Previous thread on the VW scandal: The next big automotive scandal? - Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share - Straight Dope Message Board
Starting a new thread to get the VW name in the title and to provide this update: The NYTimes is reporting that VW now states that their activities to manipulate emissions is not a “one time error.”
This seems like a very big deal. It provides more clear evidence that VW’s leadership and culture has been compromised in a fundamental way.
This was never a simple mistake. There had to be a project team that designed in and tested the cheat methodology.
Oh yes, of course. But having it focused on one Project/Engine team is different from baking it into a longer-term strategy.
which is horseshit, since the Chevy Colorado/GMC Canyon have been given certificates of compliance after the EPA’s more extensive on-road testing.
VW was stupid enough to put “Be the #1 automaker in the world” as their mission, even after seeing what that did to GM and Toyota. But they read from the same playbook, and cheapened up their cars to try to get sales volume. The 2011 Jetta was a miserable, decontented griefbox foisted on North America and was markedly inferior to the Jetta/Bora sold elsewhere.
What VW really meant above is "we can’t meet emissions regulations at the price point we’re trying to sell these cars.
[QUOTE=Hans-Dieter Pötsch]
It proves not to have been a one-time error, but rather a chain of errors that were allowed to happen
[/QUOTE]
I find it fascinating that this lying sack of shit can call something that was planned, designed, maunfactured, tested and sold, for years, all deliberately, an error. Oops.
Oh yeah, the use of the word “error” is so disingenuous it is sad. If the chairman can’t call it something more appropriate like “a long-term campaign of deliberate fraud” then it seems pretty clear that the company’s culture is kaput.
It was certainly an error in judgement. But yeah, that Pötsch guy is being a bit of a slimeball in trying to talk about it like it was some minor glitch that never got caught.
With all the lawsuits swirling around the last thing the CEO wants is to say in plain English is that it was all a deliberate plot by deeply nefarious characters for whom compliance with the law is considered wholly optional in the pursuit of profits.
So expect the careful circumlocution to continue UFN. And always in the third person.
Good point.
Absolutely. Unfortunately in this situation, it appears that the damage is deep and is going to come out sooner or later. If so, it would be far better to call it what it is - put crisis management in front of liability minimization.
Yes, of course. But no one ever believed it was a one time “oops.”
Bolding mine.
As VW is a German company, it is almost certain that English is not the CEO’s primary language. It would make a big difference if what you read in English was translated from German, or if it was composed by a German-speaking CEO. Even with the latter, it would be wrong to consider the use of the word “error” as an indication that the company does not consider the problem to be serious.
Sure, as the CEO it is his responsibility to downplay any negative aspects, but to “read between the lines” of what has been released in English from a foreign-speaker is a bit disingenuous in itself.
Personally, I feel that VW has violated the trust of their consumers (and the world as a whole) to an extent that it will take a long time to recover (if ever). It is just that I have had experience with working with non-native English-speakers, particularly in written correspondence, and have learned that often the words used, as well an sentence construction, makes misunderstandings much more common than you would expect, even with speakers that are very fluent in English.
That makes sense as additional context. In this case, I would suspect that any statements on positioning will have been bullet-proofed by an English-speaking PR firm. I would also question whether a German word could be interpreted as either “error” or also as “criminal fraud.” The gap between the two is big - I can see getting a clanky translated word, but not with a gap that big.
Good Lord!
Does anyone think a global enterprise the size of VW can’t speak English?
No, this is NOT a “translation problem”.
My last VW was in 1975 - I had a warm and fuzzy remembrance of the company.
The Rabbit was my first inkling that they might be going for ‘cheap and easy’ instead of ‘cheap and rugged’.
I would have never thought they would actually lie and cheat. And then deny.
So much for the warm and fuzzy memories.
My son-in-law is German - and he would never make the kind of mistake people are talking about.
And when my daughter was on her fellowship in Germany she traveled around Europe to meetings with a group of educators and checked the English of their statements. None of the people in this group were English speakers but English is the lingua franca 
of Europe these days.
I think HAL9000 is running VW. “We’ve made some very poor decisions recently…”
And apparently it was cheaper to design a cheating strategy than to fix the problem correctly. I would think those two engineering efforts would have costed the same.
they were trying to fight off needing an AdBlue SCR system (which would have added several hundred dollars to the cost of the car) but it couldn’t cope.
Mazda was trying to do the same thing with the Skyactiv-D and eventually gave up.
Update: in an article behind their paywall, the NYTimes discusses the executive at the center of the fraud, their head of Engines and R&D, Wolfgang Hatz. In addition to discussing his repeated statements in public about the impossibility of meeting U.S. regulations, it also spells out his direct connections with the heads of VW:
[QUOTE=NYTimes]
The central role of Mr. Hatz in the scandal raises questions about what Volkswagen’s former chief executive, Mr. Winterkorn, and its current chief, Matthias Müller, themselves knew or should have known. But both are detail-oriented engineers who worked closely with Mr. Hatz for years, first at Audi and then at its parent company, Volkswagen. Mr. Winterkorn was deeply involved in engine development, leading a steering committee aimed at charting how the company would meet future limits on carbon dioxide emissions. Mr. Hatz was a member of the committee.
[/QUOTE]
This is the first I have seen the (what we all knew was obvious) connection between central players and leadership clarified. Helpful to understand and yet one more indication that the roots-deep, leadership-driven nature of this fraud puts the company at much bigger risk than monetary settlements.
So far, VW’s behavior suggests that we won’t be seeing this. They’ve been in “bunker mode” from the day the scandal broke, trying to eek by as cheaply as possible. I mean, their “fix” for the European cars consists of adding a “flow straightener” – a flimsy plastic mesh that looks like something you’d put in the kitchen sink to stop silverware from falling into the garbage disposal. I expect the EPA is going to be much less tolerant of bullshit like that.
An error was made.
I don’t believe this BS about translation problems. When I travelled in Germany, I found most people had excellent English.
Interesting to read in this thread about the connection between the design team and the upper administration. It never seemed plausible to me that this a rogue team unknown to the higher ups.