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VW engineer pleads guilty to diesel emissions scandal

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Re: VW engineer pleads guilty to diesel emissions scandal

#91

Post by dv_dt »

agumonkey wrote: post #68
ramenmeal wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"James Robert Liang, leader of diesel competence for VW" He's not an individual engineer, he was a team lead from the sound of it. Also, your experience "at a big company" has no relevance here.

His responsibility is probably above zero, but I'm having a hard time decisions of this kind aren't reviewed by many peers across company layers. Unless he lied about the purpose of his work and nobody could decipher his claims... still odd (reminds me of the Kerviel bank fraud)

If he lied about his work, and none else caught it, it brings up other questions about the integrity of VW vehicles. e.g. How valid are their safety testing results (could someone in the org have submitted vehicles for crash tests that weren't representative of the production config?)

Re: VW engineer pleads guilty to diesel emissions scandal

#92

Post by BurningFrog »

bsder wrote: post #78
aresant wrote: post #46

This guy isn't the "fall guy" or just a poor engineer hung out to try instead of an exec, he deserves to go to prison based on the material facts of his plea: 1) He was the central figure in engineering the device. 2) He understood exactly what he was doing and made repeated efforts to perpetuate the lie to the government and EPA. 3) He led efforts to damage control and roll out an update to consumers under the guise…

> This guy isn't the "fall guy" or just a poor engineer hung out to try instead of an exec, he deserves to go to prison based on the material facts of his plea: Um, yeah, that case is so good that they needed a plea bargain ... um ... sure. I really don't understand why this guy is signing a plea deal. This is a classic example of a case complicated enough that the jurors would almost certainly be unable to come to "…

In the US, 97% of federal cases and 94% of state cases are plea bargained.

Trial by jury is only common in TV dramas today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/23/us/stronger-hand-for-judge...

Re: VW engineer pleads guilty to diesel emissions scandal

#93

Post by jrjr »

Hydraulix989 wrote: post #58
aresant wrote: post #46

This guy isn't the "fall guy" or just a poor engineer hung out to try instead of an exec, he deserves to go to prison based on the material facts of his plea: 1) He was the central figure in engineering the device. 2) He understood exactly what he was doing and made repeated efforts to perpetuate the lie to the government and EPA. 3) He led efforts to damage control and roll out an update to consumers under the guise…

Individual engineers don't make product decisions at big companies like Volkswagen. When I worked as an engineer at a big company, I couldn't even use a different text editor.

"Papa" sees and makes all the decisions in a German Company.

Re: VW engineer pleads guilty to diesel emissions scandal

#94

Post by mbesto »

aresant wrote: post #46

This guy isn't the "fall guy" or just a poor engineer hung out to try instead of an exec, he deserves to go to prison based on the material facts of his plea: 1) He was the central figure in engineering the device. 2) He understood exactly what he was doing and made repeated efforts to perpetuate the lie to the government and EPA. 3) He led efforts to damage control and roll out an update to consumers under the guise…

If all of this is true...then what was the motive? Just to save his own job? Seems like a lot for someone to do just to save a job.

Re: VW engineer pleads guilty to diesel emissions scandal

#95

Post by Gibbon1 »

wallace_f wrote: post #77
WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, he's guilty but get the rest of the crooks too. This brings Enron to mind. Yes the accountants did all the bookkeeping and they are guilty but the fraud was run from the executive suite. What this guy did was a result of what the executives wanted not the initiator. Not just that, it went on and on and on... To me, it's irritating that the 1st person to make the news is the engineer when clearly he's just part o…

The 2008 financial crisis destroyed millions of hard workings people's retirement savings, jobs, and recent college graduates hopes of finding a job. No one went to jail over that. This is clearly a case of someone not having the right lawyers and political connections as engineers are people who actually create value as is often the case they can be successful without those two.

Neoliberal ideology makes the claim that prison is necessary to dissuade working class people from committing crimes. Whereas embarrassment and the tort system is sufficient for dissuading the management classes. Since we live in a neoliberal system it stands that this guy will go to jail and his bosses will perhaps pay fines.

Re: VW engineer pleads guilty to diesel emissions scandal

#96

Post by Gibbon1 »

legitster wrote: post #43

I imagine executives are technically innocent, in that they gave engineers very specific requirements within certain parameters, and asked them to get it done by any means necessary. And then the executives were more than happy to be kept in the dark about how it was done. I can't imagine that the executives would have even been technically competent to understand what had happened. But they also created a dead end s…

Yep, make it clear the employees have to either break the law or be fired.

See recent Wells Fargo scandal

Re: VW engineer pleads guilty to diesel emissions scandal

#97

Post by ricw »

SilasX wrote: post #44
WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #40

Really, the engineer is the fall guy. Yes he's at fault but what kind of QA system does a billion dollar car company have that one person carried on a sham for decades. No way he was alone! Top management needs to be grilled on what really happened. At the very least the VP of the division that manged the emission controls for the company needs to be charged with some felony. I bet that If he would have said somethin…

Note that this is also an American employee, and there is certainly still blame to assign at the head offices in Germany, to both technical employees and upper management. Figure I might as well ask it here: how does it happen in Germany? If you go on reddit, you get inundated every day with tales of how strong their unions and labor protections are, and how seriously they take professional ethics and accreditation.…

I know people who worked on vw emissions in Germany that have been banned by vw / their sub contractor from ever entering the USA again. Probably in their own personal interest too. Curious to see what will happen to them in Germany..

Re: VW engineer pleads guilty to diesel emissions scandal

#98

Post by SwellJoe »

SilasX wrote: post #65
SwellJoe wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CO2 is regulated, and so is NOx. Buses and trucks are also regulated and have to adhere to emissions standards, and get tested regularly; at least, in the US, they are regulated more heavily than autos (or, at least have more paperwork and legal obligations involved in driving them, and have a higher tax burden). People riding a bus are, in aggregate, producing much less waste than if they were all driving automobile…

>CO2 is regulated, and so is NOx. Right, but (per parent comment), you misrepresented the basis for the tradeoff behind the regulation -- you justified it by the need to prevent global warming, but the regulation pertained to NO2, not CO2, and satisfying the former typically makes the car less CO2-efficient. So, you were justifying a GW-worsening regulation by the need to lessen GW. (Your point about differing limits…

Sure, there's the argument that we're squeezing the balloon rather than reducing waste; the waste products can be tweaked to produce more or less of one or the other. My point is that as long as diesel continues to be propped up as a "clean" technology, based on fabricated data, we won't see migration to actually cleaner technology. Of course it's cheaper to make vehicles that are either poisonous or cause climate change (both, actually, no matter how you squeeze the balloon).

Diesel, it turns out, isn't all that "clean". I hate that it's so...I drive a modern turbo diesel vehicle, and have been very disappointed to learn about the tradeoffs and negatives of that technology (though I drive a big Ford diesel, which doesn't make some of the compromises that VW was making in its small engines, and does comply with EPA regulations without trickery, to the best of my knowledge).

Burning fossil fuels contributes to climate change and produce dangerous emissions that are toxic for living things. As long as we continue to allow auto makers and the fossil fuel industry to externalize those costs, alternatives won't be competitive and won't be able to replace those fossil fuel burning vehicles.

Re: VW engineer pleads guilty to diesel emissions scandal

#99

Post by DugFin »

talmand wrote: post #69
4yt23623576 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you ask someone involved in the court system, they will tell you that plea deals are actually vital within the current court system. The judiciary is, in general, so underfunded in many jurisdictions that it would be simply impossible to try every case. Plea deals lessen the burden on the courts. Obviously, this shouldn't be seen as a defense of plea deals, merely an explanation of one of the incentives that curre…

We would also have to do something about piling on stupid charges in an effort to force a plea deal as well.

There should probably be a restriction on offering plea bargains, basically eliminating "plead to a lesser charge". The DA should be allowed to prosecute no more than the charges they want you to plead to. Piling on charges is coercion, threatening a good chance of ruining your entire life vs. a guarantee of only ruining a little of it.

Re: VW engineer pleads guilty to diesel emissions scandal

#100

Post by awqrre »

aresant wrote: post #46

This guy isn't the "fall guy" or just a poor engineer hung out to try instead of an exec, he deserves to go to prison based on the material facts of his plea: 1) He was the central figure in engineering the device. 2) He understood exactly what he was doing and made repeated efforts to perpetuate the lie to the government and EPA. 3) He led efforts to damage control and roll out an update to consumers under the guise…

He might have been pressured... just like the employees in the recent story about Well's Fargo.
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