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German court sends VW execs to prison over Dieselgate scandal

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Re: German court sends VW execs to prison over Dieselgate scandal

#161

Post by JW_00000 »

lucianbr wrote: post #55
izacus wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is, whether VW as a German company is now going to end up being beaten by US competitors which could do even more nasty stuff unpunished.

It has been some years since VW had to give up cheating on emission tests. Were they beaten by US competitors during this time? I have not read any news about it.

Indeed, Dieselgate is 10 years ago. If they would've suffered badly from it, we would've seen that by now. Sure, they've had to pay fines and compensations, but that seems to have been dealt with. In fact, you could argue the opposite: Dieselgate forced VW to drop diesel and switch focus to EVs [1, 2], earlier than they would've done otherwise, giving them an advantage over other European and American competitors (except Tesla). Of course, there are plenty of other issues they've faced since them (inflation, Chinese competition, tariffs, etc).

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/georgkell/2022/12/05/from-emiss...

[2] https://www.ft.com/content/a2c7ca01-461c-4dc2-8006-ec1d6b61a...

Re: German court sends VW execs to prison over Dieselgate scandal

#162

Post by ljf »

speff wrote: post #118
_DeadFred_ wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stealing from employees is just normal business in the US. $1.5 billion in stolen wages were recovered for US workers between 2021 and 2023. Imagine how much wasn't recovered. It is often the least able to take action/most in need of every dollar of their income that are stolen from. You can tell a lot about a society by how it treats those with the least power versus those with power. https://www.epi.org/publication…

That seems like a really small number? To compare - total US retail shrink in those years combined was a little over $300B[0] - averaging about 1.5% of sales. $1.5B seems like a rounding error when talking in those terms. [0]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-retailers-cite-rising-theft-...

I think their point was that this was all that was recovered, from the approx $20b stolen each year through wage theft. I believe wage theft is one of the largest value crime by $ amount in the US - but is very rarely prosecuted.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_theft

Actually it turns out fraud and white collar crime takes more out of the American economy.

Re: German court sends VW execs to prison over Dieselgate scandal

#163

Post by bhelkey »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #35
hollerith wrote: post #12

The OP does not mention the name of one VW exec (Oliver Schmidt, the head of VW's environmental and engineering office in Michigan, a German citizen) convicted in US Federal Court in 2017 for his part in the scandal. He was released after serving about 3.5 years in prison. A second exec sentenced in the US (also in 2017) was James Liang, also a German citizen, who prosecutors say "was a pivotal figure in designing th…

Deutsche Welle has a bit more detail and also discusses the CEO: https://www.dw.com/en/4-ex-vw-managers-guilty-of-fraud-over-... Apparently he has some health issues which caused the case against him to be suspended. That might resume later but unclear right now. He's 78 at this point.

The VX emission cheating scandal came to light a decade ago in 2015. If a 78 year old is too old to prosecute, Germany should have prosecuted him a decade ago when he was 68.

Instead, Germany refused to extradite him to the US to stand trial in 2017 [1].

[1] https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/former-ceo-volkswage...

Re: German court sends VW execs to prison over Dieselgate scandal

#165

Post by linksnapzz »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #104
FridayoLeary wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have kind of abandoned diesel engines, which the whole scandal was based around. It became clear that it would be impossible to create diesel engines which would comply with enviromental standards, which is a shame since they are more efficient and it is consumers who are losing out. They are still one of the main automotive conglomerations today. If anything American car companies are losing the market in Europ…

Consumers still have to breathe though. I'd be totally fine if diesel engines were completely phased out. In the US we somehow can't even get rid of those idiots that retune their engines for "rolling coal".

Everything you purchase over the course of a day was transported by a diesel truck at some point.

Re: German court sends VW execs to prison over Dieselgate scandal

#166

Post by ljf »

throwpoaster wrote: post #121
_DeadFred_ wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stealing from employees is just normal business in the US. $1.5 billion in stolen wages were recovered for US workers between 2021 and 2023. Imagine how much wasn't recovered. It is often the least able to take action/most in need of every dollar of their income that are stolen from. You can tell a lot about a society by how it treats those with the least power versus those with power. https://www.epi.org/publication…

Let's be conservative by taking GDP for only the middle year. In 2022 American GDP was 26 trillion (rounded down). Let's also gross up the stolen wages from your comment to 2.6 billion. That's 0.01% -- one percent of one percent. That's a background noise level, or simple error rate level, or rounding error level. And because of our conservative assumptions, over those three years GDP is actually maybe 3x higher and…

Wage theft takes more money out of people's pockets than robbery, auto theft, burglary and larceny combined.

Should we not care about them as they are such a small part of gdp?

Wage theft is about $20b a year.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_theft

Re: German court sends VW execs to prison over Dieselgate scandal

#167

Post by testing22321 »

wil421 wrote: post #57
izacus wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is, whether VW as a German company is now going to end up being beaten by US competitors which could do even more nasty stuff unpunished.

Diesel engines in the US have stricter regulations. I doubt folks in the EU will start buying PowerStrokes, Cummins, or Duramaxes anytime soon.

They are not stricter, just different.

US emissions standards don’t allow some things that euro6+ does, and visa versa.

There is an effort to make them overlap to make it easier to meet both standards.

Re: German court sends VW execs to prison over Dieselgate scandal

#168

Post by SoftTalker »

DocTomoe wrote: post #87
FridayoLeary wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have kind of abandoned diesel engines, which the whole scandal was based around. It became clear that it would be impossible to create diesel engines which would comply with enviromental standards, which is a shame since they are more efficient and it is consumers who are losing out. They are still one of the main automotive conglomerations today. If anything American car companies are losing the market in Europ…

In all fairness, in the general European perception, with the Cougar, the Puma, and the Focus, Ford is not really seen as an "American" brand. Especially the Focus has virtually nothing to do with what Europeans would consider 'an American car'. It is the quintessential low-to-mid-tier Eurocar: small, cheap, does what it is supposed to do. Compare that to e.g. Chevrolet, which tried - and failed - to get a foothold i…

Ford sold the Focus in the USA also, I had one and loved it. It was one of their few "world" cars.

Re: German court sends VW execs to prison over Dieselgate scandal

#169

Post by linksnapzz »

AshleyGrant wrote: post #122
amanaplanacanal wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consumers still have to breathe though. I'd be totally fine if diesel engines were completely phased out. In the US we somehow can't even get rid of those idiots that retune their engines for "rolling coal".

Because, for the most part, we aren't doing damned thing about it. "Rolling coal" is inherently a very public act of law breaking, but I doubt a single person has ever been pulled over by any American cop for it. The EPA and certain states were trying through other enforcement mechanisms to fight it, but with Trump in office, it's basically encouraged to "delete" your Diesel emissions equipment if you aren't in comme…

…said deletion, which returns your truck to the state of the regulatory art circa 2009, also results in a doubling of fuel economy and about an 80% jump in horsepower.

Re: German court sends VW execs to prison over Dieselgate scandal

#170

Post by echelon »

ferguess_k wrote: post #83
hermitcrab wrote: post #5

Good for Germany, but it is all too rare to see bad corporate behaviour punished like this. Steal £10k from a company, and you will probably go to prison for a long time. Start a company and steal billions from your customers and/or the tax payer, and you will probably get away with it. I believe Iceland was the only country to jail bankers after the 2008 banking disaster. We are still waiting for the British governm…

窃(Steal)钩(hook)者(people)诛(gets a death sentence) 窃(Steal)国(country)者(people)侯(gets to be the king)

This is a remarkably good idiom that rings true.

Similar to Paul Getty's quote, "If you owe the bank $100, that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem."

But in this case, it cuts much deeper and darker.

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