I guess people got tired of driving boring cars with high resale value and luxury cars with missing front-ends. ;-)
Yup. I drive a Japanese four-door sedan. It's twelve years old. 156k miles. Runs great. Paid for. But, yeah, I'm bored.
Volkswagen overtakes Toyota as the world's biggest carmaker
31–40 of 216 posts
Re: Volkswagen overtakes Toyota as the world's biggest carmaker
#32One thing learned from: Volkswagen,airbnb,google,amazon,uber,facebook is to CHEAT. Illegal hotels, copyright infringement, skipping sales tax, fake cabs,profiting on personal data.. and now, illegal emission testing.
You don't become King without stepping on everyone, and everything on your way to the top.
Re: Volkswagen overtakes Toyota as the world's biggest carmaker
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the logical conclusion when you allow corporations to be 'people' without the consequences of being a person. How do you send a company to jail? Its kinda of like that scene in fightclub where Edward Nortons character talks about the cost of doing a recall. The emissions scandal should have ended VW. Solution: Guillotine for corporate crime.
Many people look at emissions testing as an annoyance and I doubt that outside of environmental circles that very many people cared. And it was diesel car emissions -- a niche of the US market that's almost invisible anyway.
> I doubt that outside of environmental circles that very many people cared.
Do you have any basis for that? I think most people care about clean air and support laws and regulations to protect it. The laws did pass; there are regulatory agencies that are funded.
Re: Volkswagen overtakes Toyota as the world's biggest carmaker
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well in the US, Diesel isn't very popular so the impact won't be as big, but people in Europe at least are going to rethink about getting Diesel, and the governments there might reconsider the big tax break they give to diesel engine which are supposed to be cleaner than gasoline (making diesel cheaper at the pump than regular gasoline for consumers in Europe). Now we discovered that it's not only VW, but many car ma…
I thought it was only the tyrannically strict California emissions tests that they cheated on? The cars met standard emissions limits, unless I'm mistaken. Was it even an issue in Europe? I thought their standards were even more relaxed.
You are mistaken on US regulation. They did not meet NOX emission limits in the US. Europe has stricter fuel regulation, less strict emission regulation so it was probably cool there. Every TDI model over there is usually tuned for better performance.
Oh well, my chariot of lies gets bought back in 2 days. Best investment ever in a car! Since I got my parents and 4 other friends to buy TDI's too when they saw the mileage I was getting, they are all ecstatic that the cars are getting bought back at well over market. Imma buy a Chevy Cruze Diesel once the standard hatchback gets released. Until then I'll find a pre-ban TDI or maybe some other beater to get me through the year.
Added bonus: They tried to cheat me out of repairing the cheater emission system that failed just outside of the federal emissions warranty at 60k miles. I told them if they could program it to cheat, they could program it to overheat the DPF and cause it to crack and fail. Got a free replacement from that :)
Added bonus #2: Since I also suggested my parents get one before the scandal broke, they tried to cheat them out of a AdBlue urea heater (piss tank heater) claiming it would not be repairable under federal emissions because it wasn't directly a part of the emissions. The company finally bowed to the massive number of complaints on tdiclub and related forums and covered that as well.
Re: Volkswagen overtakes Toyota as the world's biggest carmaker
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
The number in question is vehicles sold, so the only relevant brands here are Volkswagen and Audi, really. Toyota also has Lexus and Scion.
The cheaper European brands like Skoda and SEAT also likely have significant volume. Skoda, for example, sold over a million vehicles—a non-trivial 10% of VW group's total. Audi sold something like 1.8M, probably with better margins than Skoda, so it's certainly a more important brand, but SEAT and Skoda aren't trivial either. Just in terms of car sales, SEAT + Skoda ≈ Audi.
Seat and skoda are only popular in handful of small European countries, vw is popular around the globe.
Re: Volkswagen overtakes Toyota as the world's biggest carmaker
#36One thing learned from: Volkswagen,airbnb,google,amazon,uber,facebook is to CHEAT. Illegal hotels, copyright infringement, skipping sales tax, fake cabs,profiting on personal data.. and now, illegal emission testing.
This is the logical conclusion when you allow corporations to be 'people' without the consequences of being a person. How do you send a company to jail? Its kinda of like that scene in fightclub where Edward Nortons character talks about the cost of doing a recall. The emissions scandal should have ended VW. Solution: Guillotine for corporate crime.
The laws arent the issue, nor even the punishments. The issue is a lack of enforcement. We have plenty of cops handing out speeding tickets but the number dedicated to "white collar" or "technology crime" in each state might only be a handfull. And dont try suggesting more IRS, EPA or FBI agents. In this political climate those federal agencies are seen more as criminals themselves.
Re: Volkswagen overtakes Toyota as the world's biggest carmaker
#37One thing learned from: Volkswagen,airbnb,google,amazon,uber,facebook is to CHEAT. Illegal hotels, copyright infringement, skipping sales tax, fake cabs,profiting on personal data.. and now, illegal emission testing.
This is the logical conclusion when you allow corporations to be 'people' without the consequences of being a person. How do you send a company to jail? Its kinda of like that scene in fightclub where Edward Nortons character talks about the cost of doing a recall. The emissions scandal should have ended VW. Solution: Guillotine for corporate crime.
Or, vote with you awl. How many Volkwagens would be sold if most mornings you came out and the tires were flat? You wouldn't buy one again I suspect.
Re: Volkswagen overtakes Toyota as the world's biggest carmaker
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many people look at emissions testing as an annoyance and I doubt that outside of environmental circles that very many people cared. And it was diesel car emissions -- a niche of the US market that's almost invisible anyway.
It isn't their job to care. The job of a citizen is to elect officials to act in his or her (the citizen's) best interest. Another way of looking at it: regulations are a noisy approximation of how much people "care".
So citizens that don't care are supposed to elect people that do. As if somehow, by adding an additional layer of separation and lack of liability, you're somehow going to get a better result. It's no surprise how often that fails.
Re: Volkswagen overtakes Toyota as the world's biggest carmaker
#39One thing learned from: Volkswagen,airbnb,google,amazon,uber,facebook is to CHEAT. Illegal hotels, copyright infringement, skipping sales tax, fake cabs,profiting on personal data.. and now, illegal emission testing.
This is the logical conclusion when you allow corporations to be 'people' without the consequences of being a person. How do you send a company to jail? Its kinda of like that scene in fightclub where Edward Nortons character talks about the cost of doing a recall. The emissions scandal should have ended VW. Solution: Guillotine for corporate crime.
I'm not sure how to take "The emissions scandal should have ended VW" but assuming you mean financially, I cant agree. As a listed company you would be taking away many peoples jobs and savings who are innocent parties in this.
The bigger issue is it seems there has been one executive scapegoat and no real punishment for the multitude of people involved.
While a company fine is good, if we were to gaol and heavily fine at a personal level anyone involved to the point of wiping out their net worth, and heavily fine anyone (if we cant show they were involved) who should have been in a position to know/stop this I suspect we would see a better result in these matters in future. IMO the bigger issue is every time we have one of these scandals the perpetrators seem to walk away without any personal punishment or direct consequence of their actions.
Re: Volkswagen overtakes Toyota as the world's biggest carmaker
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the logical conclusion when you allow corporations to be 'people' without the consequences of being a person. How do you send a company to jail? Its kinda of like that scene in fightclub where Edward Nortons character talks about the cost of doing a recall. The emissions scandal should have ended VW. Solution: Guillotine for corporate crime.
I'm not sure how to take "The emissions scandal should have ended VW" but assuming you mean financially, I cant agree. As a listed company you would be taking away many peoples jobs and savings who are innocent parties in this. The bigger issue is it seems there has been one executive scapegoat and no real punishment for the multitude of people involved. While a company fine is good, if we were to gaol and heavily fi…
If we "end" VW, we're not going to just fire everyone, close all the factories, and throw all their assets in a river somewhere.
Instead VW will be broken up into smaller more manageable companies, with tighter governmental oversight, and if it is done properly we'll have a stronger economy for it---one without the existence of a malignant massive company.