In September 2015, we shared with you the report that was flying around the world with supersonic speed: Volkswagen had somehow managed to go past the Takata airbag recall by a mile. After some random testing discovered a software design that allowed for a “clean” tune when the car’s system suspected it was being tested and a “road” software that saw elevated levels of nitrogen oxide (NOx) to blow out of the pipe any other day of the week. The fallout ever since that fateful day has been nothing short of epic: Volkswagen has been paying fines in the billions, has voluntarily pushed for EV tech including within their own brands, and has been enduring visions of parking lots filled to the brim with VW, Audi, and Porsche vehicles en masse. It’s amazing that Volkswagen AG is in business at all, to be quite fair. The reputation of Volkswagen sank faster than the Titanic and consumers the world over were floored to learn that the diesel vehicles that had been a strong hope for being a small, economical, and environmentally-sound vehicles were really no better than a 40-ish year old Dasher that was blowing smoke any moment the rattly, underpowered engine was running.
The story is unbelievably broad…three major brands in the United States market and millions of vehicles worldwide were affected with what essentially was a gigantic soot stain. It affected laws, startled economies, and even threw faith in clean-air vehicles into the gutter for a bit. What the hell happened? How does a car company with a sterling reputation suddenly make a whoopie cushion noise and legitimately brown it’s trousers in front of the whole world. Was it urgency to sell to American tastes at any costs? Was it a culture of fear that kept those who were honest from saying something? It’s still unfolding, even to this day. The echoes are still quite loud from the bomb blast that went down once a university team found a dirty little secret in a tidy little four-door package.
There is a netflix documentary called Dirty Money, episode one is about this. Its very good, and its crazy how deep in VW the cover up went.
Let’s be real here. VW knew something no one wanted to address. Meeting the regulation meant that real world performance would suffer enough to damage diesel sales. It was a smart gamble. And, you can’t escape the fact that it’s impossible to measure the impact on overall air quality because of this. In fact, if emissions rules had been frozen in 1995, or even 2000, the impact on overall North American air quality would have been impossible to measure, versus the outcome from the path that has been taken. If I’d have been in charge of VW, I’d have publicly told the feds to pound sand. Rescind the charges or VW pulls completely out of the US.
Leave the United States,Volkswagen.
No threat when there are other car companies.
Fraud is fraud..
Sure.
thank god for the internet for free press this really sucks