VW Faces $17B Fine for Emissions Scam

Funny you said that... Piech could be considered a real life Jimmy Bond of the German auto industry. Slept with most of his secretaries, has had 4 wives and 12 kids. The head honcho of Porsche 917 race car, the man behind Audi Quattro, the force behind the money-losing but one-of-the-kind BUG'atti Veyron and VW XL1. Piech persuaded the union to adopt the flexible work week in the 90's and turned around VW and went on the expand its portfolio. He and Pischetsrieder (BMW) led the charge to buy out English brands like Rolls Royce, Bentley, MINI and spun off Land Rover and Cosworth. Most of VW Group's top engineers and executives were hand-picked by Piech, including ex-CEO Winterkorn and the newly minted Matthias Muller. Hyundai lifted Audi designer Peter Schreyer, another one of Piech's guys. In fact Hyundai just hired another VW designer (Donckerwolke).

Only if GM was run by car guys and not finance/banking MBA types who only see short term profit.

 

AFAIK, small diesels (1.6L) now come from BMW, they made a patent exchange a couple of years ago.
They still make bigger ones for SUVs, trucks, etc...

 

Source: LA Times

The current offer, which expires Nov. 2, is extended to any individual who currently owns a VW, or any of that person's family members, provided they live at the same address. Under the terms of the incentive, "Returning Volkswagen owners" could be eligible for $2,000 off a "new, unused 2015 or 2016 Jetta, Passat, CC, Beetle, Beetle Convertible, Eos, Golf, Golf GTI, Golf R, e-Golf, Golf SportWagen, Tiguan, Touareg and Touareg TDI," per the company's website.

Tellingly, the offer applies to gas models only. It excludes hybrids, the announcement says,. . .​

Wth!

Source: VW’s top U.S. executive to testify to Congressional panel | The Columbian

WASHINGTON — Volkswagen’s top U.S.-based executive is expected to testify before Congress Thursday that he first learned in 2014 of emissions problems with the German automaker’s four-cylinder diesel cars.

But in prepared remarks posted Wednesday, Volkswagen Group of America CEO Michael Horn doesn’t directly address when he was first told his company had developed on-board computer software designed to deceive tests.

Horn is scheduled to testify before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, which was provided an advance copy of the executive’s written testimony. It will be the first appearance on Capitol Hill by Horn, a German and veteran VW manager who took over the reins of the brand’s American subsidiary last year.​

The rest of this note is in Freds House of Politics:
http://priuschat.com/threads/congress-critters-should-ask-vw.158585/

Bob Wilson

 

funny how th acts like he never liked diesels.

 

what, they'd figure out how to cheat the system? i think they already know.

 

is that on top of buying their stinky diesel back from them at what they paid for them? if i were a vdub competitor, i would offer them $3,000. off.

 

Take the Kelly Blue Book value and divide by half. Offer it as a trade-in value for any of the 2.0 L diesels with a promise they will go to an auction. They will NOT be resold by a Toyota dealer. Offer applies only for purchase of a 2016 Prius.

Problem solved.

Bob Wilson

 

... flying in the face of a dendritic corollary branching out from contemporary capitalism's efficient market hypothesis, that not one person stepped forward to do the right thing implies, presence of an impediment; an intervening obstacle; a constraint.

There is no conceivable likelihood VW's peer engine makers could not have known of VW's wrongdoing. They had to have known.

Our Stanford prison experiment (e.g., Zimbardo; 1971) proved, whensoever someone is positioned to costlessly impose a cost upon you, with no consequence to themselves whatsoever, not only is it inevitable they will? That with statistical certainty they will indeed do so, liberally and mercilessly (e.g., drone pilot syndrome) for non-pecuniary reward, in turn, implies the contrapositve argument no one in the matrix could have pushed the button on VW costlessly, sans consequence to themselves.

So many of its peers in the know, yet not one having stepped forward dropping a dime on Volkswagen with a last-period strategy (e.g., prisoner's dilemma; Axelrod; 1971), transitive preference logic implies (1) collusion (e.g., market rules), and/or (2) Volkswagen has the goods on them (e.g., FCA; GM, Ford; Toyota; Honda; Nissan; Renault, et alia).

Not one person in the automotive industry stepped forward, to do the right thing.

Likelihood looms a secret NATO-like treaty exists amongst the engine-manufacturers, constraining them such that the act of any one engine-maker breaking ranks, triggers automatic retribution upon them, from their entire peer group.

Ipso facto, there must be (1) detailed, specific market orders expressly stipulated constraining fellow engine-makers (e.g., collusion), (2) there must be an enforcement mechanism, and (3) likelihood now looms ever larger VW execs have significant secret evidence compiled, of wrongdoing committed by peer engine-makers (e.g., within its peer group, VW is feared) -- Samuel, '04 Ruthiemobile.

 

^^^ Msr. Inspecteur Crouton... Vous etes brillant, magnifique!!!

In English... "like totally, dude!"

 

Now it gets serious: VW To Begin Diesel Recall in January – if it Gets EPA Nod | TheDetroitBureau.com

Even as Volkswagen moves ahead with plans to fix vehicles equipped with software designed to cheat on emissions tests, its problems are mounting. Among other things, the Senate Finance Committee has opened a probe investigating whether the carmaker falsely claimed more than $50 million in tax credits for meeting emissions standards.
. . .
Adding to VW’s legal woes, the chairman and the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee have sent a letter to the company raising the question of whether it claimed clean air credits of up to $1,300 a vehicle under “false representations to the U.S. government.”

The 482,000 vehicles equipped with the defeat devices were “included (with) those that the company certified as qualifying for the advanced lean-burn technology motor vehicle credit,” wrote Senators Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, and Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat.
. . .
A preliminary study by KelleyBlueBook.com found that in the weeks after the story broke the average auction price of models like the Passat, Jetta and Golf TDI models tumbled 13%.
. . .​

Bob Wilson

 

The sh*t has hit the fan.

 

Isn't that pretty serious? Governments aren't too bothered if their citizens are defrauded, though there are courts to sort that out, but they slam down hard they're defrauded. Like you say, it's hit the fan well and truely.

 

"Volkswagen did not just consider its clean diesels comparable to hybrids or plug-in electrics; it believed they were superior, Ms. Oge said.

“These people had religion,” she said. “And that religion was diesel. They simply did not believe in electric powertrains and thought they were a waste of time.”

Report: Volkswagen Lobbied for More Tax Credits for Diesels

 

send lawyers, guns and money!

 

wow, what an indictment! now i have to wonder how many german engineers and managers were personally profiting from u.s. tax credit dollars.

 

VW Pulls Request to Certify 2016 Diesel Models - WSJ

 

That religion was quite intense. We fought the diesel people for years with their cherry-picked data.

It never made any sense. Their technology barely passed emission regulation minimums (which now we find it didn't). Ours was far cleaner, earning a PZEV rating. Ours could also be augmented with electricity to deliver even higher efficiency and lower emissions.

Yet, the fight continued on anyway.

 

follow the money...

 

What amazes me is their arrogance, I can almost hear them saying:
"This whole matter of ever more stringent regulations on NOx is not more than regulators' submission to some tree huggers lunatics, we know better what is good for the masses!"

 

VW's U.S. recall could be thwarted by reluctant diesel owners - Yahoo News

Only 17 states have emissions requirements, so TX and FL owners may chose to keep peppy diesels as is.

Now here's where the EPA new ozone rules could be a good thing, if they'd have thought of it.