The VW TDI Engine Tragedy.
Clearly VW has stepped in it big time, and clearly they will have to pay but just as clearly there are dangers in sacrificing the baby with the NOX bath water. As an expert in crisis PR with an abiding interest in energy and more recently renewable clean energy, there are some serious silver linings in this black cloud story, but first let’s try and analyze the problem in a mature and adult manner. What is the crux of this situation, in a sense is VW and Audi’s almost slave like determination to promote their hugely successful TDI engines beyond what they could support or deliver. The little machine that won LeMans several years in a row, put diesel power way ahead of a number of very sophisticated gasoline engines while delivering unbelievable MPG and performance still has a long life ahead of it. The TDI is what the diesel should have been when it was first started running on peanut oil. Then the actual petroleum fuel that came out of the design centers in Germany exploited t