you go back and do you remove that award? I mean yeah, I would imagine you have to strip the awards from the from the different models. Just this year, the Volkswagen Golf, now not not particularly the t d I, but the Volkswagen Golf was awarded the North American Car of the Year award at the UM at the Detroit Auto Show, the North American International Auto Show. UM. So this thing along the way, that's just two. It's won many awards along the way, and it has long been lauded as being, um, you know, kind of like the solution. This is this is what Diesel should be here in the United States or really worldwide. Yeah. Well, I mean, that was why German was looking into it in the first place. So I apologize for interrupting there. But the awards thing, I just had to get get that out there because they're they've been so heavily awarded for all these diesel engines that what do you do with all that? Now? It's again part of the big problem. I guess it goes back to that phrase, you know, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is right in there. Why didn't they look into it when it did seem too good to be true? Again, I think it's one of those things where, well you would either think, well, no company would be so bold as to as to try and fake their way through, because the consequences, as we see now, the consequences are so dire for any company that would attempt that, it seems unthinkable that they would try and do that. Yet, now, had they caught this in say two thousand nine or two uh, this would be dramatically different. It would be a much smaller number of vehicles are affected. It would be an easier thing for VW to fix and say like a Holly, you gott us such, or or even for them to say like it would be even more believable for them to say, uh, this this was something that was uh, you know, not intended, but we will fix it like you could. If it's if it's for a year, then you might say, well, the was something going on in the manufacturing process where uh, someone had this brilliant idea or they thought it was a brilliant idea and the implication wasn't completely realized within the company. You could at least plausibly make that point. But we're eight years into this, eight model years into this, it's a lot harder to make that plausible argument. It is. Yes, and and even this eighth model year that was scheduled to come in, as you said, has been embargoed because there's a hold on those vehicles. They're quarantined and they're not able to be sold here. So um, again, it's just a real head scratch all around. Why would they do this? Why why would a company allow this to happen? It is a little crazy. Now on on a related note, I have a thing to wrap this up with because obviously this is a story that's still going. So it maybe a couple of years before it maybe actually a decade or more before we really see the full extent of how the story plays out. But uh, I have a related thing to ask you because it was something I had not heard of before, but I imagine you probably have. Have you heard about the practice called chipping? Yes, okay, this was new to me. So chipping is essentially an aftermarket approach to do pretty much what Volkswagen did, except this time it's a customer doing it on purpose to their vehicle. Yeah, to gain performance gains, so um, okay, or sometimes just to be a jerk face game. Let's be honest and I'll have a story about that in a minute. Okay, Okay, Well, I don't know what. I don't know what you're gonna come at me with you, But um, a lot of people that I've known have chipped their vehicles or have replaced E C U or you know whatever that the flash upgrade or whatever the terminology was what they did. But there's a lot of different ways to do this. You can completely replace the the engine control unit and make your vehicle think that it's a different model year that has different performance specs, or it's a you can make your U S U S spec vehicle think that it's a European spec vehicle and that it it boosts the performance. You know, it allows a greater output you know, horsepower, tork, etcetera. Um, because you're not you're not electronically limiting your vehicle to whatever the standards are in the place that you are currently. So you're you're upping the manufacturers restrictions on your vehicle electronically. Yeah. Yeah. And then whether that's the top end restriction or it's a low end torque thing or shift points or whatever happens to be. Um, it's it's it's a common practice among tuners to do stuff like this of you know, smaller vehicles, you know, like performance import type vehicles or even big trucks. A lot of diesel guys do that. In fact, they're programmable to the point where they can, you know, kind of change things around frequently as much as they want toy with the numbers and you know, make it really good for pulling and for towing, or they can make it, uh you know, like performance games for diesel engines. You get crazy great performance numbers out of a diesel engine if you just have it chipped correctly, which you know, again you you're getting great performance at the expense of the legality of the emissions from your vehicle. And you know, see there's the thing is that you can go back with a scan tool and change that back to whatever you needed to be for the emissions. It's exactly the same thing that Volkswagen is doing, except on a more manual basis. Yes, yes, and other people. You know, if you're outside of that tenure window or whatever, you don't have to have emissions testing. Then you know, it's fun to make your Jeep Cherokee think that it's a cop car, right, and that can happen. You can do stuff like that. So one of the other things that you can end up doing with this. Okay, here's where we get to the jerk face part. Right. Yeah, So sometimes when you chip a car of diesel powered vehicle and you activate it, one of the things that your vehicle might do when you pressed down on the accelerators, belch out an enormous cloud of black exhaust. So you're talking about rolling coal, rolling coal, coal, rolling or rolling coal. So Scott, I walk home. No, it is a three mile walk from from here to my house. And there's a point that I like to rest at. It's it's a little more than halfway to my house. And usually at that point, especially on a hot day, I like to sit down on a bench. It's outside of a lovely little flower shop in in uh the Kendler Park area of Atlanta, and I sit down and I rest for a few minutes before I continue on. It's it's lovely, you know. I I collect my thoughts, I relax, and then I get up to walk the rest of the way. There was a day not long ago, Scott although back when it was much hotter. When I sat down on that bench, got up, I'm ready to start walking. Well, it's at an intersection that's a four way stop, and it's a busy intersection with a four way stop, which is a little tricky for pedestrians because you have to make sure you have the attention of the drivers before you walk across. There's no light to time it with hazardous situation. Yeah. So there's a large red Diesel pick up to my left as I'm about to cross the street here and you can hear that loud knocking noise you know what's diesel. Yeah. So I am about to cross the street, but they decide they want to go. So not only do they go, But they flipped the switch and I am covered from head to toe in black exhaust as they turn right, so they turn in front of me, so because they were on my left, they turn right, so they go down the street I was about to cross and belch out that black smoke while cackling and driving down that jerk faces Yeah that you know what, that is a jerk face move. I agree. I agree that that whole that whole thing bothers a lot of people. I mean, other people say it's my right to do this, and I'm gonna do this no matter what you know. And uh, I guess you could say that, you know, people have been doing this for exhibition for a long time, Like you know, we go to a like a tractor poll event or something like that. You see all those vehicles are belting smoke like that, and they're doing it because it's a There is a performance gain when you do it as well. But the situation that you're talking about, they were doing it just simply to be it's an effective to to envelope you in this cloud of soot, and that's terribly dangerous for you. It's not nice on their part. It was dangerous for them to. Let's be honest, at that point, I was not happy that what it does, and just everybody knows, is when you flip that switch, it just dumps a bunch of extra fuel into the engine and then that unburned fuel can't quite get burned off the way it normally would. And you know, with all those exhaust scrubbers that we talked about, you know, the particular filters and all that, it bypasses all that, and then you end up with this cloud of smoke that looks like um, like it's coming out if you don't the little trains that burn cold, it looks like that. And that's what they call it. They call it rolling coal. And uh, just so you guys know, out there, out there and listener land. According to John Swanson of California's Air Resource Board, any modification to a pollution control system is illegal unless the manufacturer of that product had proven that the modification doesn't result in any adverse impact on the environment. Now, again, any place that I've seen this happen in real life was has been like an attractor pull up or something like that. But I've never seen anybody actually had this done to them outside of video clips. Yeah, I wish that. No, I don't know. That's the second guest say I've seen in traffic. I've seen some some uh you know, diesel trucks that are emitting quite a bit of smoke, but they're traveling at such a speed that I can't tell if they've done that. At a slow speed is very apparent what happens because it's a dramatic difference in the output of exhaust gases rather the cloud of smoke or whatever soot. Uh. I can't say for sure that I've never seen it happen in real life, but but I don't think so, not intentionally. Like you know, when they there's a big truck and a priest is following it, you know, they they flip the switch because I think that's funny. Or a walker A lot of times you'll see you can see videos of this where they go buy bikers or walkers or whatever, and with these mean spirited videos where they same to meated to you. It wouldn't surprise me if there's some video on YouTube where you see a an exhausted, sweaty bald podcaster coated in soot. Well, I'm sorry to hear that happened to you. Man, that's terrible. Yeah, as a as a pedestrian who already considers himself somewhat environmentally friendly, it was it was like it was like a cherry on top for my day at any rate. Yeah. By the way, Car Stuff has a podcast on Rolling Cole. Oh wow, Okay, yeah, go check that out. Guy, that's Dutch. It's a completely shameless plug because there's no shame to be had. Uh. Yeah, definitely check out Car Stuff guys. Scott, thank you so much for coming on the show and kind of talking about the scandal and the technology behind it. Uh. This is a little bit of a departure from our normal Tech Stuff episodes, but I thought it was really important to talk about because it's something that's been in the news. It does have to do with the tech and in the software of the car, and there's a lot of stuff we could have touched on. But this this show has gone pretty long, so I don't want to continue it on anymore. But I mean this also ties into other elements of why it's it's harder and harder to tell what's going on with your vehicle, at least to tell and be sure that that's really what's happening? Sure, I mean look at the false bill of sale that that all these VW owners were handed and it really kind of opened everybody's eyes to the fact or to the idea of what manufacturers could do to kind of toy with these things. Uh that how much control they have over every little situation that your car can be in. I mean, it's very very specific and it's very very devious what they did. But um, well they got away with it for about eight years. But too bad for them, they had caught. Yeah, it was the wrong time to get caught. If they were gonna get caught and and somehow escape this, it should have been earlier. They thought they were gonna get away with it forever. And that's one of those points where you realize, like you are all in I hope you enjoyed that classic episode and Scott's contribution to it. Uh, missy buddy, hope you're doing well out there. It was great to have him on the show and talk about this stuff, because you know, I obviously have my own perspective, my own point of view. I value having other people on the show to kind of balance that out, give me an alternative perspective and and alternative uh conclusions that perhaps I had not even thought about. So it's always great having guests on the show. If you would like to reach out and suggest future topics or maybe even future guests that I should have on tech Stuff, please do. There are a couple of different ways you can do that. One is you can download the I Heart Radio app, which is free to download, free to use, Navigate over to the text Stuff page on that app, use little microphone icon that will let you record a voice message up to thirty seconds in length, Or you can hop on over to Twitter send me a message. The handle for the show is tech Stuff hs W and I'll talk to you again really soon y. Text Stuff is an I heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.