DSG woes in The Age

[team_v]

VW response to Faifax Volkswagen Group Australia Response to Fairfax

Seems this is not going away Volkswagen Australia Safety and Reliabilty Issues

How can they fix the problems when there isn't a verified cause or an actual solution yet?
Saying replace all the 7spd with 6spd is just rediculous as it doesn't fix the problem.

The other thing most people don't understand is that VW may not offer a recall here if there is no real fix as they may then be open to more serious litigation for failing to fix the actual problem.

[lol.u.mad.bro]

The amount of times my mechanics have told me about times people have skimped on an item of service they have suggested needs to be fixed baffles me. These guys are honest mechanics and even a drop kick could see that. sometimes I think they care more about the cars then they do the owners, in a good way of course. If you have a mechanic that you trust, and he/she suggests you change brake pads or rotors, any vital part of the car, why would you not do it.

I know for a fact that my DSG mechatronics are on the way out. next service I'm going to make sure I tell them the signs and symptoms and if they're happy and its not a concern then win for me. In most situations like the pre mentioned news articles, I sometimes believe we just have to let natural selection take its course. If only we could protect the innocent.

[Transporter]

I guess, it's more sensational and much easier for the media to relay on the posts count from the facebook, twitter and all other internet forums and blogs rather than to try to get the information from the official sources like VAG itself or chase and dig into all the accident that had happen to find out how many was caused by the fault of the car. The VAG has it's own data and know how many real DSG or other faults were reported by the dealers, so it could be the millions of the posts on the internet but only 10th or hundreds of the real one who came forward with their car not the post on the facebook or in here, also posting in all the forums about hearing your friend that his/her DSG did something unusual doesn't count as the faulty DSG, sorry.

If there is a fault in the DSG or it could be made better with the smoother and faster shifting then why not, who wouldn't want that? But, when there are more people trolling about it and make the issue look beigger than it is, then it's wrong for the newspaper to get involved and carry on like they do.

The cars made today are more reliable and safer than the cars made 20 or more years ago. If you are old enough and remember? How many automatic transmissions didn't need rebuild before they reached 150,000km? The cars were stopping on the road not just because of the transmissions but also with the failed fuel pumps, ECUs, crank angle sensors, ignition modules etc.
Just ask any mechanical shop that's around for long enough.

I still have more faith in the VAG car than many other brands in the term of the safety and the long term reliability.

[RoknRob]

How do you explain the recalls elsewhere in the world?

[brimway]

........

Saying replace all the 7spd with 6spd is just rediculous as it doesn't fix the problem.
......

True, the 6 speed has problems aswell. What infuriates many, is the "head in the sand" stance adopted by VGA. The dealer response to my complaint of a false neutral was "oh, we haven't heard of that before". You only have to Google "VW DSG false neutrals".

[Transporter]

Request to moderator: can you change the title of the thread please to remove the reference to "DSG", which is incorrect? Ta.

No, the title stays, that's how it was in the media wasn't it? If they want to change the story then they should publish the new article to correct their mistakes.

[Transporter]

Well, I've been driving for 40 years and never before have I owned a car that's shut down while moving no less than 5 times. In fact, I don't think it's ever happened to me while driving any other car, not even the ones I drove back in the 1970s!

Don't drive the car like that then.
Take it to the dealer to get it repaired, or if there is no fix. just get together with all other people with the same problem and park all your faulty cars infront of the VAG head office and invite the media (TV), get some real action not the talk over in the forums .
You were born at the similar times as I, so I expect from someone from the older generation to still remember how the things were fixed in the old days - by real actions not hiding behind the keyboards. The Fairfax and the media will not fix your car, the VAG will, you can use the media to try to push your issue, but it may take much longer, than parking the cars that aren't safe and stop the payments on them, IF there is big enough number of people then it should speed the process up.

Use the facts not the posts in the cyberspace! The car companies have the facts, media have the hearsays (my apology to those with the real problems). In order to fix the fault one has to be able to confirm it (reproduce), I'm sorry but that's how it is.

[SilvrFoxX]

DSG woes in The Age

I think that this is a broad brush approach to quality issues with VAG. It's true that all cars have issues I guess these are becoming more apparent with VAG and the costs associated with them being high given they want to be a people's car

[noone]

Take it to the dealer to get it repaired, or if there is no fix. just get together with all other people with the same problem and park all your faulty cars infront of the VAG head office and invite the media (TV), get some real action not the talk over in the forums

Agreed. If you are serious, take it seriously. This forum is for banter, not resolution. You could invite the press here, but they are not going to spend days reading through to find out whats going on (from often non-technical drivers). How many times have you read a new post that was : my car is making a noise... Not much help to those who would like to help.

[cappuccino]

RoknRob you missed my point, yes the DSG is a complex box of tricks, but the problem cannot be random. Whether errant code or mechanical failure (and the suggestion is errant code, from what has been said), such a state should be able to be replicated or at the very least recorded - yes, there might be multiple factors involved, but the Volkswagen is full of monitoring units constantly checking the operating state of the vehicle and logging faults - not to mention anyone can plug into VCDS and do their own sophisticated logging of vehicle behaviour realtime should they choose.

I don't believe in ghosts in the machine - either something exists or it does not, and if it exists it can be recorded and logged. More than a few people have said that this "sudden loss of power" has happened to them repeatedly, so surely someone somewhere can back up these claims with real evidence. I don't say this to discredit anything said, but if no-one can do better than "This happened to me" then this matter seems to lack supportive substance - certainly I doubt anyone anywhere will do anything on such a basis.

Machines and their software, unlike philosophy or religion, are hard science quantifiable measurable and recordable objects - they do not act randomly (unlike humans) as they are bound by their design and coding, given the same set of circumstances they repeat the same actions (even when those actions are not the ones the designers/coders intended!). That is my point, and right now there seems to be nothing but conjecture, a shakey basis for claiming "death trap".

I don't work for VW, nor do I have an investment in the issue (beyond owning a VW myself and having driven a VW since 2006). I read The Age story, and what's been said here by some - particularly the claims that somehow VW, the ACCC or the Government are somehow failing the driving public - and I'm befuddled how some of these things can be said on the scant lack of any real evidence. Some are drawing a very, very long bow indeed. As to the problem existing, it's possible, but possible is probably all it will remain until something more is offered up.

you have no idea what your talking about.

as a programmer, (and i take it that your not a programmer), you have no idea how complex software is. I am surprised everyday that humanity has yet to destroy itself from a software / computer glitch, we've had close calls during the cold war with bad nuclear denotation detection sensors. you can spend all the money in the world and debug forever, any software that performs any complex function will never be 100% and will not be able to handle all possible scenarios. The DSG/EPC software is not simple, its very complex, and since it replies on sensors to compute physical factors (i.e. unlike operating system software or isolated app with no physical input) the complexity increases even more, why? Because physical input becomes unpredictable. In software talk, its the difference between pseudorandom and random, you can also refer to the halting theory. Basically to sum up, anything with a computer and software involved, you can't predict like something which is mechanical.

do a computer science degree, work in software for 10-20 years, and then you will appreciate how complex software is. consumers moan on about ATM failing, this and that. but consider that a typical program can contain millions of lines of code, worked on by dozens if not hundreds of programmers, costing millions of dollars, tested all day and night. and even then, programmers will tell you that usually, you will still have 1-2% of the code buggy, hence 'software updates'.

haha "Machines and their software, unlike philosophy or religion, are hard science quantifiable measurable and recordable objects"...
ok a few problems:
1) software is not just 1+1, the logic goes way way more complex
2) maths is not complete, refer to halting problem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem
3) refer to software bugs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_bug
"Finding and fixing bugs, or "debugging", has always been a major part of computer programming. Maurice Wilkes, an early computing pioneer, described his realization in the late 1940s that much of the rest of his life would be spent finding mistakes in his own programs.[16] As computer programs grow more complex, bugs become more common and difficult to fix. Often programmers spend more time and effort finding and fixing bugs than writing new code. Software testers are professionals whose primary task is to find bugs, or write code to support testing. On some projects, more resources can be spent on testing than in developing the program.

Usually, the most difficult part of debugging is finding the bug in the source code. Once it is found, correcting it is usually relatively easy. Programs known as debuggers exist to help programmers locate bugs by executing code line by line, watching variable values, and other features to observe program behavior. Without a debugger, code can be added so that messages or values can be written to a console (for example with printf in the C programming language) or to a window or log file to trace program execution or show values.

However, even with the aid of a debugger, locating bugs is something of an art. It is not uncommon for a bug in one section of a program to cause failures in a completely different section,[citation needed] thus making it especially difficult to track (for example, an error in a graphics rendering routine causing a file I/O routine to fail), in an apparently unrelated part of the system.

Sometimes, a bug is not an isolated flaw, but represents an error of thinking or planning on the part of the programmer. Such logic errors require a section of the program to be overhauled or rewritten. As a part of Code review, stepping through the code modelling the execution process in one's head or on paper can often find these errors without ever needing to reproduce the bug as such, if it can be shown there is some faulty logic in its implementation.

But more typically, the first step in locating a bug is to reproduce it reliably. Once the bug is reproduced, the programmer can use a debugger or some other tool to monitor the execution of the program in the faulty region, and find the point at which the program went astray.

It is not always easy to reproduce bugs. Some are triggered by inputs to the program which may be difficult for the programmer to re-create. One cause of the Therac-25 radiation machine deaths was a bug (specifically, a race condition) that occurred only when the machine operator very rapidly entered a treatment plan; it took days of practice to become able to do this, so the bug did not manifest in testing or when the manufacturer attempted to duplicate it. Other bugs may disappear when the program is run with a debugger; these are heisenbugs (humorously named after the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.)

Debugging is still a tedious task requiring considerable effort. Since the 1990s, particularly following the Ariane 5 Flight 501 disaster, there has been a renewed interest in the development of effective automated aids to debugging. For instance, methods of static code analysis by abstract interpretation have already made significant achievements, while still remaining much of a work in progress.

As with any creative act, sometimes a flash of inspiration will show a solution, but this is rare and, by definition, cannot be relied on.

There are also classes of bugs that have nothing to do with the code itself. If, for example, one relies on faulty documentation or hardware, the code may be written perfectly properly to what the documentation says, but the bug truly lies in the documentation or hardware, not the code. However, it is common to change the code instead of the other parts of the system, as the cost and time to change it is generally less. Embedded systems frequently have workarounds for hardware bugs, since to make a new version of a ROM is much cheaper than remanufacturing the hardware, especially if they are commodity items."

Maybe also take a course in physics 101: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle

So give it a break, expect bugs and errors in life and stop talking about certainty. **** happens, and physics proves that there is no certainty. At the end of the day, its about how they deal with and fix problems. Not saying that they couldn't do a better job, just saying that nothing is perfect.

That is what warranty is for. One death is terrible, but there is a difference between murder and accidental death, even if it was a result of manufacturing / design flaw. Unless someone knew and did it on purpose. Watch air crash investigations and you realize how unlikely and sometimes how unpredictable a chain of events can be. In some cases even the regulator had no idea what caused a part to fail. but your are less likely to die in a air plane than sitting at home. you are less likely to die from a car fault than a moron tailgating truck driver, P plater, young driver, drink driver! There was no intent, and there is no evidence of negligence on the part of VW. Sure their PR could be better, they could provide more answers on what the problem is and better provide fixes and services.

maybe if people drove better there would be less death. cars fail all the time, from wear and tear, bad driving, bad servicing, and yes faults. but if people didn't tail gate you would be able to break in time in emergencies.

the 110km-0km stopping in 3seconds is bull****. even if you cut the engine, breaked and pulled the handbreak, no idea how you do that. supercars can't even do that. remember btw, personal testimony is the most unreliable evidence in court.

[pologti18t]

Well, I've been driving for 40 years and never before have I owned a car that's shut down while moving no less than 5 times. In fact, I don't think it's ever happened to me while driving any other car, not even the ones I drove back in the 1970s!

Why would VW even bother fixing these issues if the owners are like you. They fixed your car .... over 1.5yrs of no issues and you whinge about it! Like there is some conspiracy against you. You even had to recreate a profile on here to go on about it after not posting for years. What is your motivation?

[wai]

How do you explain the recalls elsewhere in the world?

Different laws. As I said, in NSW at least, you can do whatever you want (unless it is already on the criminal statutes), as long as you tell your customer what you are going to do them. There are limits, but what we are talking about here is OK.

On the ACCC, they are concerned with safety. Again, it is up to the person lodging the complaint to make the case on safety.

Above all, DO NOT be confused by the titles of these organisations. The titles are a way of governments (all persuasions) hoodwinking citizens into thinking they are doing something about a problem. Just look at all of what is going on right now in politics. Create an organisation or body with a name that suggests they are doing something and you quieten the masses.

[wai]

True, the 6 speed has problems aswell. What infuriates many, is the "head in the sand" stance adopted by VGA. The dealer response to my complaint of a false neutral was "oh, we haven't heard of that before". You only have to Google "VW DSG false neutrals".

Volkswagen are in business to sell cars, not fix them at no cost. You only have to look at their standard response to shut down complaints "<whatever> is standard for this type of vehicle".

This is not VW hating, as it applies equally to EVERY car manufacturer.

[nyc863]

This media beat up reminds me of the toyota unintended acceleration debacle a few years ago that turned out to be a couple of floor mat mistakes compounded into mass hysteria and more than a few opportunists.

The press in this country is paper thin, there is no investigative ability at all. They are addicted to clicks and love opening up for comments on articles that don't really matter but withholding the ability to comment on articles that are of national importance.

I've got friends coming to me each like a dog who has dug up a bone, asking if I had heard that my new Passat could stop at any time and be taken out by a semi trailer, and how in China they just (today) recalled every VW. It is ridiculous. VWA must be shaking their head with the hysteria of it all.

I don't really have an opinion on whether or not VW should recall all DSGs, personally I'm happy with the warranty and think that if there should be a transmission failure I'll just get them to fix it. This is my third DSG in three cars, over 7 years and none gave me any issues. I suspect the actual number of VWs off the road for long periods are few versus the number on the roads -- not much different than other brands at similar prices. The same DSG units are in Skoda and Audi, where are the owners action groups around those cars and brands?

As for the poor lady who got smooshed by a truck, I don't know the details but I do know that cars loose the ability to accelerate at full bore every day for multiple reasons (blow outs, bad fuel, running out of fuel, limp mode, operator error) and nobody gets killed or if they did, it turns out to be carelessness on the part of one or both drivers involved. Nobody calls for puncture proof tires or emergency motive force to save lives.

[BluChris]

"<whatever> is standard for this type of vehicle". While I have experienced a degree of this with other brands, I never had the runaround like I had from VAG group dealers. There's enough expressed emotion here and in the media to indicate this is a common experience with VAG products.

Thank heavens I never had potentially life threatening problems, but man I tell you when I stepped away from VAG the palpable sense of the weight off my shoulders was something to experience. Approaching my current service department no longer fills me with dread, as in 'what arrogant crap am I going to experience today, will I be told again that the bleeding obvious can't be detected, and just how much am I going to get ripped for the pleasure of a non-fix?'

The angst this set of issues is causing demonstrates there is a real customer service problem here, one that VAG has done way too little to address. They knew about it long ago but did nothing (I was surveyed and later discovered VAG had received tons of negative feedback). I feel really, really sorry for those of you who are going through this nightmare with your cars. I sincerely hope VAG is forced to improve how they handle customer issues, however that might be done.