VW in trouble

[BaggedGLI]

Re: VW in trouble

The CEO has stepped down for real now.

http://www.ctvnews.ca/business/volks...down-1.2576678

This ticks me off, they are in the middle of a crisis and the CEO steps down, now someone has to get things sorted out while dealing with the problems. I understand stepping down to gain trust on the consumer front but I feel that the problems should be dealt with, then step down.

[Ur0Drivr]

Re: VW in trouble

This ticks me off, they are in the middle of a crisis and the CEO steps down, now someone has to get things sorted out while dealing with the problems. I understand stepping down to gain trust on the consumer front but I feel that the problems should be dealt with, then step down.

They have others that can manage the issue. This is a good move in my opinion. If you're the head of a major f#ck up like this, you're gone.

[bobkatkat]

Re: VW in trouble

This ticks me off, they are in the middle of a crisis and the CEO steps down, now someone has to get things sorted out while dealing with the problems. I understand stepping down to gain trust on the consumer front but I feel that the problems should be dealt with, then step down.

CEO`s don`t step down, they are shown the door by the Board of Directors. He was the CEO since 2007 and would have had knowledge and the final say of the cheat from day one. There is no way he has skills, judgement or character to take VW through this. If he did this would have never happened.

[Shax]

Re: VW in trouble

Statement from the Executive Committee of Volkswagen AG's Supervisory Board

https://www.volkswagen-media-service..._auth=FKrizm2K

...The Executive Committee notes that Professor Dr. Winterkorn had no knowledge of the manipulation of emissions data...

Sort of strange.

[Canadian Turbo]

Re: VW in trouble

I agree and disagree with these points; the CEO is a figure head of a company and they are there to help steer the ship, but more importantly be the face for when things are good and for when things inevitably go wrong and their movement is something used to appease shareholders. I also think that in many cases CEOs are so far removed from operational decisions and sheltered (you know how hard it is to get to talk to a CEO of a multi-billion dollar corporation) that they truly may not have knowledge of things that have occurred.

In this case I am really curious who and at what level made this conscious choice to cheat emissions testing and the reasoning behind it as an informed executive would have had to have seen the potential for things like this to occur.

I also understand peoples frustrations with this but unless you bought your TDI specifically because of the low environmental impact you really still got mostly what you are after and asking for large compensations is just greedy and if everyone begins to sell their cars they will further deflate prices by flooding the market, which is not VWs problem.

[MechEngg]

Re: VW in trouble

I also want to know how far up the decision tree this got to...if it got to the engineering director or even Senior director then it would have been his head on the line here. There is also however a possibility that this was done in the lower levels and wasn't even brought that far up. Directors/Senior directors as well typically don't involve themselves in the detail oriented nature of every technical decision, those are done at the lower levels. Directors would get the high level input "Hey do you want better fuel economy if we make a tweak to the software? We would wind up having less maintenance costs and we would still pass emissions technically, and the customer would end up with a "better" product. Should we do it?"

If a software update and slightly less fuel economy and power will actually fix the problem with a bit of extra maintenance costs for replacing the systems that break it might be cheaper for VW to actually just let everybody come in for a software update and then cover the next XXX,XXXkms of maintenance costs related to this issue specifically. They could then do kinda like Kia/Hyundai did and give customers rebate cheques based on their mileage for the extra gas they are going to have to purchase for the upcoming future of owning the car, it would keep the money in the company instead of immediate payouts/buybacks of vehicles.

While i understand the devaluing of the cars, i don't think it is right to be demanding ridiculous sums of compensation for this. People are certainly greedy in nature, but maybe instead of asking for $35,000 and to keep your car still and get it fixed, you ask for the $5,000 or $10,000 you feel your car has been devalued by? Or better yet, if you plan on keeping the car for a long period of time, don't really worry about it. You bought it to use, use it and keep it as a daily driver and then when you want to sell it you can evaluate the value of the car at that time. By that time in the future there will probably be fixes available.

If you bought the TDI because you are a tree hugger, maybe just keep it parked in your driveway and ride a bike to work to offset your emissions footprint

[bobkatkat]

Re: VW in trouble

Regardless if Winterkorn knew of the cheat or not, he should have known. It was a know issue back to 2004 that VW diesels were struggling to meeting US standards. Hard to believe that for his 9 Year stint he had no idea that an entire group of engineers working on these emissions workarounds, that effects 11 million cars, didn't exist. On a side note, it would be stupid to think that VW is the only automotive group to be smart enough to come up with emissions workarounds, not only for diesels but gas also.

It would be interesting to see, like Blair pointed out. how far up the food chain the knowledge went but also how far down the food chain it went?

As far as the law suites. I am sure that if you are in an area where there are mandatory emissions tests, this really could be a problem for resale. For law suits in places like Alberta where we all run smoker tunes and catless cars without ever having to worry about having to pass emissions, that becomes a little hard to swallow.

[stefan]

Re: VW in trouble

Regardless if Winterkorn knew of the cheat or not, he should have known.

I'm in a small company - 150 people. Hard to compare here... but for the sake of argument... I could easily make a judgement call at my level of the company and decide to call it standard procedure to be followed for the next few years, and I'd have no need to run this by the president/CEO. The CEO here would be micromanaging far to much to know every part and every piece of software in a VW. At the end of the day, he should be able to ask his team "does it pass?", and accept their "yes" as truth without going through the code himself. If that team was given a cash incentive to get the car on the road, I could see some reports to the top level getting manipulated.

I know if I cost my company a few years of profit and reputation, I'd get fired and the President/CEO would would carry on doing what he does, trying to put something in place so it doesn't happen again. Big difference - my company is not publicly traded. The public needs to see an important person kicked to the curb. We probably wont even see the names of the guys that actually implemented the code.

[Stonewall]

Re: VW in trouble

Did everyone miss this? "His contract was scheduled to be extended by two years through 2018 at a meeting this Friday of the supervisory board."
He quit ahead of not having his contract renewed. No company that is going through this would go ahead and say "Hey we just signed the big wig who oversaw this mess on for another two years".

[Red90]

Re: VW in trouble

Interesting to see if any other companies did the same thing.

If you read the test report, which includes a BMW, it is quite clear the BMW is doing it as well. During the EPA dyno test, they are non-detect for NOX. During the driving tests, they are sitting a bit above the limits with one test at 10X over. BMW was just smarter and made sure the "regular" program did not overtly break the limits. VW just said, **** it, and went for broke. Pretty easy to detect you are on a dyno.

Page 62 for the NOX results.
http://www.theicct.org/sites/default...al_may2014.pdf

[stefan]

Re: VW in trouble

Seems like there is some environmental watchdog that believes VW is definitely not the only one being sneaky. Wouldn't be surprised to see other things come to light, although I would be surprised if they were as significant as this!

[Red90]

Re: VW in trouble

The report was requested by these guys: http://www.theicct.org/about-icct

[Benjamin]

Re: VW in trouble

I buy tdi's because of power and fuel economy. They are not the most powerful car out there, but for the economy they do get day in and day out you can't compare. Your value will not go down, I could actually see higher values for those that don't get the VW fix if it decreases power and economy.

[Geobmx4life]

Re: VW in trouble

An interesting post on TDICLUB...food for thought...

First, the report itself cites the standard is an average for a given manufacturer’s fleet on page 5. The NOx standard is not meet by a given model or individual car. Some models can be over the limit, but others would need to be under the limit. But for a given model, it should be expected to have varied emissions in different conditions/demands.

Looking at the multi-state real world driving data for the Passat, there are a number of reported measurements where the car is well below the limit when driven on the flat hiway. The car is clearly capable under the right ON ROAD conditions of being cleaner than the standard helping lower its overall average. Also, for this pages 78-79, the report shows the total average multistate NOx to be .25 g/km which is 5x standard, not the eye popping “upto 40x” where the media uses the worst case urban route of the LNT car. This data proves that the emissions controls are indeed working on road, not what the media would have us believe that there are no controls at all on road.

The BMW exceeded standard by 10x for the up/downhill route, yet we don’t hear any issues with BMW performing a violation. Yes the BMW did fare better overall in the other conditions, but it would seem that BMW engineers also allow the “controls” to come off significantly at times.

2nd – The NOx is not the only pollutant measured in the report to be controlled by the EPA, there is also data for the Carbon Monoxide (CO), Total Hydrocarbons (THC) and Particulate Matter (PM). We don’t hear about those due to how AWESOME the car performs for these emissions. Page 80 shows the CO to be 1% of the allowed standard. Page 81 shows the THC to be under 1% of the allowed standard. Page 83 shows the PM to be a whopping 0.1% of the allowed standard. No media report has ever told us how clean these engines are for the other pollutants, nor do they show how clean they are compared to gasoline equivalents for these pollutants.

3rd - The report has other issues such as being dominated by urban routes. The LNT car’s hiway data is corrupted by “rush hour”. Isn’t than urban? (page 12) Only 60% of the hiway route was over 90km/hr. Maybe that is hiway in CA, but not for me. The averages do not appear weighted by miles which will greatly skew the poor urban #s with lower distances over the better NOx performing miles with significantly more distance. The report shows the routes being as much as 3x length different, and the portions of the multistate I don’t believe are listed at all.

I don’t make light of the fact VW has done something extremely improper to make NOx test better than it is on road. But there is more to the story than “VW Cheated” and the “40x over standard” emissions. Despite any wrongdoing these are still incredibly clean cars overall, and the NOx performance is not nearly as bad as what is being reported.

I’ll continue to drive my 180K mile ’00 ALH (aka smoky) with pride. And my better half’s 82K ’09 CBEA will continue to display CLNDZL on its plates. For now, the EPA has forced me to continue to drive my ’00 ALH as long as I can rather than replacing it with what would CLEARLY be a lower emission vehicle in the form of a ’16 TDI.

[Canadian Turbo]

Re: VW in trouble

Of course the media is stating the worst case and really blowing things out of proportion but hopefully with time this will become a lot clearer for everyone, although lining the pockets of lawyers is a much greater environmental cause