Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Volkswagen overtakes Toyota as the world's biggest carmaker

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 216 posts

Re: Volkswagen overtakes Toyota as the world's biggest carmaker

#151

Post by MagnumOpus »

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #75
sitkack wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All that acceleration is enabled by it violating the environmental laws of every western country.

VW is not alone, Fiat Chrysler did the same thing. http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/12/news/companies/epa-emissions... the tricky question: did anybody figure out how to do a clean enough diesel engine without cheating? i think its funny that European countries were pushing Diesel engines just because they emit less CO2, disregarding the NOx problem. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/dec/05/vw-diesel-c...

> the tricky question: did anybody figure out how to do a clean enough diesel engine without cheating

Yes. It is just more expensive in terms of maintenance because the urea-based cleaning liquid ("AdBlue") needs to be refilled by the dealer a lot more often if the exhaust scrubbing doesn't cheat and disable it half the time.

If you are interested in the details of the topic, I can recommend this CCC conference talk from last month:

https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-7904-software_defined_emissions

Re: Volkswagen overtakes Toyota as the world's biggest carmaker

#152

Post by tmalsburg2 »

pixelbill wrote: post #78
NamTaf wrote: post #44

For 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 consid…

No one is debating the sporty performance of your VW. You dismiss all criticisms of them immediately and go on to talk about your lovely driving experience, making it seem like you either work for VW or have a vested interest in them, so your opinion instantly counts as worthless in my book. If a person had done what VW did they would be in jail, but because we as a society have determined that rich people are much m…

I find it hilarious how some people here are directing vitriol at VW because of emissions while it is perfectly acceptable, particularly in the US, to drive ridiculously oversized trucks. I'm sure that a Polo with manipulated software still has still a much better environmental record than your average truck. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Re: Volkswagen overtakes Toyota as the world's biggest carmaker

#153

Post by alkonaut »

gonzo41 wrote: post #14
ransom1538 wrote: post #5

One 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 emissions scandal should have ended VW.

The question is who such a punishment would have been directed towards. A few decisonmakers make something illegal, and the punishment is given to a hundred thousand employees, not to mention the owners of the cars without emissions cheating (most)?

This is the problem with megacorporations. Punishing them proportionally to the damage they make is unfair, because you are mostly punishing employees and consumers who knew nothing about the wrongdoing. Consequences need to be strong enough to be a deterrent but weak enough to not kill a large employer. That's nearly impossible.

Perhaps the most reasonable thing to do, as has been argued with banks, is to simply not allow megacorps to form, that is, no organization should be to big to fail because we want to allow the bad ones to fail.

Re: Volkswagen overtakes Toyota as the world's biggest carmaker

#154

Post by ZeroGravitas »

alkonaut wrote: post #153
gonzo41 wrote: post #14

Earlier 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.

> The emissions scandal should have ended VW. The question is who such a punishment would have been directed towards. A few decisonmakers make something illegal, and the punishment is given to a hundred thousand employees, not to mention the owners of the cars without emissions cheating (most)? This is the problem with megacorporations. Punishing them proportionally to the damage they make is unfair, because you are…

Which is one of those pro-free-market, yet anti-corporate ideas that don't seem as popular as they should be as the political incentives are misaligned.

Re: Volkswagen overtakes Toyota as the world's biggest carmaker

#155

Post by ZeroGravitas »

ams6110 wrote: post #16
gonzo41 wrote: post #14

Earlier 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.

You'd think the lack of popularity of diesel would have the opposite effect. If, like the EU, there had been a lot of institutional support for diesel then you can imagine them having issues dealing with evidence that it's causing a different kind of pollution. But in America you'd hope they'd not have enough political capital and the truth would be accepted.

Re: Volkswagen overtakes Toyota as the world's biggest carmaker

#156

Post by lyschoening »

frik wrote: post #117
ransom1538 wrote: post #5

One 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.

If you own a VW/Seat/Skoda/Audi diesel car in US, you can give your car back and get your money. In EU, VW promises to fix the car by adding a 5cent placebo plastic pipe and a software update which lowers the performance and increases the diesel consumption (physics after all). In US VW has to pay billions, in EU VW has to pay nothing to speak of. Of course the German government is involved in this company as shareho…

You ignore that emission standards in Europe were less strict when it came to diesel pollution, so that 5cent placebo plastic pipe makes the cars compliant there. Emissions standards in Europe focused on C02 emissions and not so much on the toxic byproducts of diesel combustion. That's why the scandal is not such a big issue for Volkswagen in Europe.

Re: Volkswagen overtakes Toyota as the world's biggest carmaker

#157

Post by Yaggo »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #134
dgudkov wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a real Toyota - it was designed and built by Subaru.

It was designed by Tetsuya Tada at Toyota. Toyota had a complete concept car they were showing before they asked Subaru to get involved. Subaru ended up contributing the engine, but the rest is largely Toyota. They are built by Subaru though.

Also, Toyota owns significant portion of Subaru.

Re: Volkswagen overtakes Toyota as the world's biggest carmaker

#158

Post by claudius »

hvidgaard wrote: post #140
Sacho wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You dissolve the entity and sell the assests to pay back the costs of damage VW could pay the damages in its particular case without dissolution. What would you do with the extra money after liquidating its assets? It seems like you're simply arguing for even bigger fines.

Not the parent. If the company can pay for fines, fine. No need to dissolve them, but the leadership responsible still needs to face a judge. Just because you're part of a corporation, shouldn't mean you get to walk from crimes.

> but the leadership responsible still needs to face a judge

There’s your problem, assuming that there is a way for leadership in a company not be responsible. Managers being ‘responsible’ is the only argument for them being paid disproportionally more than the average worker. In turn, a manager should always be responsible for the actions of their underlings all the way to the top, regardless of personal involvement in or knowledge of those actions.

The idea that the management of a company could not be responsible for something done by that company (which, e.g. could have resulted in considerable savings for the company and its shareholders) is simply ludicrous.

Re: Volkswagen overtakes Toyota as the world's biggest carmaker

#159

Post by pasta »

fusiongyro wrote: post #116

There's a local dealer who sells VWs and Mazdas. The Mazdas outsell VW 2:1, but they have 4x as many VW technicians. I had two VWs: a Jetta and a Passat. Both required an astonishing amount of maintenance compared to the Toyota Camry I had before. VW has really mastered the art of "this feels well-engineered" without actually being well-engineered. My current car is a Ford Flex and frankly I love it. It's not a perfe…

VWs are very unreliable. Every year they end up below avarage in reliability tests (Honda and Toyota always share the top).

But I think people buy them because they look great.

I owned multiple VWs but never will buy a VW again. And because my Mazda keeps on going I think I will be a Mazda owner for a long time to come.

Re: Volkswagen overtakes Toyota as the world's biggest carmaker

#160

Post by koonsolo »

simonbarker87 wrote: post #150
koonsolo wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is how the world works. If you want to win, you have to be willing to do everything to get there. Not only for companies, but also in sport. Do you think the winners play fair? You should really read the autobiography of Arnold Schwarzenegger, then you get an idea of what it takes to be able to win.

I've not read Arnold's autobiography but out of interest what are you referring to? If you are talking about his use of steroids etc (which I'm assuming is covered in the book?) then that isn't really cheating since in the case of professional bodybuilding since the sport is untested. There are federations that test and in that case using PEDs is cheating but in an untested federation, it's considered fair game. Obvi…

I'm not referring to that, because at that time it was even legal.

For example what he did was looked at what parties the jury members went, and then go there and socialize with them. So they already knew him personally before going on stage. Or mess mentally with competitors, lie to them etc. Or when he was on stage with another bodybuilder for the final poses, acted as if he was about to leave the stage, the other one left, and then Arnold actually stayed and did a few more poses.

Maybe not all really illegal, but his book has lots of cases where he describes how he mentally messes or lies to people to get an advantage over them. That's how you win. Very good book if you have time to read it.

He even went to a ballet teacher to improve his poses. This guy did everything to get to the top, very inspiring.

Post reply on HN