Voltswagen of America • Hacker News Board

Re: Voltswagen of America

#321

Post by Fern_Blossom » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 4:46 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #298

Fern_Blossom wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What they did was absolutely reprehensible, Okay, this is a bit much. I know you came to realize all the car companies were doing it, so relatively speaking, it evens out when it comes to image. But this concept of hating a company over false marketing, it's a "and cows moo" moment. All big companies lie about their performances and benefits. Every. Single. One. Who would have guessed people would lie to make money.…

How about we stop accepting this status quo? People will lie to make money, but we don't have to make it a socially acceptable practice. In fact, to make money, people just do whatever makes money. If they lie to make money, it means lying is making them money. If we could raise the costs of lying, for example by being much more eager to punish deceptive advertising with high fines, people would lie less.

Humans have been lying for personal gain for only a short amount of time. I guess yea, we should all just decide that lying is bad. That's a novel idea.

Re: Voltswagen of America

#322

Post by thrwyoilarticle » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 4:46 PM UTC

kbos87 wrote: post #179

I previously owned a VW, but swore on my life that I'd never buy another one after the emissions cheating scandal. There are plenty of reasons why a VW likely wont be my next choice, but I'm softening my stance a bit. What they did was absolutely reprehensible, but I later learned that the more accurate story is that they bore the brunt of media attention for something that nearly every auto manufacturer was later fo…

I found it to be a bit of a Snowden moment. Of course they were doing it, why all the surprise? Balancing good performance in emissions tests with the power and brunt that consumers enjoy in the real world had already made turbochargers and variable valve timings widespread instead of simply increasing displacement. In fact there were multiple other scandals in the decades before where loopholes in emissions regulations were treated the same way as in accounting or racing. I believe regulators were complicit by using ineffectual metrics like NEDC - no car buyer really expects to reach the quoted performance.

Re: Voltswagen of America

#323

Post by bufordtwain » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 4:47 PM UTC

gaoshan wrote: post #121

outside1234 wrote: post #17

Does this mean they have shifted their focus to cheating on battery capacity?

From what I have seen VW had a sort of genuine reckoning with the whole diesel issue. They have reinvented themselves, shed cruft, cut all fuel vehicle development and completely devoted themselves to an electric future (vehicles, batteries, chargers). They have turned things around wholesale and are now producing amazing, relatively affordable electric vehicles (their new id.4 SUV will debut in the US for just a lit…

Despite all the focus on Tesla, companies that makes a minimal, good and inexpensive electric car/truck will win big as far as I'm concerned. Bonus points for an iconic look.

Re: Voltswagen of America

#324

Post by gnulinux » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 4:48 PM UTC

nicholassmith wrote: post #36

This is what happens in a meeting when someone says "there are no bad ideas". This is the sort of three beer spitballing that normally you come up with as a gag and yet they're committing to it, and whilst it's US only the likelihood is they'll do some aggressive product placement and get some global recognition around it.

> This is what happens in a meeting when someone says "there are no bad ideas".

No, I think this is what happens as the date approaches April 1st.

Re: Voltswagen of America

#325

Post by MrApathy » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 4:49 PM UTC

soperj wrote: post #307

greeneggs wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of posting uninformed speculation, you can just Google it… > In 2017, the U.S.-based VW executive Oliver Schmidt, who oversaw emissions issues, was sentenced to seven years in prison and fined $400,000, the maximum possible under a plea deal the German national made with prosecutors after admitting to charges of conspiring to mislead U.S regulators and violate clean-air laws. The US has charged nine people, a…

and what about the ones at literally every other company that produces diesels?

My own admittedly uninformed understanding is that there was cheating all around, but VW was by far the most flagrant. BMW and Mercedes diesels required DEF (diesel exhaust fluid), whereas VW did not. Marketing and/or executive leadership (again, as per my understanding) pushed the notion that the additive would make diesels appear to be less attractive and who wants to add a second liquid beyond fuel every few hundred miles?

But weren't they all cheating? The diesels with DEF were still above the legal limits, albeit to a lesser degree than the VW's who didn't even bother with DEF because, I guess, if you're going to cheat anyway...

How incorrect is my understanding?

Re: Voltswagen of America

#326

Post by socialist_coder » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 4:49 PM UTC

But the German company is still called Volkswagen?

Re: Voltswagen of America

#327

Post by ChrisArchitect » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 4:49 PM UTC

MattGaiser wrote: post #19

agrafix wrote: post #4

Hmm did they release their April 1 joke too early by mistake?

Mistake? Look at all the coverage they are getting when they would otherwise be lost in a crowd.

Ya, this is like releasing superbowl ads weeks out now so they don't get lost in the flurry of activity a few days out

Re: Voltswagen of America

#328

Post by Dirlewanger » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 4:51 PM UTC

alasdair_ wrote: post #256

aidenn0 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dad used to joke that if you wanted sneakers that were not made by child labor, your best bet was whichever manufacturer last got into trouble for it because of all the extra scrutiny. That this level of fatalism about immoral acts exists is a failure of society as a whole. I suspect that all of those who got rich either knowingly or being willfully ignorant about emissions cheating walked away completely unpunish…

I always found it odd that Americans have no problem with child labor at home, so long as it’s confined to movies and entertainment. We even have special laws just to make it legal when every other form of child labor is outlawed. It’s absolutely not the same as a sweatshop, but hollywood has a long track record of ruining children’s lives for profit.

The mainstream corporate media machine doesn't cover it because they're complicit in it. You have shit like what happened to Cory Feldman on the View: that hag Barbara Walters saying "you're trying to ruin an entire industry!" when he tries to expose the horrors he and others went through.

Re: Voltswagen of America

#329

Post by formerly_proven » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 4:51 PM UTC

Laarlf wrote: post #197

formerly_proven wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Wikipedia ratings under WLTP are much lower than under NEDC so your comment doesn't seem to make a ton of sense to me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldwide_Harmonised_Light_Veh...

Remember how i said "unrealistic" and not "lower"? WLTP is a rather unrealistic way to determine fuel consumption or energy usage on cars. If you look at sites which collect fuel usage for cars you often times see fuel usages considerably higher than what WLTP defines. Especially if it's a PHEV since WLTP expects a full battery all the time. Under 2L/100km for a 2 ton SUV is not realistic by any stretch of the imagin…

So your criticism is actually in the context of ICE and PHEVs - I assumed you meant pure EVs since that what this thread seemed to be about, and for those autonomy numbers seem to be strictly lower, hence my confusion why WLTP would be more doctored in this regard than NECD.

Re: Voltswagen of America

#330

Post by guitarbill » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 4:51 PM UTC

titzer wrote: post #181

sillyquiet wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans are pronouncing it perfectly correctly as most of us speak English and not German.

Does it bother you when Germans say "zis"? German has no "th" sound, so "zis" is what they start with before they practice. It's similarly grating to Germans to hear their language mispronounced by others. And yet, English has an "f" sound. German has an extremely consistent spelling and essentially all "v"s are pronounced as "f". We share (the latin) alphabet, and English has absolutely no authority, given how incon…

Vice versa, it's interesting to me why German speakers tend to approximate the pronunciation of e.g. "think" as "sink", rather than "fink" or "vink". There's even some British accents where it sounds more like "fink". English is hard :D