I own a 2011 Jetta TDI. At the time I bought it my commute was about 100 miles a day. The higher mileage in addition to the clean aspect are the primary reasons for my purchase.
Now I find out these German speaking fucks were lying to me the whole time? Yea, fuck them with flaming hot pokers up their sauerkraut eating assess!
A few weeks ago I went in for a recall for a software flash. Apparently this recall was a first attempt to fix the emission issue. My MPG has gone to shit since then. It was common to hit 47-50 on the highway. Now I’m lucky to hit 40-42. And when the next recall hits I expect my mileage to go down even more.
Damn! I had no idea a fix was put out to customers yet (I heard about VW’s try at a fix, but assumed it was only internal testing, and not actually released to the masses).
The best thing I did was dump my 2012 Jetta TDI after 12 months of ownership. Like you I did 100+ miles a day of driving. I loved the mileage and the performance, but some weird issues with the car, and the subsequent repeat dealings with 2 inept dealer service departments, had me quickly wanting to just rid myself of the VW experience.
It’s nice to know I made the right decision. It’s unfortunately for the other owners like you who may have to deal with whatever fix VW comes up with.
Really hoping the Amarok range of trucks get caught up in this. I flipping love my pickup, and will (like every vehicle I buy) run it for years till its wrecked, so the chance to sue for a few thousand now would be very nice.
This epic story in Der Spiegel, published in May (English version), blows the lid off the dynastic battle of the ages between Ferdinand Piëch, Volkswagen Group chairman, and the erstwhile CEO, Martin Winterkorn.
Winterkorn won and Piëch was out. Piëch probably can’t sleep for laughing. Who knows if he was instrumental in the pollution scandal finally growing legs.
I’d say it’s the real-life Game of Thrones, but I’ve never watched it, so I can’t.
That’s the problem with all you lefties. You think ‘all we gotta do is pass a law’ and it will automagically make your stupid ideas work, but the laws you pass have perverse incentives built into them, and then you get all outraged and bent out of shape when people (and companies) respond to those perverse incentives by doing perverse things. You’re idiots.
Cue Construct, canned mayhem and Magellan01 to chime in and demonstrate that reflexive idiot righties are as stupid as I’m portraying them, and prove Poe’s law true.
[eta: I didn’t actually read the thread, yet, just the OP, and they may have already done as I predicted. I’ll laugh my ass of if it turns out that they did. Then I’ll shake my head sadly, and again, wish they’d go the fuck away.]
Oh, BTW, I’m a righty, and that 2nd paragraph is exactly what I think of you idiot lefties. Of course, the third paragraph is also what I think of stupid righties, and I wish they’d STFU and stop making my side look as stupid as they are. But I’m not holding my breath.
Well, that sounds a little Luddite, depending on what you mean by polluting.
Then again, in the age of Elon Musk and Carlos Ghosn, we actually can go to incredibly low automobie pollution. Hm.
Yeah, that is a problem. It’s one thing to protect a patent, another to tell owners and regulators never to look at the works. And of course DMCA doesn’t require anything like a patent process, relying as it does on copyright law–which is part of the problem.
Your heart doesn’t feel like it’s really in this defense, but I’ll rebut anyway. This lefty knows that passing a law doesn’t automagically fix things. In this case, it makes most automakers play by the rules and bring down emissions from diesel vehicles. More importantly, it gives regulators a hammer that they can bring down violators. As I’ve already indicated, regulators tend to wield the hammer sparingly for small and accidental infractions, but this VW is a deliberate deception that can (and should) bring down a massive fine. This isn’t a case of a perverse incentive. This is a case of cheating. Perverse incentive might have been lowering NOx in a way that increases carbon monoxide.
This case is an example of why regulations tend to be very large. It’s fairly easy to regulate that the emissions from a diesel vehicle will be less than a certain value. It’s the “measure it this way, report it this way, here are the things you can’t do that will be considered cheating” portion that makes the regulations so massive (at least in the case of the EPA - I can’t speak to other agencies regulations).
I’m sure that Germany considers VW to be too big to fail. Still, a bailout will likely be too expensive, so I’m really wondering if the end game will be some kind of legislative fix. Germany pretty much controls the EU, so I expect that if they want to, they could push through some kind of law that limits VW’s liability.
I would expect you would have a hard time getting a DMV registration on one of these cars right now, so a quick purchase would get you a car you couldn’t legally drive.
Once they fix the software, and the cars can legitimately be driven, I expect the performance to take a significant hit. If it doesn’t, then this whole thing makes no sense at all unless Volkswagen is run by Captain Planet villains.
