Before this news broke, if someone had said to me that they believed that some major auto manufacturer was programming their engines to defeat pollution laws by cheating on the emissions tests, I would have thought they were a crazy conspiracy theorist. I would have said that too many people would have to have known about it, and somebody would have talked.
Yet here we are. It happened. How? There had to be numerous managers and engineers who knew about this and kept it to themselves, and all of them had to have confidence that none of the others would squeal. How does that happen?
No, they’re not “bankrupt” by any stretch of the imagination. But as you said, they are fundamentally weak. FIAT is hobbling in its traditional markets, Ram and Jeep are propping the entire empire up and that won’t last forever, and they’re pissing away money trying to resurrect a brand here which nobody gives a shit about (Alfa Romeo.) Plus, they have no real advanced propulsion (hybrid/EV) on the roadmap except for a supposed PHEV minivan. Which I’ll believe when I see it. Yes, FCA needs a further tie-up with someone else. GM is not that someone else, regardless of how hard The Great Sergio is macking on Mary Barra.
Yeah, it’s BS. Big engineering organizations like the one that designed these cars don’t let engineers slip in unreviewed changes. There’s too much at stake. You could get a car that wouldn’t run on Tuesdays, or whose brakes would fail when traveling at 57 MPH. I’m sure that all the firmware in these cars was seen by many people before the design was finalized.
Before this news broke, I didn’t realize that cars had an “emission testing” mode. Once that becomes clear, the rest of it immediately becomes more plausible.
As part of that, I would say that they aren’t cheating on their emissions tests: what they are doing is cheating on their non-emissions test mode. Which I think is a significant semantic difference.
The idea that it is just two software engineesrs is, of course, BS. There is, and was, a complete company culture dedicated to diesel engines and the idea that emissions testing is spurious.
And as noted, car software is considered safety-critical in much the same way space-program or aircraft or medical software is. You don’t just make it up as you go along.
not worth discussing. the cars operated differently during the test than they do on the road. that’s all that matters. “significant semantic differences” are meaningless blather.
If these semantic arguments were any use you would think VW AG would have made them, without any help from the peanut gallery, instead of just throwing up their hands and saying all right you got me.
Well, that was quick. Winfried Vahland, the new head of VW’s US operations is quitting after less than 3 weeks. I’d love to know what’s going on behind the scenes.
The NYTimes is reporting that Germany is requiring VW to recall 2.4 million vehicles because VW’s proposed approach to fix them wasn’t sufficient.
Hmm, I am ping the mods and ask them to put Volkswagen in the thread title. This thread may be here for a while.
VW is not going to be bankrupt. This is not GM or Chrysler. It’s a hugely profitable company. VAG’s profits from last year alone were more than enough to buy back every diesel it sold in the US. At worst, the short-term impact on VW is going to be that it has a few less dollars to spend on R&D and maybe issues a small bond or something.
The long term impact is more of a worry. This is obviously going to squelch the company’s relatively well-earned reputation and that will impact global sales for decades.
the EPA has already said they’re not going to mandate that owners park their cars, because the owners aren’t responsible for VW’s non-compliance. they will, however, mandate that the cars have the recall remedy performed once VW makes it available.
I still think that Marchione is hiding some huge losses-like in Brazil (FIAT do Brazil is down 40% from 5 years ago). And its Italian operations have been unprofitable for decades. it cannot close plants, because of Italian labor laws.
It will be the biggest transfer of wealth from China to the US since the Boxer Rebellion, since 70% of VW’s profits are from its’ Chinese joint ventures.
The profits have been paid out. This year’s profits can buy back the US fleet (I’m assuming you’re correct; I’ve not verified this), but we don’t know the global impact. That “small” bond may be huge. We also don’t know if there’s a global drop in sales, now, immediately. This could be a short term impact instead of a long term impact. Cash flow is critical in the auto industry, and huge liabilities versus a low cash flow could definitely spell bankruptcy if no one extends them credit (ahem, queue Niedersachsen government).
Article in the NYTimes discussing how some owners will not want to get their cars updated because they don’t want to see the power and torque compromised, and feel they have been getting great mileage anyway.