Mitsubishi Motors Pulls a Volkswagen; Shares Drop (reuters.com) 61
Reader Zane C. writes: The president of Japan's sixth largest auto corporation has admitted to manipulating test data on fuel economy (mileage test data) for 625,000 total eK Wagon and eK Space models, as well as the Dayz and Dayz Roox models produced for Nissan Motors. The tests overstated fuel efficiency by 5 percent to 10 percent. The offending models have been taken off the market until the problem is fixed, and foreign markets are being investigated for similar violations. Upon the announcement of the manipulations, Mitsubishi's stock dropped 15% and it lost 1.2 billion dollars in market value. The company apologized for the deception and said that it is investigating the employees involved. According to Mitsubishi, it was Nissan's in-house testers that discovered the discrepancy between the cars' published fuel efficiency data, and their real-life results. The affected models are sold exclusively in Japan.
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Whoosh!
The OP is saying the management of Mitsubishi should spend several days listen to Harry Carry expound on the virtues of the 10 commandments and how they apply to corporations.
Denial of emissions... (Score:5, Funny)
He who articulated it, particulated it!
lol (Score:4, Funny)
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Re: lol (Score:2)
Given that the smaller car was "Colt"
Had an eighteen year old cousin (the first relative I ever smoked-up with) get killed in one of those little sardine tins...
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Yeah we get the joke... but it's not true. It's a portmanteau of "Star" and "Orion" and "Arion" (a mythological horse).
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The Japanese use English in very interesting ways that sound ridiculous [wikipedia.org] to us.
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Beats the heck out of English where we expect people to remember how to pronounce words like 'rendezvous' even though it only makes sense with French intonation and thus ends up yet another exception.
In thinking a bit further about this, given that we no longer teach syllabic pronunciation in American public schools, and Americans are plummeting down the
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Japanese words that are "English sounding" are part of their Katakana syllabary. For example, "ice cream" becomes 'Ai su' 'ku ri mu' or Aisu Kurimu.
It's not Katakana syllabary, it's Katana syllabary. You take an English word, you chop it up with a Katana, and then you glue the remains back together to get the Japanese form.
They all did (Score:5, Insightful)
Clearly all of the manufacturers used similar tricks, that's why they didn't point the finger at VW earlier. I'm sure they all knew about it since VW had such good emissions and fuel economy that the other manufacturers must have done tests and tear downs of their own to figure out how VW did it. But no one wanted to rock the boat and invite more scrutiny from regulators.
Re: They all did (Score:2)
But no one wanted to rock the boat and invite more scrutiny from regulators.
Benz might've had motive to; they were apparently forced to incorporate expensive "cow-piss-injection" and particulate filters..
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This. It was a reporter who "busted" the story. If people think the Big Three are gonne get out of this scott free, guess again. That's why hypergiant penalties on VW won't happen.
Re:They all did (Score:5, Informative)
There is actually very little that is similar between this and what Volkswagen did. It is like saying that a shoplifter "pulls a Blackbeard" or something. In this case, they lied about their fuel economy to increase sales. In the other case, they sold cars with completely illegal emissions and built them to detect an emissions test and cheat on it.
Your claim about "no one wanted to rock the boat" is horse shit. The regulators who uncovered the VW cheat have been testing other manufacturers too, and nobody else appears to be doing that thing. The reason that nobody pointed the finger at VW is that they don't all buy competitors cars and road test the emissions. They test things like comfort and performance of competitors, they don't attempt to re-create all their regulatory compliance. They spend that money on their own compliance! That testing is expensive, and they don't really benefit from it. Performance testing of competitors they do benefit from, because it is more likely to lead to engineering insights.
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N2O is laughing gas. NO2 is entirely not laughing gas. Learn your chemistry, you slashdotters!
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Twice the oxigen? That's even better!
No, oxygen is a component of hydrogen hydroxide [urbandictionary.com] of which a teacup full can cause death! And the solid form can put your eye out!
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Don't you think that the engineers who had to install expensive urea and similar systems in their vehicles to meet emissions might just be a bit curious how VW could sell cars without those systems?
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No. Most of the affected cars had those systems too. The engineers probably presumed that they were using more of it.
And to the extent that "engineers [were] curious" I would expect them to be curious about lots of things that other companies do that they were not being paid money by their employers to reverse-engineer. If the company was interested, it would more likely be in the form of trying to license the technology, not in trying to reverse-engineer stuff that will all turn out to have had patents-pen
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I made a similar speculation in a VW-cheat /. story about half a year ago. Here's the logic again:
Car co's are practically obligated to study competitors' systems because a lot of engineering resources are spent on pollution control. I hear diff estimates, but roughly 1/3 to 1/2 the parts and complexity in an engine are devoted to pollution control.
Before you spend tens or hundreds of millions implementing and/or manufacturing a system,
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Clearly all of the manufacturers used similar tricks, that's why they didn't point the finger at VW earlier. I'm sure they all knew about it since VW had such good emissions and fuel economy that the other manufacturers must have done tests and tear downs of their own to figure out how VW did it. But no one wanted to rock the boat and invite more scrutiny from regulators.
True. Ever wondered why after the whole VW scandal became known - even though it would be such an excellent thing to capitalize on - none of the other car manufacturers did any large advertising campaigns in which they said "buy our cars, we do not cheat"? This is why. Keep a low profile and nobody will take a closer look at your own cars.
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Clearly all of the manufacturers used similar tricks, that's why they didn't point the finger at VW earlier.
Yes and no. The manufacturers have a long history of not badmouthing one another outside of racing, with only limited exceptions. But yes, all or at least many manufacturers have diddled the emissions systems in the past, and it would be surprising to learn that only one of them (Audi, VW etc. being one company, after all) was doing it now when the regulations are, as usual, stricter than ever.
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Clearly all of the manufacturers used similar tricks, that's why they didn't point the finger at VW earlier.
The reason why those standards for diesels are so high is because US auto makers could not market a decent enough quality diesel passenger car at a sufficiently-low price with the performance Americans demand, and so these standards were put in place to attempt to prevent foreign companies from competing in the US diesel passenger car market.
You hear US auto companies scream about CAFE standards for gasoline vehicles anytime talk of raising those standards comes up, but were and are strangely silent about d
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Also VW had a big marketing campaign showing how Clean Diesel was so much more better than Hybrid cars. Touting their superior gas mileage and green creds, vs those lame priuses. Showing VW was just flat lying about it, despite a full marketing hype. Mitsubishi, at least in America, may had posted fuel economy, but they weren't doing their big sales push because of it.
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In addition to up to 35x higher NOx emissions, VW also admitted that CO2 and fuel consumption were not reported accurately (i.e. they lied).
I guess you will only care about NOx if you get lung cancer, asthma, emphysema or heart disease.
Wikipedia has a good write-up on the problems:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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The Evo is still relatively cheep for its performance. It's not like the 3000gt or Eclipse were cheep cars, at least not the ones you wanted.
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No, he's referring to the Eagle Talon and Summit, which were cars made by Mitsubishi and sold under the Eagle brand.
Dayz and Dayz Roox (Score:2)
Who the hell thinks up these names? And who the hell buys them???
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Japanese?
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Big Difference (Score:2)
Is KIA involved? (Score:2)
Wrong company.. (Score:2)
Actually, it would be more accurate to say they "Pulled a Hyunadia [cnn.com]," i.e., overstated mileage.
Volkswagon's mileage data was correct; they were just spewing pollutants.
VW must be thrilled (Score:2)
Not a VW (Score:2)
I'm not surprised... (Score:2)
I'm not surprised.
Mitsubishi has been phoning it in since the '90s where their Automotive division is concerned.
They used to make very nice vehicles - and Chrysler used to import them branded as Chrysler/Dodge/Plymouth models (Galant -> Dodge Challenger/Plymouth Sapporo - a very nice car for the time, then the Dodge Colt, Dodge's compact pickup trucks, etc.) and then the DiamondStar partnership was struck. Then they came out with the Starion which was a nice 2+2 "sports" car (a ponycar really) and marke
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Then came the 3000GT/Stealth and the Eclipse. Then Mitsubishi quit caring about their auto segment - quality dropped, they killed the sportscars, and they started parading the non-turbo FWD Eclipse as a serious sportscar (despite inferior performance and crappy handling), and they have been getting worse ever since, and dealerships have been abandoning the brand for makes that actually provide dealer support.
You forgot the Evo. I mean, it's gone now, right? But no one can argue that it wasn't a serious performance vehicle.
If I could trade Mitsubishi's existence for any number of extinct marques (Saab, Studebaker/Avanti, Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Saturn, AMC, De Tomaso Modena, Fisker, or heck, even Plymouth (with a product line distinct from Dodge's, like they used to have up through the mid-'70s - the Roadrunner/Satellite was sweet for a musclecar)
And it was built on the same platform as other Chryslers [wikipedia.org], and the Dodges were available with a broader, better range of engines.
Dayz (Score:2)
However, they went on to stress that the 'Chicken 4 Dayz' model is unaffected.