Heads are Rolling at VW

[Nate1979]

Bumping this:

Houston sues VW for polluting its air to the tune of $100m.

http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/30/news/companies/houston-harris-county-lawsuit-volkswagen/index.html

 

[Garak]

Now, if they were given $100 million tomorrow, would it actually go to clean air initiatives or to help those who may have been harmed by pollution, or would it just be lumped into general revenues? That's the one hundred million dollar question.

 

[Joe90_guy]

The foundation of The British Empire had nothing to do with money and everything to do with teaching the fuzzy-wuzzies The Rules Of Cricket and how to use the proper knife and fork for eating pheasant. Anyone that says otherwise is an uncivilised heathen!

 

[Jetronic]

you forget tea....

 

[lubricatosaurus]

Originally Posted By: Nate1979
Bumping this:Houston sues VW for polluting its air to the tune of $100m. http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/30/news/companies/houston-harris-county-lawsuit-volkswagen/index.html


Wow, I have never heard of a city suing a car company over pollution. This is new, I think. (???) Court may find that the EPA has full jurisdiction over fines, penalties, etc. here, not cities, counties, or states, else the entire planet sues VW-Audi !

Back to the thread subject, "heads rolling", has anybody seen what has happened to the engineering departments who actually did this? All I've heard is Winterkorn getting poked by angry pitchfork mobs while no press media or visible scrutiny is placed on the the group inside VW-Audi that actually did this.

Winterkorn faces:

 

[Jetronic]

the government in Belgium is also considering sueing VW. Belgium will get fined for not meeting the Air quality standards regarding smog and ozon, if that happens the state will sue VW (VW is the major player here)

 

[lubricatosaurus]

Plaintiff: Planet Earth, freakin' everybody, all.
Defendant: VW-Audi
Absolutely insane. Judges should throw it out.

 

[redbone3]

Originally Posted By: HTSS_TR
Originally Posted By: Miller88
I think the EPA is out of control anyway. I don't see anything wrong with what Volkswagen has done.

I'd be happy if they got rid of that after treatment bullsnot.

EPA enforces the emission laws passed by Congress and signed by President. They didn't make up their own laws/rules. The maximum fined per violation is the law too.

VW intentionally cheating emission control laws, they will be fined and someone may spend sometimes in jail for it, US Justice Dept opened criminal investigation about this problem. I will not be surprised when they announce some VW employees were indicted.


Sorry Charlie, The EPA makes it's own laws and requires no approval from anybody.

 

[bruno]

That's the root of the problem... set arbitrary stabdards with no oversight of the EPA .

 

[Andrew1972]

Originally Posted By: bruno
That's the root of the problem... set arbitrary stabdards with no oversight of the EPA .


If other car makers can achieve the standards with diesels and have a decent engine your point is mute.

 

[Gasbuggy]

Originally Posted By: GiveMeAVowel


No, it wasn't at least during modern Europe until after WWII.
Worst thing that ever happened to Europe was the Muricans
bringing their "culture" to the Old World. That comes from
a born and raised Murican. We are seeing the fruits of that
import as we speak, from extremely corrupt business practices, to
multiKult, the destruction of the nation, and the dismissal of REAL culture and heritage, and many other disgusting things.

It honestly makes me sick to my stomach.


This is by far the stupidest post in the entire thread. It sounds much more like Connecticotian, which by definition is very un-"murican." If it were correct logic you would see many of the U.S. auto manufacturers with diesel engines doing the same, the reality is the exact opposite. German culture is regarded as strong and independent. I have an impression of German engineers as being stereotypically arrogant, I expect this is 100% their own doing and not influenced by U.S. capital markets.

 

[willyreid]

VW should be responsible for paying to have the Urea replenished in every single car their competitor's have sold requiring it, for the next 5 years, if they want to continue doing any business in the U.S. They also should have to pay reparations to all of their own customers who now drive diesel's with lower power and lower fuel mileage. $5,000 per vehicle sounds about right.

 

[Benito]

Originally Posted By: willyreid
VW should be responsible for paying to have the Urea replenished in every single car their competitor's have sold requiring it, for the next 5 years, if they want to continue doing any business in the U.S. They also should have to pay reparations to all of their own customers who now drive diesel's with lower power and lower fuel mileage. $5,000 per vehicle sounds about right.


Germans paying reparations?

 

[Benito]

Originally Posted By: Shark
I have an impression of German engineers as being stereotypically arrogant, I expect this is 100% their own doing and not influenced by U.S. capital markets.


Yep be in no doubt. They positively sneer at engineers from other countries.

Except for Porsche whose fortunes were turned around by the Toyota way.

 

[Olas]

The whole point (and thread) is completely moot!

Remapping exists. Even switchable mapping. Reflash or no reflash, it won't make any difference at all to the informed consumer.

 

[GiveMeAVowel]

Originally Posted By: Shark

This is by far the stupidest post in the entire thread. It sounds much more like Connecticotian, which by definition is very un-"murican." If it were correct logic you would see many of the U.S. auto manufacturers with diesel engines doing the same, the reality is the exact opposite. German culture is regarded as strong and independent. I have an impression of German engineers as being stereotypically arrogant, I expect this is 100% their own doing and not influenced by U.S. capital markets.


I'm not talking about the engineering part of the business culture, but the money making aspect of it. After WWII the injection of a wall street mentality and short term earnings invaded German business culture. Previously their was nothing quite like it.

 

[willyreid]

[/quote]

No, it wasn't at least during modern Europe until after WWII.
Worst thing that ever happened to Europe was the Muricans
bringing their "culture" to the Old World. That comes from
a born and raised Murican. We are seeing the fruits of that
import as we speak, from extremely corrupt business practices, to
multiKult, the destruction of the nation, and the dismissal of REAL culture and heritage, and many other disgusting things.

It honestly makes me sick to my stomach. [/quote]

Sounds like you really miss the good old days of the National Socialist German Worker's Party heyday before the end of the War, and the arrival of the evil Muricans. The East Germans made out so much better after the War, didn't they?

 

[Jetronic]

The grass is always greener on the other side, willyreid...

 

[GiveMeAVowel]

Originally Posted By: willyreid




Sounds like you really miss the good old days of the National Socialist German Worker's Party heyday before the end of the War, and the arrival of the evil Muricans. The East Germans made out so much better after the War, didn't they?


Actually as much as Hitler was found to be disagreeable to many, Germany was prospering during his early years in power.
Look at the USA today, it isn't getting any better here and in many ways the country is spiraling towards third world status.

 

[PandaBear]

Originally Posted By: lubricatosaurus
Originally Posted By: HTSS_TR
I don't know if much "Higher-Up" knew about fraud, but someone higher than the software engineers knew and approved it. It's impossible the coders in engineering dept did it without knowledge/approval from managers or directors or ...


A software tech manager or two or three would have known. In 7 model years, many grunt tech software coders would have known, but they might not understand "cheat" concepts related to the law.
Managers involved should have known about how to comply with the EPA laws, for sure.
But who looks into the code above coders and immediate managers? Probably nobody knew very high up at all.

What I want to know is if anybody reading this thinks the executives should have conducted outside independent reviews of how they were getting EPA compliance ??????


Usually, if the result is a bit off the original estimate in emission or fuel economy, then management or QA would miss it by accident. If the result is 40x off, whether it is too good or too bad, someone would have notice outside of software engineering.

The point is, this "mistake" has to be way higher than a couple teams or engineers. It is a collaboration across departments or divisions, which means it is OKed by some top management.