Volkswagen Diesel Scandal Spreads To Porsche and Audi 494
New submitter sumanareddyraval writes: The fallout from the Volkswagen diesel scandal is spreading fast to the company's other famous brands, including Porsche and Audi, and across the Atlantic to the U.S. The scandal reached down into the company's engineering corps as the CEO of Volkswagen's US business, the research and development chief from Audi and the engine chief from Porsche, which are part of the Volkswagen Group, are said to be following Volkswagen's CEO out the door of the company, according to multiple reports Thursday. The impending departures are a sign that the Volkswagen scandal is ready to grow to much larger proportions.
Pulling that off was a major conspiracy (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Pulling that off was a major conspiracy (Score:4, Interesting)
That depends if the low emission mode was already coded and used in some other circumstances. If for example the engine enters that mode after idling for 30s. It could be relatively simple for one or two programmers to include a simple check that detected the dynamo scenario and put the engine into that mode, it would almost certainly be possible to obfuscate what's going on so a casual review wouldn't detect it.
Do I think that's what happened? No. Lone coders don't go off the rails that far without direction from above. If nothing else, it's doubtful the software engineers were directly aware of the emissions problem without anyone else being in the loop. But it is at least theoretically possible.
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Try reading his whole post; that's pretty much precisely what he said he believes. He is just pointing out what is possible.
MANY people knew about it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:MANY people knew about it (Score:5, Insightful)
I work in production test. It is a constant battle with people who should know better trying to ship things that shouldn't be shipped.
I could absolutely imagine a scenario where someone comes up to an engineer says "we pass emissions in this scenario, but not these others" and then pushing, cajoling, even threatening that guy into "bending the rules" and "making things work" so they can start shipping. How much does the average car factory lose for each hour of downtime? Even more likely if the issue is a fundamental flaw that will cost millions to fix. All it takes a couple guys trying to be heroes or save their jobs.
Again, I'm not saying that's what I think happened, especially in light of how widespread the issue appears to be and how fast executives are jumping out with their golden chutes. But I do work in a similar industry in a similar capacity, depending on how the internal culture it would be easy for one or two people to make this happen.
Re:One guy is plenty (Score:5, Informative)
According to one article I read, the heuristic was "did the emissions testing technician put the car into emissions testing mode." Apparently, the cars need a separate setting for that to prevent the electronic stability control from going haywire when it starts reading the front wheels going 50 MPH while the back wheels are stationary.
BMW also... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:BMW also... (Score:4, Interesting)
BMW engines were emitting nitrogen oxide levels that were 11 times more than the current limit set by the European Union. However, it later reported that there was no indication of tampering with the vehicles.
All that means is that they can't prove BMW was cheating the tests while treating the PCM like a 'black box'. VW just cheated so bad, there was no hiding it. The "revelation" is going to be that all manufacturers detect the test regime and do their best to meet emissions standards during it, while at other times they play a little loose, usually to improve mileage.
Re:BMW also... (Score:4)
How long will the company stay up? (Score:2)
The penalties and lawsuits will quickly exceed VW's $126bn valuation.
Re:How long will the company stay up? (Score:5, Insightful)
The really sad thing is that I have seen a lot of people, in a lot of places, suggest punishments in the extreme.
"Ban them from selling cars here for 5 years"
"Require them to buy back every car at the full sales price"
And so on. At some point you just bankrupt the company, which is stupid, it'll put millions of people out of work, destroy a lot of wealth, and then when it files for bankruptcy, it won't be able to fix the cars in the first place.
Do you want vengeance (against millions of people who didn't do anything), or do you want solutions?
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Re:How long will the company stay up? (Score:5, Informative)
Do they? Frankly I have found the quality of Ford vehicles to have jumped leaps and bounds over 10 years ago. Their decision to start bringing in their European designs shows.
GM isn't there yet, but they are making progress. The stuff they build today is also better than it used to be.
The irony is the real fall off in quality is Japan. Toyota and Honda aren't what they used to be.
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VW makes hundreds of thousands of cars right here in the US. VW dealerships employ a lot of people and are owned by some wealthy people.
Give it some time for the headlines to pass, then the lobbying to limit the damage will start.
VW is not just a German company, they have a lot of roots in the US as well, you'll hurt American workers if you kick them too hard.
The issues in 2008 were not of the car companies making, thus the help. Same reason, you can't let GM go bankrupt, you just can't.
Of course, that al
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VW make better cars than American companies.
Umm, JD Powers disagrees:
http://www.jdpower.com/press-r... [jdpower.com]
Anecdotally, everyone I know with VWs have had plenty of annoying problems. Ford & GM, not so many. I am surprised that VW comes in even worse than Chrysler, though.
My theory is that a lot of European manufacturers just don't fully understand just how much Americans drive. In addition to having almost twice as many vehicles per capita than the EU (any statistics that say otherwise are probably excluding light trucks in the US numbers), each of th
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Much of the stuff that breaks on VW's breaks independent of mileage. For example: a Dual Mass Flywheel should NOT break after 30000 (mostly highway) miles. (compare that to a single-mass flywheel; which will basically last forever, because it's a solid hunk of steel or aluminum; there are clutch breakdown scenarios that will DAMAGE a flywheel to the point where it has to be resurfaced like a brake rotor, but single mass flywheels never had these sorts of problems - VW added moving parts to a component that
VW quality (Score:3)
VW make better cars than American companies.
Not according to any of the industry quality surveys. VW is perennially near the bottom [tradeinqualityindex.com] of the quality rankings, almost always lower than the US makers.
Re:How long will the company stay up? (Score:5, Insightful)
At some point you just bankrupt the company, which is stupid, it'll put millions of people out of work, destroy a lot of wealth, and then when it files for bankruptcy, it won't be able to fix the cars in the first place.
Do you want vengeance (against millions of people who didn't do anything), or do you want solutions?
The fines need to cost the company more than they made/saved by implementing this scam OR the people who perpetrated this scam need to be held personally responsible, especially the executives overseeing the operation. Nothing else will deter companies from repeating this kind of behavior. Otherwise they will just make some lowly engineer the scapegoat and write off whatever symbolic fine that gets handed down as the cost of doing business.
Since the higher ups are usually able to use the corporate veil to protect themselves from the latter option, we're left with he former: punitive fines that force shareholders/boards to police themselves.
Re:How long will the company stay up? (Score:5, Insightful)
The fines need to cost the company more than they made/saved by implementing this scam OR the people who perpetrated this scam need to be held personally responsible, especially the executives overseeing the operation. Nothing else will deter companies from repeating this kind of behavior. Otherwise they will just make some lowly engineer the scapegoat and write off whatever symbolic fine that gets handed down as the cost of doing business.
I'm not at all convinced that even the above will deter companies from doing this.
Why? Because the people who profited from this don't care if the company is fined into nothing in 5 years, they got theirs today.
The CEO is leaving, he has his money from the past X years. What difference does it make to him what happens in the next X years?
You need to find the people who actually did this, and punish them, not the millions of employees of a huge corporation who had no idea it was going on.
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Since the higher ups are usually able to use the corporate veil to protect themselves from the latter option, we're left with he former: punitive fines that force shareholders/boards to police themselves.
^ That is the part that needs to stop, actual specific people who profit from/make decisions to profit from such things, need to go to prison.
Punishing the employees and shareholders does nothing, the vast majority of them had no idea this was happening.
Never punish the innocent, it is worse than letting guilty people go free.
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No, the fines need to be higher than the extra money they made times the perceived likelihood they will get caught.
Savings are part of that, but so are the extra sales because people liked the pep. So is the fact that it took six years to locate.
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Are you suggesting we allow corporations to exhibit epic levels of malfeasance and NOT have any punishment?
Yeah, that sounds brilliant ... lay it out plainly to every would-be shady-asshole that the penalty for fraud on a global scale is acceptable.
And then stand back and watch every damned corporation realize they can pretty much do anything and get away with it.
Good luck with that.
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Are you suggesting we allow corporations to exhibit epic levels of malfeasance and NOT have any punishment?
No, and I didn't say that either...
But you also shouldn't destroy a company that employs millions of people because 20 of them were stupid/evil/criminals...
There has to be a middle ground...
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"Destroying" the company doesn't magically make all the assets disappear. Someone else buys all those factories. People are still going to be buying the same number of cars with or without that company existing and thus those cars will still be built. Those factories and workers will be needed by whomever takes up the slack.
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really, WTF are you saying? corporations should be able to cheat the system for as long as they can hide it, and when found out, their only punishment is that they need to find a new way to cheat?
everyone gets what you are saying about the economic ramifications, but simply letting them get away with it isn't something that society should let happen. there's a greater good to be had beyond the immediate hardships to VW stockholders and employees. you nip this on the bud, and show to VW and the greater indus
Re:How long will the company stay up? (Score:4, Insightful)
"Ban them from selling cars here for 5 years"
"Require them to buy back every car at the full sales price"
Don't equivocate these two. Banning them from selling cars here for 5 years would harm the public, auto dealers create a lot of jobs. Requiring them to buy back every car at the full sales price if the customer isn't satisfied with a reflash is only reasonable. Anyone should have to do this if they defraud the customer. Anyone. A person, a corporation, a co-op, anyone.
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Don't equivocate these two. Banning them from selling cars here for 5 years would harm the public, auto dealers create a lot of jobs. Requiring them to buy back every car at the full sales price if the customer isn't satisfied with a reflash is only reasonable. Anyone should have to do this if they defraud the customer. Anyone. A person, a corporation, a co-op, anyone.
The problem is that requiring them to buy back every car at full sales price may well bankrupt them.
Which defeats the point.
Ford faced a similar problem in the 90s with the Explorer. Those who remember and were paying attention will tell you that the tires were only part of it, the vehicle had a design flaw that was not really fixable. Ford should have bought them all back, but that would have simply bankrupted them, so Firestone was made the bad guys.
VW probably will end up paying out several thousand do
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The problem is that requiring them to buy back every car at full sales price may well bankrupt them.
It won't. The VW group has plenty of money, and they can re-sell those cars in other markets.
Ford faced a similar problem in the 90s with the Explorer. Those who remember and were paying attention will tell you that the tires were only part of it, the vehicle had a design flaw that was not really fixable.
"Most other sport utility vehicles are also built on pickup truck underbodies. Indeed, many have rollover death rates considerably higher than the Explorer's [nytimes.com]. I'm no Ford-lover, but it wasn't just Ford. It was everyone. All early SUVs were tip-prone if driven by morons who refuse to acknowledge that they are driving something which is not a car. So they remade SUVs to be more like cars, making them worse at being o
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It won't. The VW group has plenty of money, and they can re-sell those cars in other markets.
You think this is limited only to the US?
VW made 11 million vehicles with this defeat system in it.
The US cars are US vin'ed, they can't just be exported to other nations and they may well not be able to get permission to do it, even if they wanted to.
Finally, it isn't just the cost of buy backs, it is fines, legal costs, state lawsuits, etc.
This may well end up needing a political solution, rather than a legal one. Given the size of VW, the number of people employed around the world by VW and their child
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If you don't you create a moral hazard though. Its just another from of To Big To Fail. Its not worth breaking to entire economy to protect a few unfortunate victims. If anything they should be made to qualify for unemployment insurance or something like in the case of a traditional layoff.
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Right, so the moral hazard should be finding those who ACTUALLY did this and putting them in prison.
Punishing everyone else and letting the people who ACTUALLY did it go free is the real moral hazard.
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Right now, if I was a CEO of a huge company, I'd be thinking, "gosh, I can do something illegal, make millions personally, then resign and retire scott free while the world cuts up the company I don't really care about anyway".
THAT is the moral hazard.
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"Most other sport utility vehicles are also built on pickup truck underbodies. Indeed, many have rollover death rates considerably higher than the Explorer's. I'm no Ford-lover, but it wasn't just Ford. It was everyone. All early SUVs were tip-prone if driven by morons who refuse to acknowledge that they are driving something which is not a car. So they remade SUVs to be more like cars, making them worse at being off-road vehicles in the process, instead of making a better driver, which we now know to be impossible.
I've seen people post that before, but the truth is a bit different.
The front suspension was redesigned from the 90-94 model year for the 95 model year. It is the 95 model year and beyond (until the full redesign in 2002) that is the problem.
It is the combination of the new front suspension and the old rear suspension that was the issue, neither by themselves was a problem. It was a poor choice and shouldn't have been approved for production. I owned one back then, followed it closely. That info came ou
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The Ford Explorer didn't become a "unibody car design" until 2011, when it became a tall Ford Taurus station wagon (that is really what it is today). The 2002-2010 models were body on frame just like the 95-01 models.
IME the real difference isn't unibody anyway. That's a red herring. The real difference is the IRS on the 2002+ models.
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How much money is the Volkswagen CEO going to walk away with? How much money did GM's executives make off with? Do we really expect to discourage this sort of stuff if it just comes down to cost benefit analysis?
Exactly...
Fining VW a billion, 10 billion, or even everything they've got, does nothing.
The CEO got his money, what difference does it make to him what happens to VW in the future?
That is why punishing VW to the point of bankruptcy is pointless. Find and punish those people who made this decision, find a reasonable compromise for VW to provide solutions that are affordable, and move on.
Hurting a million employees who did nothing wrong, hurting shareholders who did nothing wrong, doesn't help anyone.
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Do you want vengeance (against millions of people who didn't do anything), or do you want solutions?/quote?
So what should we do? Curse them so those involved are always stuck in traffic behind someone rolling coal?
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There is a middle ground between the two options...
VW probably needs to come up with a solution to provide the owners a legal way to drive the cars, it will probably involve the loss of power and fuel economy, and probably involve the payment of a few thousand to each owner.
Full price buybacks of 5 year old cars is just not reasonable.
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Transfer shares of ownership to the victims. Jobs are saved, and the company does not go bankrupt.
Criminal penalties against individuals are still appropriate though.
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Transfer shares of ownership to the victims.
From whom?
I own shares of VW (via index funds). Are you suggesting that you simply take them away from me for... reasons?
You really don't want to go down THAT path...
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Of course share should be transferred from owners-- you're an owner of VW, and hence responsible (albeit indirectly) for the company's actions.
Shareholders appoint board members, who oversee the company. Shareholders must the ones ultimately left holding the bag for civil violations, since they're the ones who own the value associated with the company.
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They'll survive (Score:2)
The penalties and lawsuits will quickly exceed VW's $126bn valuation.
No it won't. VW is a vital piece of the German economy and is part owned by the German government. They are almost certainly going to get slapped hard over this but it isn't likely to drive them out of business. It will cost them billions of dollars in fines and recalls and probably more in lost sales but they'll probably survive. Hopefully they will get slapped hard enough that they'll serve as an example to other auto makers who might be tempted to pull the same stunt.
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was it intentional, like VW cheating?
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The bike part.
Oh no, not Porshe! (Score:2)
Where else can I get quick treatment for my mid-life crisis???
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From a car maker that's easier to spell?
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From a car maker that's easier to spell?
I guess that rules out a SsangYong then!
Re:Oh no, not Porshe! (Score:5, Funny)
Buy a Harley! Their emissions are terrible too. But nobody cares enough to lie about it
This is what happens.. (Score:4, Insightful)
when the suits don't listen to the nerds, I'll bet. I'm sure at some point someone in engineering said that this was wrong, that they shouldn't cheat like this. I'm sure he/she was quickly told to drop it or start looking for a new job.
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Could be the case. It could also be the case that an engineer thought it up and said it could be implemented and no one would notice, and the management agreed. Either way, it only seems plausible that management and the engineers must have both known about it. Maybe not the CEO. But, we'll probably never find out who really knew what.
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when the suits don't listen to the nerds, I'll bet. I'm sure at some point someone in engineering said that this was wrong, that they shouldn't cheat like this. I'm sure he/she was quickly told to drop it or start looking for a new job.
Or could it have been the other way round?
The nerd(s) had a quick cool hack to satisfy the emissions tests while providing better performance, and didn't want to listen
to the boring lawyers in suits...?
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Government: Dire need of whistleblower protections and incentives to use them.
Engineers: You do what you have to do to pay the bills.
Executives: You made your windfall while polluting the world. Keep up the good work.
The rest of the public: Demand whistle blower protections.
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I'm sure at some point someone in engineering said that this was wrong, that they shouldn't cheat like this.
Perhaps, but I suspect it's more likely that someone in engineering said, "Hey, ugh, you know you can't really hide this little forever, right? It's going to get discovered at some point either by EPA statistics analysis showing vast differences in results depending on testing methodology or by the aftermarket guys disassembling our ECU code and talking on the forums."
Engineering *had* to know this was going to get discovered at some point. That's what really amazes me here. Why on earth would you be so
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So engineers are somehow inherently more moral than anyone else? That's ridiculous.
It's *just* as likely that some amoral engineer said to an amoral suit "hey, you know, we could detect when these tests are running, and kick in the pollution controls only when they're being tested" and the suit said "ok cool, do it".
Guess: Engineering told to do the Impossible (Score:5, Insightful)
My guess is that what happened is that Engineering was told to do something that turned out to be impossible. They built a diesel engine and determined what was the maximum performance and efficiency they could achieve. Then management told them they needed to hit those numbers while still passing emissions requirements. Eventually they realized that the only solution to meet the requirements was to game the tests.
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Re:Guess: Engineering told to do the Impossible (Score:5, Funny)
Kobayashi Maru.
Captain Kirk would be proud.
So, does this news item essentially boil down to: (Score:4, Insightful)
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I think it would be a lot easier to keep a list of companies *not* doing this. It'll be a very short list.
This should cause a sea change in testing (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yes, the only way to be sure that a vehicle is not producing excessive emissions is to probe the tailpipe during an actual drive cycle — preferably without connecting to the computer at all, so that the car has no way to know that it is being monitored.
Diesel technology... (Score:2)
It didn't spread to Audi (Score:3)
Porsche and Audi DIESEL (Score:2)
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'this country'. I'm UK-based
Slashdot is hosted and based in the US. The most represented country on slashdot - in terms of which country most readers are from - is the US as well. It is understood that on slashdot a reference to "this country" is referring to the US unless there is context to imply otherwise.
I am well aware that the engine distribution is vastly different for some brands - particularly European-based brands - in other countries but here in the US the Diesel is almost extinct. VW is the top seller of Diesel-power
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Lemme let you in on the secret... (Score:5, Insightful)
Its not just VW. Its not just the auto industry. It's all over the corporate world and our governments. Everywhere there is closed source software, your stuff that uses that software is being used in anti-consumer ways. I wish people would wise up and say enough is enough. If 99% of the source code for the stuff we use every day were suddenly made public, there would be nothing short of riots in the streets. I'm not advocating that people and companies who write firmware or software should not be compensated, but I am absolutely advocating that the public be allowed to see and change the software for the stuff we purchase.
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software is being used in anti-consumer ways.
The average consumer couldn't give 2 shits about NOx emissions if they could squeeze another horse or two out of the engine.
Spanish SEAT too; CEO climbing in the group... (Score:2)
The Spanish brand SEAT, part of VW group, used some 500.000 of these tampered engines [elpais.com]. Jürgen Stackmann, the CEO of SEAT is also leaving this company.
However, apparently he is not being fired, instead he will become the group worldwide sales chief [theguardian.com] (link [auto-motor-und-sport.de] in German).
Interesting and sad to see how some people are being blamed and fired, while others (in the same position in other company of the group) manage to leave unpunished and even use this opportunity to climb in the group.
Engineering ethics fails here (Score:4, Insightful)
One thing I'm convinced of, based on my experience working with German companies, is that the audit trail *will* eventually lead one of two places -- the actual person who wrote the "benchmark mode" code and checked it in, or a black hole where records have mysteriously disappeared. German companies are fastidious record keepers, especially engineering companies. The CEO leaving is just to appease the shareholders -- the other departures are more telling, and if it got up to the VP of engineering level, there could be a lot more heads rolling.
Honestly, without trying to sound like a finger wagging do-gooder, this is going to be a really good case study in engineering ethics, or the lack of them. Especially in the software world, this is seriously lacking. Over-stressed corporate managers or crazy inexperienced 23-year-old Silicon Valley startup CEOs have software engineers over a barrel when it comes to ethical behavior. Without PE-style personal liability, every engineer is subject to the uncomfortable conversation that goes like, "Look, we need this feature in or the product can't ship/won't pass regulation tests/won't let us do something nefarious with customer data. And if you don't want to put it in, I have 500 H-1Bs and other hungry engineers who will be happy to."
It's too bad - most people can't afford to take a stand, and a lot just don't care enough to even if they could. They have families to feed, or debts to pay, or are worried about being blacklisted from the industry. I see a lot of posts saying the EPA was too strict with their limits -- VW has less than 3% of the US car market; they could have easily just expanded sales to China where emissions controls just don't exist at the same level. Unfortunately, the temptation is always there, and corrupt corporate executives always get away with these things, so I can see how some people think that if they just act like these guys they can join the party too.
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Fuck you.
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Do you also react that way to things like "2 + 2 = 4" and other basic stuff?
2 + 2 = 5, for very large values of 2.
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Even worse, 2+2 != 4 (depending on the quirks of your floating-point implementation).
Re:The real guilty party (Score:5, Informative)
Putting aside the debate about global warming, this it completely off-topic.
The WV scandal is not about global warming. Global warming is mostly about CO2 and CO2 is mostly about fuel economy.
Here the problem is that they cheated on NOx emissions, which are toxic (known to cause acid rains) but do not contribute to global warming. If anything, NOx cause global cooling.
I think that "fuck you" is a totally valid reaction to highly loaded and off-topic "information".
Re:Slap on the wrist (Score:4, Insightful)
Give them a slap on the wrist. Do we really stand to gain more by dragging these guys over the coals.
I suppose it depends on how you feel about car emissions. If VW gets little more than a slap on the wrist, then why wouldn't every other automotive company do the exact same thing? AFAIK, this is just for their diesel engines, what Toyota decided to do this with their gasoline engines? That would be a hell of a lot of cars. I would guess that would start a domino effect, and all manufacturers would do the same.
It's about fraud (Score:5, Insightful)
I suppose it depends on how you feel about car emissions.
No it depends on how you feel about fraud. The reason this is a big deal isn't the pollution though that is not a trivial part of it. No the big deal is that this company intentionally defrauded millions of customers. They promised their technology worked in a way that it didn't.
In my opinion the people who ordered and the people who carried out this fraud should see some time behind bars. They committed a crime that cost customers and taxpayers many millions of dollars.
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As always, the coverup is worse than the crime.
Re:It's about fraud (Score:5, Insightful)
Every single one of those customers cared about being able to pass an emissions test, because every single one of those customers wants to drive their car legally on the road.
Re:It's about fraud (Score:4, Insightful)
Even if an owner doesn't give a crap, what do you suppose the resale value on these cars is right now?
Re:It's about fraud (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that as punishment, given that most of these cars are probably still in the hands of their original owners, VW should be forced to buy-back at original transaction price all of these cars, as no owner will be satisfied by the performance of the cars post-retrofit. Other industries have been forced to buy-back product during a recall and couldn't depreciate that purchase price, I don't see how VW and automobiles should be any different in this circumstance.
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There are three reasons a product is recalled. The first reason is user-error that's so widespread that the company cannot afford the liability even t
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Horseshit. Find me a single customer who cared about the emissions output. People buy diesel cars for the durability and the fuel economy, and VW delivered on those. The only people they defrauded was the EPA. How did this cost customers money? How did it cost taxpayers money? The only people this really affected were the shareholders.
Not everyone is a selfish loon who thinks everything done by The Government is evil.
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Re:Slap on the wrist (Score:5, Insightful)
I blame the long history of governments 'letting it slide' with the banks, Intel, Microsoft, and numerous other big companies for a lot of the major corporate abuses we are seeing today.
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Winterkorn gets a bonus of 30 mil Euros for going. Yeah, I bet he feels really punished.
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First off, when VW makes the change, it wil not change the mileage. What it WILL drop the performance. The standards are fine (if not tight enough), What is wrong is that VW and these car companies simply have no morals esp. since they are the ones pushing for tighter regulations.
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Yes, behave yourself unless you are a bank. Banks get slaps on the wrist.
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On the flip side, Arthur Andersen [wikipedia.org] was put out of business because of a court ruling that was eventually overturned. A lot of people who never had anything to do with Enron lost their jobs as a result. In VW's case, the number of managers and engineers who had anything to do with the emissions testing of diesel vehicles for export to the US is probably dwarfed by the number of people would could be hurt by an overreaction.
This doesn't mean don't punish the wrongdoers, but saying that you want to "hurt" VW
Re:Hilarious! (Score:4, Insightful)
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oh the U.S. companies who actually abide by the emissions law should somehow roll over for the poor foreign competition who didn't. go fuck yourself