Inside the Volkswagen emissions cheating

Posted Jan 8, 2016 20:12 UTC (Fri) by anselm (subscriber, #2796)
In reply to: Inside the Volkswagen emissions cheating by nybble41
Parent article: Inside the Volkswagen emissions cheating

IIRC, here in Germany the speedometer in a car may not display a speed that is less than the speed the car is actually travelling at, while in the other direction the maximum allowed tolerance is something like 10% of the highest speed printed on the speedometer scale. So if the highest speed on the scale is 200 km/h, the speedometer may display a speed that is up to 20 km/h faster than the actual speed. This leads to even small cars with wimpy engines having speedometers that go up to fairly impressive speeds which are way beyond what the car could actually reach – even, as we say “at full throttle, downhill with the wind at its back, and homesick”.

If you're cited for speeding, there is an automatic allowance for “manufacturing tolerances” that would let you get away with somewhat more than 50 km/h in a 50-km/h zone. Even so, you don't get to claim that your speedometer showed less than the actual speed of the car. Manufacturers calibrate the speedometers to display a higher speed on purpose, so people that drive such that the speedometer value matches the posted speed limit are actually safely below the speed limit.