Volkswagen is in trouble with just about everybody on the f'ing planet

I am sitting in the Emergency Room of Androscoggin Valley Hospital in Berlin, NH, hunched over a machine that is delivering Albuterol via humidified oxygen, directly to my constricted lung passages.

It?s a routine to which I?ve become accustomed, over the past 30 years. And it?s one which too many of us who suffer from asthma and other lung diseases know all too well. Anyone who?s ever endured a full-blown asthma attack can tell you just how terrifying it can be. And rightly so?each year over 3,000 people die as a result in our country.

So, when the news broke this past week that VW had duped the EPA and, therefore, every one of us, with their emissions testing slight-of-hand, I took it personally. VW?s willful disregard of the law is a direct assault on my health. By cheating on the EPA test, nearly a half million of their diesel passenger cars are today spewing up to 40 times the allowable levels of nitrogen oxide?a pollutant known to be especially dangerous for those of us with a lung disease. It is an act of violence against, as Frank O?Donnell, the President of the DC-based advocacy group Clear Air Watch called it, ?The breathing public.?

I bought a 2015 VW diesel. I also suffer from Asthma. Boy, am I ticked off.
 
I only hope he's not the only one who will resign. Taking the responsibility is noble but just a gesture. Those who really came up with and installed the software must be punished.

So essentially everyone in marketing and accounting. Whenever there is questionable engineering to cover something up or hide something it doesn't usually stem from the engineers...
 
So essentially everyone in marketing and accounting. Whenever there is questionable engineering to cover something up or hide something it doesn't usually stem from the engineers...
But the engineering would have been done by...?
 
BBC News reporting that Winterkorn has resigned. Little detail as yet but I am sure more will emerge in the next hour or so. Not surprising news really since he probably had littlel choice.

Yep, the Byers family that I work for and owns the Volvo place I work at also has a VW store next door. A bit of panic is settling in right now.....

PS, the Byers family is seriously awesome though.
 
Volkswagen is in trouble with just about everybody on the f'ing planet

Everybody is thinking of the customers as victims and rightly so.

But there is another dimension to it: All over the world, roughly 600,000 People work for VW and then there are hundreds of thousands more working for suppliers, dealers and contractors. I saw some TV interviews and they are worried and furious. They blame the management for endangering their jobs and shake their heads about the pointlessness of the whole trickery with the software - just for saving a few bucks per car.

So although theoretically the penalty may be 18 billion, I predict in reality it will be a lot lower, simply because VW is too big to fail and its downfall would also endanger many suppliers who have nothing to do with it.

I wonder, though, if those "car enthusiasts", who currently swing their pitchforks and torches, have thought it to the end. Because an end or a really deep crisis of VW might also be the end of Lamborghini, Bentley and Bugatti and a real petrolhead cannot really want that...

I'm all for punishing the people responsible but the workers in the factories or at the suppliers or the mechanics at dealerships shouldn't have to atone for a failure in management. And because innocents would suffer from it, I don't think anyone has an interest in bringing VW down - not even the prosecutors in the USA.
 
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Everybody is thinking of the customers as victims and rightly so.

But there is another dimension to it: All over the world, roughly 600,000 People work for VW and then there are hundreds of thousands more working for suppliers, dealers and contractors. I saw some TV interviews and they are worried and furious. They blame the management for endangering their jobs and shake their heads about the pointlessness of the whole trickery with the software - just for saving a few bucks per car.

So although theoretically the penalty may be 18 billion, I predict in reality it will be a lot lower, simply because VW is too big to fail and its downfall would also endanger many suppliers who have nothing to do with it.

I wonder, though, if those "car enthusiasts", who currently swing their pitchforks and torches, have thought it to the end. Because an end or a really deep crisis of VW might also be the end of Lamborghini, Bentley and Bugatti and a real petrolhead cannot really want that...

I'm all for punishing the people responsible but the workers in the factories or at the suppliers or the mechanics at dealerships shouldn't have to atone for a failure in management. And because innocents would suffer from it, I don't think anyone has an interest in bringing VW down - not even the prosecutors in the USA.

Sigh. You know what the above reads like?

Think-of-the-children.jpg


Same excuse was used to 'save' GM. What we got from that was nearly 200 people dead, at least one woman wrongfully in jail for YEARS for murder because GM management lied about there being a known problem with the ignition switches and about finding a problem in the *specific switch* involved, and again the corporation's officers get to skate because "it would hurt the workerrrrrrrrrrrs."

Enough is enough. No. Fucking. More.

Until and unless an example is made, this stupid crap is going to continue. Make a horrible enough example, and you'll get workers, suppliers, dealers, contractors, everyone involved in the company reporting potential wrongdoing like this in future - which makes it unlikely that further potential wrongdoing will happen at VW or other large motor companies. At least for a decade or two, until the people that got burned cycle out and retire, and quite probably longer. Ford getting hammered for the Pinto made damn sure that nobody did anything quite that stupid again until now and that was almost 40 years.
 
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Everybody is thinking of the customers as victims and rightly so.

But there is another dimension to it: All over the world, roughly 600,000 People work for VW and then there are hundreds of thousands more working for suppliers, dealers and contractors. I saw some TV interviews and they are worried and furious. They blame the management for endangering their jobs and shake their heads about the pointlessness of the whole trickery with the software - just for saving a few bucks per car.

So although theoretically the penalty may be 18 billion, I predict in reality it will be a lot lower, simply because VW is too big to fail and its downfall would also endanger many suppliers who have nothing to do with it.

I wonder, though, if those "car enthusiasts", who currently swing their pitchforks and torches, have thought it to the end. Because an end or a really deep crisis of VW might also be the end of Lamborghini, Bentley and Bugatti and a real petrolhead cannot really want that...

I'm all for punishing the people responsible but the workers in the factories or at the suppliers or the mechanics at dealerships shouldn't have to atone for a failure in management. And because innocents would suffer from it, I don't think anyone has an interest in bringing VW down - not even the prosecutors in the USA.

Sorry MacGuffin but 'too big to fail' is simply irresponsible bullshit. It was bullshit when it was said about the banks. It was bullshit when it was said about GM and Chrysler. And it's just as much bullshit now. It does nothing more than excuse and condone gross corporate malfeasance and doesn't do much to help 'the workers' but sure is a pretty handout to the slimy execs who caused the problems. If a corporation has become 'too big to fail' maybe it should be broken up so that's not an issue any more - then the parts that have failed can be dealt with appropriately. If those 600,000 workers are concerned than let them band together and buy VW (or at least a controlling interest) themselves if/when it goes bust. Maybe they'll do a better job. I would love to see VW survive and thrive (they're a major client of the company I work for) but not at the cost of them getting away with crap like this. Protecting a corporation/industry because it's 'too big to fail' just encourages it and others to behave increasingly irresponsibly because they know 'mommy government' will always be there to pick them up when they fall, at taxpayers' expense of course.

As for 'losing' Lambo, Bentley, Bugatti, etc., if they're worth anything they won't go away. Someone else will buy them. Look how many times they've all changed hands already.

The secondary suppliers will have to find other clients. It's not like the demand for cars is going anywhere so parts will still have to be made. All of the VW's (and other brands of car) already on the road aren't going to simply disappear so it's not as if mechanics are going to suffer terribly. And the dealers and salespeople will just have to adapt as well. At least here in NA car sales is one of the most mobile jobs around. Salesfolk jump from dealership to dealership, brand to brand all the time. When GM killed Saab, Saturn, Pontiac and Oldsmobile, when Ford killed Mercury or when Suzuki pulled out of the market all of those people either found auto sales jobs elsewhere or moved on to something else. It's the nature of a free market - when circumstances change, you adapt as necessary. I've had jobs pulled out from under me a few times over the years and have changed jobs/industries as necessary. It can be difficult in the short term but in almost every case I've ended up better off afterwards. You adapt and move on.
 
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Sorry Macguffin but 'too big to fail' is simply irresponsible bullshit.[...]
Dito. Let them pay. In full.

VAG has a lot of money in the bank and a lot of sub-companies to sell before they have to close business or fire people. Yeah, the company won?t be the powerhouse it is now but it won?t be forced to close either.
What we cannot tolerate is this bullshit cheating and lying for profit.
 
If VW have to sell some assets to get through this, it'll probably be best to sell Porsche - they are not fully integrated into VW yet and are by far the most valuable subsidy outside the VW/Audi/Skoda/Seat quartet. If you ask me, this would actually be good for the car market.
 
Jesus Christ, I really feel like there is a crowd with pitchforks and torches waiting... :rolleyes: I assume it's the primeval joy of simply wanting something big to be destroyed. I currently imagine some of you jumping up and down shouting "DEATH, KILL, DESTROY, ANNIHILATE... FUCK YEAH!" :p

And I suspect that the well-known dislike of VW in some forumers also plays a role here. Mixed with rubbing hands and schadenfreude because "ze Germans failed" perhaps...

As I already mentioned before: The people responsible need to be punished. Punishing people who are innocent is wrong in my book. I don't know about your moral standards but finding the ones responsible and punishing them is more important to me than the primal urge to see something big going over the edge.

Besides, I'm not trying to do an evaluation here or make a judgement. I'm just being realistic about the outcome. It will be expensive, yes, and rightly so. But not so expensive that it will threaten the existence of VAG.
 
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Just found this rather interesting piece....

Not saying I agree with all of it but it does raise some valid points.
 
Just found this rather interesting piece....

Not saying I agree with all of it but it does raise some valid points.

Some truths in that. The problem is not a lack of rules or laws. The problem is that the existing laws and rules aren't enforced enough - at least in Europe, where an undistinguishable mishmash of industry, politicians and lobbyists rules the economy. Don't know if it's the same in the USA but at the moment America's law enforcement seems to be the only one on the planet willing to go against powerful companies and organizations (sometimes the USA's claim to be the leader of the world actually have a good side :p). Anywhere else it currently seems that the rules and laws only exist to stupefy the population(s) but actually nobody gives a shit about enforcing them.

It's not just VW or Germany, basically the whole European car industry is very much interweaved with national politics. Heck, tell me a country where the car industry (or other important industries) are not interweaved with politics :rolleyes: It just seems to be a matter of definition what is "vital" for a nation. The car industry is vital for Germany, thus it's being treated with great lenience. Other countries have other key industries they try to protect.
 
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...and the inevitable happened, the next carmakers are getting caught up - Peter Mock from the ICCT says that they...
...found similar (emission) values on cars from Volvo, Opel, Hyundai and Citroen.
(src, original article is paywalled)
 
Mac,
VW is too big to fail but not in the way you think, all those other brands can he spun off to become their own companies like they used to be or they can kick VW out and stay together. However for a company as big and as powerful as VAG I doubt it would actually be forced to close shop, top execs might be going somewhere upstate but there will be others who can take their place in the company. As far as many goes I'm sure they have enough cash reserve to weather this.
 
Too big to fail? Can somebody also be too fat to diet?
 
so when will be the best time to buy VW shares?
(because i'm sure, eventually they'll go back up!)
 
VW have admitted the whole thing extends to 2.0 and also 1.6 litre cars sold in Europe. Meanwhile Autobild is reporting that the ICCT has found the BMW X3 is 11 times over the prescribed limits for European tests. BMW shares have dropped 10% this morning.

VW have to be hoping and praying that several other manufacturers get caught with their pants down in order to deflect some of the unwelcome attention and the German government will be doing the same and additionally hoping some of them turn out to be something other than German.
 
Too big to fail? Can somebody also be too fat to diet?

That's unbelievably cynical... If you were trying to make a point, you failed.

In essence you say "fuck the common people who might lose there jobs, I wanna see something big going ballistic".

Sorry but with all understanding for the need of punishment, that cannot be the answer.
 
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