NOxious Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal: Chief falls on sword

Re: Not all need to be recalled.

Among them should be restricted access to markets.

You are quite correct here. Idiot civil servants, politicians and regulators are in love with the concept of "fines up to 10% of turnover", they rarely think about blocking sales. I work for a large company that has repeatedly had multi-million pound fines from the industry regulator, and these seem to me to be treated as an occupational hazard of our industry. But I can assure you that the one thing that made our directors sit up and take notice was when a competitor was barred from selling for a mere ten days or so.

I suspect this is also why the financial services sector are always up to something crooked or immoral - because financial penalties rarely affect bonuses, and the corporate reporting just treats them as a "non operating expense". If the big banks had been banned from all product sales in response to their PPI mis-selling, that'd hit people's bonuses up and down the food chain, it'd hit end of year operating profits, and they'd start to think that the game of mis-selling wasn't worth the candle (whereas it usually is). Such sales bans don't even need to be protracted - as noted above, the company who were spanked were blocked from selling for less than two weeks.

Simple, easy to implement, easy to police, and with the effects felt by the guilty. The PR impact of having to tell current and prospective customers enquiring about products that you've been suspended from the market is also a useful punishment.

Re: Not all need to be recalled.

Having been sold a diseasel by VW and being quite happy with the driving performance, I'll not be at all happy if VW try to modify my vehicle to enable THEM to comply with the law. If it turns out the modification will steal power or is likely to result in expensive repairs not far down the line, the answer will be NO WAY. The engine uses EGR to reduce the combustion temperature to reduce production of NOx. This unfortunately produces lots of soot, which is collected and burned in the expensive DPF. Unless VW retrofit a urea based system, reducing NOx will be achieved by a software update to increase EGR. That will reduce output power and increase soot, clogging the EGR system and the DPF sooner than if the software wasn't updated. A simple software update versus the laborious installation of tanks of concentrated piss... Hmm, I wonder which VW will choose as the "fix" for their cheapskate design-and-cheat snafu?

Re: Not all need to be recalled.

"Most of the world cares much less about emissions or any air pollution until they can no longer breath and even then they won't adopt equivalent standards."

Bollocks.

Most of the rest of the world uses smaller cars that use less dino-soup, so creates less CO2, which means they contribute less to the really important thing called global warming.

Any other toxicity problem is a localised one, and won't turn the planet into a disaster zone for our children's children.

Also, the "others" often have functioning public transport, and not three cars per household on average. And they even walk and cycle sometimes.

Re: Not all need to be recalled.

If you have an affected diesel VW - you could make the case that it is not fit for purpose or that it was sold under false pretences and just get your money back. What will VW do with a 3 year old car no-one wants. What about all the inner-city located cars that have low/no-TAX concessions due to their stated low-emissions? Where are you going to park now? After the SW *upgrade* has killed performance who will want a gutless VW diesel?

Expect lots of VW diesels on eBay for very little money real soon.

Perhaps some enterprising after-market *downgrades* to restore the performance lost by the forthcoming emissions *upgrade*.

Re: Not all need to be recalled.

Drivers who have been paying for lower priced VED bands, and less company car tax based on the false emissions figures will be required to back-pay their arrears at the correct rate then try and claim it back from Volkswagen.

OK, maybe not, but I wouldn't be surprised.

Re: Not all need to be recalled.

I think they all should be recalled for installation of smarter software, that not only recognizes when a test is performed, but also when someone is trying to find out about the software itself.

To those who are babbling about restricting access to markets: You are mistakenly thinking we live under that fabled political system called "democracy". So you believe in the puppet theater front of a new, modern fascism, where corporations call the shots and the input of elected officials is a carefully kept up illusion. (TTIP anyone?)

You might think Hitler did a disservice to fascism, with the term getting confused with all sort of other things. But he worked out quite well for the corporations and bankers who funded him. They never expected or intended for him to win his strange crusade. As a whole, it worked out even better than all the other wars, where banksters have been digging up crazy people to start wars and then financing both sides for endless fun and profit...

In modern fascism, wars are all waged at safe distance and to 'bring democracy' as the most easily corruptible form of government. No corporation or bank will ever really be harmed by a government. Individual employees who write bad software, maybe... But the ~140 families (see Swiss statistical study) owning 90+% of the worlds largest banks and corporations will never be touched.

If you think Lehman Brothers was an example to disprove this - no, that was just several banksters taking out another one, which they had grown particularly tired of.

So, nothing will happen to VW, aside from the possibility of some people looking at other brands to buy. Either way, if I was a car buyer, I'd rather buy a car that spits out too much nox, than a car with ignition key issues that could lead to accident and immediate, personal death.

Winterkorn was pretty clever to get out right away... he couldn't have held on for very long anyway. And he would have just gotten tarred and feathered over and over.

.

- The intelligence of a species is inversely proportional to its distance from the center of the galaxy it lives in. This perfectly explains why this planet is such a loony bin and why our idiotic culture still revolves around the biggest monkeys trying to keep all the bananas for themselves.

Re: Win Win

I am going to guess that he will be rather closer to the tail of along jobs queue for car maker's jobs that will likely grow from the head end rather than behind him. Mutter in the gutter is that the bottom may well fall out of the car market and not just for VW. It might be a good time to buy a cheap car, but on the other hand perhaps not.

God forbid that will all have to rent a field for our transport horses in future!

Re: Nitrous Oxide? You're having a laugh(ing gas)

And N2O4 at high pressure

That evil thought crossed my tinfoil surfaced brain as well. Furthermore, what other Hacks exist out there in their and other company's ECU's? I swear, those hamsters in my head are nearing warp factor one.

That doesn't look good on your CV if you were CEO when this plan was put in action

That could be why he quit now... protect his golden parachute, claim he took responsibility and did the right thing even though he claims he knew nothing about it. Other companies will look at him and say: "Oh, a CEO with ethics, grab him.". <For some value of ethics as defined by corporations>

The question that will never be asked is: "Why didn't he know? He was in charge."

This will probably cost them $50B or more in the end, $100B isn't far fetched.

I was thinking along similar lines. And those sort of numbers wipe out the equity shareholders interest and possibly the debt holders.

Nice one VW. Major Ivan Hirst saved you from the ashes, and then you flush yourselves down the toilet like this!

Well, you would think this, but this is the banks all over again, if VW is let to go bust all the workers end up on the dole and exports are down the pan, hence the German government will end up underwriting this.

Why would I let them retrofit anything to my car? It doesn't work as advertised, I want a full refund lickety split as per my consumer rights. The fact that this would then write off any depreciation I have incurred since purchase is besides the point...win for the consumer for a change.

He doesn't need a CV at his age, he can just go retire.

I do wonder how many more skeletons there are to be found in the world's car companies.

I always hated all that electronics crap in cars:

- made them fixable only by people with the proper connections to the car mafia

- allowed the car mafia to sell $35 circuit boards for $1,600 as a spare part you can't get around buying.

Re: Has anyone got any real details?

Tons of articles about this on places like jalopnik. In short, the cars are tested on a dynometer. There are two easy way to sense that the car is on a dyno - the wheels are spinning but are never turned to go through a curve, and the drive wheels are spinning but the other wheels are stationary. Because of the second case the traction control would try to kick in, cars are equipped with the ability to turn off traction control.

Re: Has anyone got any real details?

Modern cars tend try to run the engine at heavy acceleration as much as possible for efficiency. The gas pedal modulates the transmission to use the highest gear possible for the desired power. Extra RPM is extra friction and extra exhaust. This has been the only trick left after already optimizing combustion, accessory loads, tires, transmission, aerodynamics, etc. This is also why modern AT cars have such terrible acceleration lag. The engine is already near maximum torque so you must wait for a gear change.

Re: Has anyone got any real details?

@bonkers

The point is that VW diesels don't use urea to clean up the exhaust. VW claimed that their technology was so advanced, urea injection was unnecessary. But they were cheating the tests. The ECU was injecting fuel in a special test programme, that will severely impact on the cars' performance if it is now inflicted on motorists who bought VW cars based on a test drive experience. Also, it's not a minor discrepancy. In the US, VW diesels were discovered to be emitting seven times more pollution on the road, than they did in the tests. That's illegal, by a factor of at least five.

If other manufacturers are cheating but only by not injecting Urea as much as they do when they detect a test situation, it'll be less serious for them. They'll have to turn on "test mode" for ordinary motoring and supply free urea to motorists. Possibly, they'll have to retro-fit a larger tank, if the supplied one holds less than a ~500 mile supply. Luckily, urea is cheap (and about as non-toxic as a chemical can be). OTOH if test mode cripples on-road performance for other manufacturers' cars, this will become the biggest scandal since the bankers almost crashed the entire global economy.