VW Golf BlueMotion

Why this Car?

Note: This is now fairly old information. This is a model 2011 vehicle, purchased in early 2012 - long before even the Europeans discovered (or admitted) that diesel is evil.

This vehicle was selected primarily to reduce CO₂ emissions and fuel consumption. Obviously, a fully electric vehicle would have been nice, but it wasn't a realistic option in Australia in 2012. The thinking was that the electricity generated to power it (here) would have come from dirty coal and is extremely expensive. So that choice made neither environmental nor economic sense.

According to both Volkswagen and the Australian government, this car had greenhouse gas emissions and fuel consumption comparable to a Prius.

It's also much less complicated, better looking, handles much better and is much a lot more fun to drive.

Information such as this was used in the selection process.

The Defeat Device

Until about 2017, the assumption was that the "forward thinking" Europeans wouldn't have so many diesel cars on their roads if it wasn't a smart choice. Apparently not: 20/20 hindsight.

It took far longer than it should have, but Volkswagen eventually confirmed that this vehicle was fitted with a "defeat device".

VW claimed that the changes they made as part of the mandatory factory recall would reduce neither fuel efficiency nor performance. As everyone would expect with such a patently ridiculous claim, it's false. We carefully documented the fuel efficiency over the entire life of the vehicle and it significantly decreased after the defeat device modifications.

The two sections of the orange curve above show the moving average of the fuel efficiency (in l/100km) before (left) when the defeat device was fitted and (right) after the defeat device was removed on 23 March, 2017. Note: before the COVID pandemic, the car was refueled about once per month. Lockdowns and subsequent significantly increased WFH (yay!) resulted in far less driving.

There is no practical way to collect engine performance data, but this is was never sold as a high performance vehicle. No decrease in engine performance of the vehicle was noticed.

We still cannot believe Volkswagon would stoop to this level of idiocy. For those of us who trusted Volkswagen and tried to do the right thing for the environment - at significant cost - we feel angry and betrayed. Volkswagen will reap the consequences of this morally bankrupt act for many years to come. Shame on you Volkswagen.