Do VW's numbers include their self-registrations, which make up 30% of their "sales"? Explanation: http://dailykanban.com/2014/05/that-car-filled-test-track-ac... (towards the end).
Volkswagen overtakes Toyota as the world's biggest carmaker
41–50 of 216 posts
Re: Volkswagen overtakes Toyota as the world's biggest carmaker
#42One 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.
There are a couple of hidden assumption here:
1. It is possible to punish a person for his crimes in a justifiable manner.
2. People are somehow deterred by punishment when the option of winning via cheating is available to them.
It's very hard to argue that 1 is possible considering the ethical dilemmas that it exposes e.g. would capital punishment be a justifiable punishment for a murderer?
If 2 were true, then there wouldn't be doping scandals in sports, would there?
Re: Volkswagen overtakes Toyota as the world's biggest carmaker
#43Earlier 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…
> As a listed company you would be taking away many peoples jobs and savings who are innocent parties in this.
Perhaps we need to require of publicly-listed companies that they have a "registered acquirer" or the like--a company that all the employees would be moved to if the original company were forced out of existence. (Basically turning every Chapter 7 bankruptcy of a public company into a Chapter 11 bankruptcy by default.)
Then we could allow civil suits to kill companies with impunity, knowing their employees would just end up "passed to" another company willing to retain them for the same salaries performing the same duties.
Re: Volkswagen overtakes Toyota as the world's biggest carmaker
#44For all the criticism about their cheating of metrics and rules, I recently hired a VW Polo Diesel for a month to drive around Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and France and found it to be a comfortable, performant, nimble and all-round decent car. It handled doing 160 down the Autobahn quite comfortably without steering judder or anything I'd expected at higher speeds. It accelerated surprisingly well (not even considering it's a diesel!) all the way up to 100 making entry onto roads and highways a breeze, it had great steering which helped parking in cramped spots and did well for fuel efficiency - I was getting about 750km to a (45L, if I recall) tank in a combination of highway and town driving.
All in all, I think I did something over 5000km in total and it did it everything I could have asked for. I was quite impressed by it. Compare that with the Vauxhall I had in England for a couple of days, which was utter horseshit and struggled to accelerate up a moderate incline at 80 in 4th gear (I had to put it down to 3rd, rev the hell out of it and even then it was losing speed up the hill) and I can only say good things about the VW Polo.
Re: Volkswagen overtakes Toyota as the world's biggest carmaker
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm honestly not sure the public really cared about this - was anyone really surprised that this was happening? Most people I spoke to at the time seemed to be of the opinion that all the other manufacturers would be found out next. My friend bought a Golf the week after the scandal broke; I've bought a Golf GTI and a Polo in the last six months. They're just, well, pretty decent cars.
I, for one, was very surprised this was happening. I don't know the first thing about calculating the emissions from my car...is there a noticeable smell or visible difference between cars that emit less vs more? Since I don't know anything about the topic, my default assumption is the car manufacturers are playing by the rules. Although, once the news broke I did think we'd be hearing about other manufacturers too.
TBH, the old way of measuring emissions for diesel was to look out the back and see if there was a black cloud forming at idle and with slight throttle applied. Maybe California actually measured more, out east they didn't. It wasn't until model year 2007 that new regulation kicked in that made things a lot more strict.
For this emission issue, there was increased NOX coming out the pipe. The NOX by itself isn't a huge issue... it's when it combined with volatile organic compounds (VOC's) from trees'n shit. Then magic happens under the sun and it combines with carbon to become smog (ozone), which blows into cities and gives the kids asthma.
Some further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropospheric_ozone
EDIT: The old test handled particulate emissions... the DPF worked on these cars and no black smoke appeared until they programmed it to fail and crack (like mine!), you can't see NOX and I don't think it has a distinct smell...
Re: Volkswagen overtakes Toyota as the world's biggest carmaker
#46One 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 problem is that at one point, when you reach a certain size, no matter the intentions you will end up affecting other people negatively.
Googles don't be evil is a good example of the problems with good intentions.
And so while I think it's fair to want the responsible people to be punished it's not as simple as it sound.
Re: Volkswagen overtakes Toyota as the world's biggest carmaker
#47Earlier 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.
There are a couple of hidden assumption here: 1. It is possible to punish a person for his crimes in a justifiable manner. 2. People are somehow deterred by punishment when the option of winning via cheating is available to them. It's very hard to argue that 1 is possible considering the ethical dilemmas that it exposes e.g. would capital punishment be a justifiable punishment for a murderer? If 2 were true, then the…
Accountability, credibility, and a sense of duty to the greater good must be part of what defines a society. When those are intact, individuals take responsibility and accept consequences. When they are too far eroded, there is no way to force or coerce society back to integrity except perhaps through a concerted effort over many generations.
Re: Volkswagen overtakes Toyota as the world's biggest carmaker
#48One 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.
Another way to look at this: people have endured enough absurd protectionist media circus shows from US auto makers to no longer believe or care. Cry wolf scenario, in other words.
Re: Volkswagen overtakes Toyota as the world's biggest carmaker
#49One 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.
Life isn't a game.
I beg to differ. Life is most definitely a game. It has rules and winning depends on numerous factors such as information, skill, strength, luck, connections, etc. I would argue that all other games which have been created are based on a subset of the rules of the first game: Life.
Every single rule can be broken, it just depends on if/when you get caught. You're still a cheater but as long as you can pay your way out of any hole you've found yourself in by the time you've gotten caught it's perfectly ok. Traditional morals notwithstanding, e.g. Lance Armstrong or any of the above.
Re: Volkswagen overtakes Toyota as the world's biggest carmaker
#50One 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.
>Solution: Guillotine for corporate crime.
TBH, HN's BFF Elon Musk thinks regulators were too hard on VW: http://www.takepart.com/open-letter-to-california-air-resour...
But yeah by this logic, Winterkorn was worse than Hitler. Went way more wholesale on the gassing.