61–70 of 100 posts
In my opinion, this is going to get far worse for VW. People bought cars expecting the stated fuel economy - if they submit their cars to the recall, there's likely to be a class-action suit aiming to recoup enough cost to pay for the difference in fuel costs over the life of the car. Cars that don't go through the recall process will continue to pollute at a greater rate and will earn the ire of the EPA (here in the…
It's going to get worse, but not for the reason you state. Changing car performance (acceleration profile, etc.) for the worse is a necessary outcome of fixing this issue. That's why people will sue.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems like the majority of people saying these are scapegoats didn't read the article that closely. It clearly says these two engineers were top aides to the former CEO. Regulator's aren't stupid enough to be fooled by a couple of junior engineers being offered up as a sacrifice. They'll definitely go after the highest-level people they can get.
A top aide to the CEO sounds like exactly the kind of person who would be the fall guy in a scandal like this. Important enough for the regulators to be happy, but not someone who has actual power in the company.
Two men are named in the article. One is on the Audi board of management. The other is on the Porsche board of management.
I understand where the cynicism comes from, I really do, but it's exhausting to wade through all the uninformed naysaying in this discussion. The above information took me less than a minute to find.
glad they found the culprits. I was absolutely certain it would be renegade engineers and the higher level up (politically secured allies) have nothing to do with it. Torches and pitchforks everyone. The amount of restraint I have to exercise as an ex-consultant who made his living working for the likes of Audi, VW & Siemens nobody here can possibly comprehend.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's going to get worse, but not for the reason you state. Changing car performance (acceleration profile, etc.) for the worse is a necessary outcome of fixing this issue. That's why people will sue.
You're right - I was assuming the pollution controls would only result in a lower fuel economy. On the other hand, degrading the car's performance to improve emissions is the opposite end of the spectrum. Since fuel economy versus performance provides an entire spectrum of tuning options, it will be interesting to see exactly which trade-offs they make in the ECM's code.
It seems much more likely that there will be parts replacement involved, and we may soon discover that the entire engine must be swapped out. This is unlikely to be feasible for cost, but bricking cars to intolerable driving conditions is also not enough. It's going to be really interesting to see how this develops. Done properly, this would probably be the end of VW. So I'm sure we'll see some half-assed solution that doesn't work for the consumer, but lets the company survive for a few more years until they finally collapse from consumers taking their future business elsewhere.
> in August 2007,[..] It rebranded the company’s diesel engine TDI—for turbocharged direct injection. Huh? VW's diesel engines had been TDIs for well over a decade at that time, for example my 1996 Golf was a TDI. The TDIs are awesome engines. I previously had a gasoline engine with the same horsepower rating, but the TDI was better in every way: unkillably high torque at low RPMs (I could go from a standing start to…
The reason people perceive diesels to be better is that they have much flatter torque vs RPM curves, so any schmuck can make them accelerate without shifting to the correct gear. If diesel engines gave better performance at the same amount of horsepowers, and used less fuel, why don't we see diesel engines used in horsepower-limited racing car classes? Why has Ferrari and Lamborghini not ever offered a single diesel…
It will be interesting to see if the investigators manage to obtain an email chain which will show where the pressure to do this came from - from day 1 I've felt it was unlikely that this was an isolated incident, or one which management weren't tacitly aware of, and I would be very surprised if it doesn't turn out that we find out where it all came from - my bet is that it was pressure from above that led to it, but…
"regulators are considering steps to tighten emissions standards for diesel engines"? - interesting that the old emissions standards were (one presumes) absolutely fine, until somebody turns out to have been cheating.
I think you've got to look at this as a process of gradual refinement in which both government and industry participate. The government wants to achieve its overall objectives of reducing emissions over a long period of time (decades); it knows that if it just set the emissions targets at the target on day zero the entire industry would fail to meet them and the industry would collapse. So the regulations have to be…
glad they found the culprits. I was absolutely certain it would be renegade engineers and the higher level up (politically secured allies) have nothing to do with it. Torches and pitchforks everyone. The amount of restraint I have to exercise as an ex-consultant who made his living working for the likes of Audi, VW & Siemens nobody here can possibly comprehend.
Even if their superiors did honestly not know that they were loading fraud-ware in the vehicles, this is most likely the result of systemic social dynamics and perverse incentives. Mutually exclusive goals get set with no regard to the laws of physics or reason. Everyone who dares mention this self selects outside of the management hierarchy, so the whole chain of command becomes an echo chamber of overconfidence.
Then, at the end of the day, something has to give. It was the emission control testing in this case. It could have been much worse.