Wards Auto
Bob Gritzinger

Regulators are approving software changes that will allow Fiat Chrysler Automobiles’ 3.0L EcoDiesel V-6 to meet emissions standards without any degradation in fuel economy or performance, the company reports.

The certification by the U.S. EPA and the California Air Resources Board permits the sale of FCA’s ’17 Ram 1500 pickups and Jeep Grand Cherokee SUVs. The announcement comes seven months after the agencies cited the vehicles for emissions violations. Some 104,000 vehicles were affected dating back to the ’14 model year.

“The approvals announced today represent a significant step toward resolving the issues raised by EPA and ARB,” says CEO Sergio Marchionne. “We appreciate the efforts of the agencies in working with us to achieve this milestone. We are anxious to build on this progress to make appropriate updates to the emissions control software in our earlier model-year vehicles.”

FCA in May announced it was filing for certification after collaborating with the EPA and CARB to resolve the issue via a software update. The modifications require no hardware changes and the Auburn Hills-based automaker says in a statement it expects the “modified calibrations will have no effect on the stated fuel economy or the performance of these vehicles.”

The 3.0L EcoDiesel V-6 was a Wards 10 Best Engines winner in 2014, 2015 and 2016, cited for its power, refinement and fuel efficiency.

The engine was developed in 2008-2009 by Italy’s VM Motori (which FCA now owns) and previously had been installed in European-market Jeep Grand Cherokees, Chrysler 300Cs (known there as Lancia Themas) and even some Maserati sedans.

The EPA issued its notice of violation following enhanced testing of diesel vehicles dating back to September 2015 when German automaker Volkswagen was found to have installed defeat devices on its passenger-car diesels in a deliberate effort to avoid detection of the vehicles’ failure to meet diesel emissions standards.

The EPA and CARB on Thursday approved hardware and software changes that will permit certification of 326,000 Volkswagen diesel cars. That fix is expected to reduce vehicle fuel economy by as much as 2 mpg (0.87 km/L).

honestly, who cares....? the diesel enthusiasts will find a way to bypass all emissions bus=shill, no matter what. NWO in the diesel engine world..........

I still wonder where the crossover is between placing all this emissions equipment on a diesel vehicle to cut down pollution, but that makes the engine less efficient and therefore burn more fuel and pollute more, and simply, letting the engine breathe more efficiently, thereby reducing total emissions. Like, in real world driving, over the course of 100 miles, is the EU diesel polluting less while getting 55mpg or is the emissions regulated US model polluting less while getting 35mpg? I would believe it's the EU model which is using 1/3 less fuel, but I'm not an engineer for these companies so I don't have the data.

Any pollution equipment added to a diesel engine other than the CCV system hurts performance and fuel mileage to some degree or another!
The more regulations EPA adds which requires newer stricter requirements, the more fuel mileage will suffer!
To them, they do not give a rats behind how bad it affects fuel mileage as long as the discharge from the tailpipe is below their mandated specifications.

The EPA is the elephant in the room and is growing all the time!!!!!

Everyone is talking electric vehicles nowadays, but did you ever think of all the fossil fuel that will be required to be burned to charge all these electric vehicles?
Which is worst, some tailpipe emissions from vehicles, or millions of tons of pollution from stacks which include the principal pollutants of carbon monoxide (CO), lead (Pb), nitrogen dioxide(NO2), ozone (O3), particulate matter (PM), sulfur dioxide (SO2), and Toxic Air Pollutants which include mercury, selenium, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), benzene and other volatile organic compounds (VOCs) just to name a few!
Not to mention what you do with all the chemicals used to make all the batteries or discarding them after they are used up which adds to the pollution!

More to think about!

Any pollution equipment added to a diesel engine other than the CCV system hurts performance and fuel mileage to some degree or another!
The more regulations EPA adds which requires newer stricter requirements, the more fuel mileage will suffer!
To them, they do not give a rats behind how bad it affects fuel mileage as long as the discharge from the tailpipe is below their mandated specifications.

The EPA is the elephant in the room and is growing all the time!!!!!

Everyone is talking electric vehicles nowadays, but did you ever think of all the fossil fuel that will be required to be burned to charge all these electric vehicles?
Which is worst, some tailpipe emissions from vehicles, or millions of tons of pollution from stacks which include the principal pollutants of carbon monoxide (CO), lead (Pb), nitrogen dioxide(NO2), ozone (O3), particulate matter (PM), sulfur dioxide (SO2), and Toxic Air Pollutants which include mercury, selenium, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), benzene and other volatile organic compounds (VOCs) just to name a few!
Not to mention what you do with all the chemicals used to make all the batteries or discarding them after they are used up which adds to the pollution!

More to think about!

No one said they didnt, but they do reduce emissions. The argument that they loss of fuel mileage offsets the reduction in emissions isn't even close.

Electric cars use energy far more efficiently. If an ICE can only extract 50%(Max) of the fuel's energy to use to drive the car, then 50% of that fuel is being wasted and sent out the tail pipe or into the air via the radiator as heat. Most power plants work generally the same in that the burn a fuel(nuclear, coal, gas, oil whatever) to heat water into high pressure steam which drives a turbine. Since they are using the fuel purely to generate heat then they run FAR more efficiently. Now instead of burning a gallon of fuel to drive 40 miles, you might only need half a gallon cause your not wasting half of it.

All your power plants are running basically the same emission systems that we all complain about on these diesels so they are running cleaner than some straight piped Liberty CRD.

Why the hate for electrics? We like diesels for their low end torque and driveability. Electric motors have instaneous torque at any time, even 0 RPM, and will make a diesel look bad. Looks at the Teslas, those cars can do 0-60 in like 2.5 seconds because of the massive torque and extremely precise traction control you have with the electric motor. Once they can get the issue of long distance driving out of the way then there isnt too many downside to electric.

Electricity won't be ready for prime-time for another generation at best.
We're stuck in the middle of paradigms, and it's gonna be a long bumpy ride.

One of the downsides to the industrial production of electricity with the current outdated power grid in much of the country is that everyone comes home at 5PM, turns on the internet and cranks up the A/C - which results in an overtaxed supply, brownouts and rolling blackouts an population centers and suburbs for 10's of millions of people in this country.

Add to that - Everyone coming home at 5PM, doing the above AND plugging in the car for the daily recharge.

And doing it after dark in the winter, albeit with electric heat and more lighting instead of A/C.

Sure, you can delay the charge with software, to midnight, or some programmed time - but with the EPA taking fossil fuel plants off-line, dams being removed, and the sun going down on photo-voltaic every afternoon.... that means that more heavy lifting is going to settle on battery storage under the solar arrays.

And the clean batteries that have endless deep-cycles coupled with charger circuitry that becomes subject to components that will require whole system changes when a single board isn't available anymore, and current tech for solar array lifecycles, ignoring cloudy days, dirty arrays, low temps, winter sun angles, footprints for solar arrays, and the same long transmission lines, and the back-up generators that have to run 24/7/365 anyway to be able offer instantaneous emergency power...
The Chinese have much of the rare-earth materials used in manufacturing, and most of the manufacturing they do is dirty and produces counterfeit junk.

Will we solve the problems before an EMP hits us?

I don't know. Just because we've managed to come up with some temporary imperfect, temporary highly imperfect, and temporary decidedly horrendous solutions to wholesale power generation in the past doesn't mean we can expect better in the future to let us live our lives under anything that looks like freedom and fun in the future.

(My bet is we'll be burning wood and relying on mules for a long time after that EMP).

Electric power might be a subset of tomorrow's power, but it aint gonna be as easy as all the
'With nuclear power generating electricity - electricity will be so cheap to generate that we'll be giving it away for FREE!!1!!11'
stuff that they were saying in the 50's when they were trying to figure out how to monetize Atomic Power after WWII.

I do not believe that Electricity will become the fix it's touted to be on a state level much less national or global within 2 generations, at best. Everything between now and then is going to suck.

(My bet is we'll be burning wood and relying on mules for a long time after that EMP).

EMP = overhyped disaster scenario thanks to popular fiction and conspiracy theorists.

If you are really worried about EMP, keep a old mechanical injection 6BT Dodge Cummins truck buried with you in your bunker along with a hundred gallons (or more) of diesel.