Crabbers

Well, my opinion is that it's a non-story in the sense that it's not nearly as bad as everyone is making it out to be. Yes it's a huge story for the public, but as far as actual environmental, impact it's nothing really that big. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree though.

rob62

It's about the deception. Not to mention how America goes above and beyond environmentally while the rest of the world laughs. STORY.

LDB

We’ll indeed have to disagree. NOX matters everywhere, and in certain areas like the LA basin, it’s critical. Would one, or even 100, or maybe even 1000 of these VW’s operating in LA cause a big difference? Not likely. But now suppose all diesel engines operating in LA were suddenly a factor of 40 higher on NOX. Not much doubt you’d see a huge difference from that. And if you say a factor of 40 NOX difference matters on diesel engines taken as a whole, how can you turn right around and say that if the diesel engine happens to have a VW label on it, it doesn’t matter?

VW gained a huge competitive advantage from having a diesel that was more responsive than other diesels. But they didn’t get it via the honest path of creating a better diesel. They got it by cheating on NOX. Anybody with any knowledge of diesels and emissions would know that it’s easy as pie to make a very responsive diesel if you ignore NOX. But almost everybody who knows that would be ethical enough not to take that path. VW was the exception, taking the unethical path. Sorry, but I just can’t imagine that very many people who really understand what they did would call it a non-story. And in the very unlikely event that it should prove to be the tip of the iceberg, with most companies doing similar things as you have implied in some of your posts, then the story grows from being big to being truly gigantic. I don’t see how it could ever turn into a non-story.

Crabbers

I can't seem to make a point without people twisting my words.

1.) This isn't the norm, but it happens. People cheat the system. Sometimes they get caught, sometimes they don't. Sometimes they cheat the system by one person's standards, but the EPA doesn't think they did.

2.) This has happened before. It will happen again. The companies are going to get initially threatened with a huge fine and then rectify the issue at less of a cost.

3.) This isn't ethical. It's not the right way to do things. I don't think it's okay to do so. But it happens and life will go on. The sky isn't falling. It's not the end of the world.

But I'd be willing to bet your going to try and tell me I just said that everyone is outright cheating all of the time and the world is going to overheat tomorrow. VW is going to get a slap on the wrist, they're going to fix the issue, and then life will go on exactly the same as before. Nobody seems to care about GM's known ignition issue that they dismissed that killed people anymore (I think we can all agree that's worse than what VW did), I mean look at all of the people that just bought new Corvettes.

LDB

I’m not going to try to tell you most of those things, but I will say that I believe the VW offense is worse than the GM ignition switch offense in all respects but one. I acknowledge that the ignition issue killed some people. So did Toyota’s sudden acceleration, the DC-10 cargo door, and any number of other industrial fiascos. In that respect, the VW offense is less severe. Long term if left alone, I think the VW fiasco could well have killed more through long term effects of air pollution, but that’s certainly debatable, so for now, I’ll concede the point that the VW consequences are less severe than those in many other fiascos. But the thing that sets it apart as a unique offense is the degree of premeditation.

In all of the other fiascos, the initial error was an honest design mistake. People screw up from time to time. Yes, the companies were slow to admit and correct the mistakes, and that slowness cost additional lives. But the initial lives lost and the initial problem was a human mistake. In many of your posts, you keep coming back to some variant of the “everybody’s doing it” notion. But I’d say that applies to the other fiascos, not to VW. Everybody makes mistakes, and once they make mistakes, almost everybody is slow to admit them. But that’s not what happened with VW. They didn’t make a mistake. They planned and executed a deception. In my view, that is seriously unethical intent from the get go, which puts it in a different and worse class from the fiascos where the initial problem was an honest mistake, and the culpable portion was slow reaction to that initially honest mistake.

If judged only by the criteria of harm that can be proven to have come from the mistake, I concede that the VW case is less serious than many other corporate fiascos. But if judged by ethics of the initial decisions leading up to the problem, I can’t think of any corporate fiascos that are as clear cut and wrong as the VW case. Even if you take something really extreme like Chernobyl, it’s not like those guys sat around and said let’s go cause a meltdown. The VW guys sat around and said let’s cheat. The evidence is clear, it’s designed into their cars. With regard to unethical intent, it just doesn’t get any worse than that.

White Out

Fixed it for you.

rob62

o.k.

roadbike56

IMHO, LDB I read all your posts and think you've got a pretty good handle on the situation. But, I just want to add, the actions by VW that really got my attention is, according to the press release they tried to deceive the federal investigators. I've spent most of my life working in the compliance and quality profession and have dealt with federal investigators. If someone did try to deceive them, that's very serious and if it was a corporate action to deceive, then anyone who thinks this is going away is not facing reality. If that's true, this is only the beginning for VW's problems. Will the Fed decide to pursue a consent decree with VW to seize their profits from the sale of these half million cars in the US? A lot will depend on what the investigation finds and the lack of control corporate has over their operations and who knew what and when.
As for European operations, I wouldn't underestimate how the EU will react.

LDB

Thanks, and I agree with your points too. While true that US regulations on many types of pollution are more strict than Europe, they obviously care, as Europe is leading the way on greenhouse gas and global warming. They also have 20 times as many affected cars as we do, about 11 million. Various ones of the “no big deal” crowd have talked about naiveté. For my part, I’d say it’s pretty naïve to think this isn’t going to be a huge, long term, world wide scandal, and unless some real mitigating factors turn up that aren’t yet apparent, VW richly deserves it. Finally, in what I believe is the very unlikely event that it turns out others really are cheating as blatantly as VW, I think that expands the scope of the scandal, it doesn’t let VW off the hook. But call me naïve if you wish, I’m going to be truly astonished if this ends up being shown to be anything even approaching typical auto maker behavior.

White Out

The plot thickens . . . BMW also caught

LDB

At least so far, this appears considerably less severe than the VW case. The exact tests run on the BMW are unclear, and BMW issued a statement saying they did not use any type of defeat device like VW did. That could mean they got an isolated bad BMW or are using more stringent tests than required. Of course it’s also possible that BMW emissions grow with time, and the possibility they lied and also use bypassing strategy like VW still can’t be ruled out. As they say, stay tuned for the next exciting chapter, which will presumably be when AutoBild magazine reveals the exact nature of their findings.