The salmonella outbreak attributed to tainted nuts apparently killed nine people, they’re saying “did this do at least that much damage? probably!”
That still makes no sense. He’s using a 2005 paper to shore up his argument that these VW’s killed at least “a dozen or more” people.
Oh I don’t know if I buy his logic either, I just thought maybe you skimmed the quote—as I did at first too—and thought he was specifically saying nine people died from emissions.
I don’t think he’s trying to prove the case with a single link in a single blog post. The Justice Department has a lot of smart lawyers…I think he’s hoping they’re looking into criminal charges.
I read triggercuts synopsis and it says that emissions weren’t just a bit over the regulation amount, but 10 to 35 times the regulation amount. Ouch.
Now if only those graduate students got 0.01% of the $18 billion.
Looks like the EPA is gonna start testing other auto companies with diesel models: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/21/usa-volkswagen-idUSL5N11R0TU20150921
It’d be so crazy if other cars also had this kind of defeat mechanism.
Well, yeah, especially when the way that most of them are NOx compliant is an absolute pain in the ass for the car maker. Seriously, Mercedes/Daimler AG are going to look stupid if they invested all this money in engineering SCR systems that rely on constantly replenishing DEF, (not to mention the plumbing and signaling systems inherent to that) only to find out that Volkswagen just installed some software and waved their hands around.
(In other words, I’ll be pretty shocked if anyone else with a properly engineered DEF injection system is cheating. It’d be like setting up a counterfeit coin machine that makes only pennies at a cost of 2 cents each. I think this is for baselining and comparison.)
GM settled for allowing defects which killed 175 people for a “mere” 900 million, and no criminal liability.
So Bill Gates could kill something like 10,000 people before getting criminal charges?
I mean, VW is going to get hammered, and well they should. But it’s going be interesting to see a certain kind of differential application of justice for different criminal corporate offenses.
The thing is though, GM covered things up. They acted incompetently. They did dumb, dumb things, but they did them negligently. They didn’t plan on killing anyone, they just made a shitty ignition switch, and then failed to act properly on defect reports. They also cooperated fully with the investigation into things. It probably also helped that GM could say that they were almost a completely made-over company since that point. Dunno.
So yeah, you probably can’t convince a judge of deaths…but this isn’t negligence, either. This is a willful middle finger at government regulation. I expect corporate incompetence, cover-ups, negligence here and there, and even playing loose with the word of law. But this thing with Volkswagen just seems more brazen than that to me, perhaps.
According to the danish motor enthusiast group FDM, this isn’t in any way a singular thing. Most cars that perform one way in laboratory tests rarely perform the same way in real-life situations. This includes miles per liter and other things as well.
Yeah, this isn’t a singular thing at all, dude.
Just the 40 times the allowed amount and the potential $18b in fines. Probably a margin of error thing. ;)
Not to be harsh, but Danish motor enthusiast group FDM haven’t the foggiest notion of what they’re talking about here.
The US tried to get VW to tell them why there was such a huge discrepancy for a year. VW stonewalled them. VW didn’t go into full denial mode for a year for something that was fairly common. VW didn’t come clean until the US threatened to not certify their 2016 model year cars for sale. That’s not a no big deal situation.
Volkswagen admitted to putting a device and software in their cars to deliberately flout a federal regulation, one that chased other competitors from the marketplace.
This is pretty fucking singular.
I think I’m using the word wrong then - What I mean is that this is not a unique thing that only pertains to VW. They apparently all (Car manufacturers) conduct the laboratory tests in imaginative ways to get the best results.
No, you’re using it correctly.
What I’m saying is that this is a huge deal and pretty much unprecedented. This really doesn’t seem to be an “Everyone’s doing it” situation at all.
I have no technical insight here of course, and I understand that the scope is somewhat huge, but the point is, that in the EU at least, most people in the business understands that the laboratory tests do not conform to reality. From the article it also says
"The fact is that we’ve looked at it for a few years in the EU, so the Americans are basically just afterwards. The spectacular thing about this case is that the US provides huge fines for companies that do not meet the rules. This does not happen in the EU, "said Torben Lund Competitors from FDM.
There is no car manufacturers have been convicted of fraud in the EU, and it is because the test for approval is too oldfashioned, says Torben Lund Wagoner.
“The test of the EU’s incredibly outdated and unclear, and it means that car manufacturers have relatively free rein to be a little creative, without actually violating the rules,” says Torben Lund Wagoner.
While google translate does some funny stuff here, I hope the meaning carries over.
So… analogous to 3D Mark testing of video cards then?
It seems they are confusing performance testing with compliance testing. Performance testing lab results may be based on an optimized product rather than the average results that a consumer may see in the wild. With compliance testing, industry or government standards are maintained, with outliers addressed, and any cheating of the system is grounds for the kinds of lawsuits that no business wants, and often will not survive. Beyond the fines involved, it is not inconceivable that VW could be banned from selling any cars whatsoever in the US market for some period of time.
In short performance testing is marketing BS, while compliance testing is deadly serious.
VW says they have 11 million cars worldwide that are affected.
What’s the record for a one day stock collapse?
Yeah, I’m curious what kind of company can survive both the devaluation of stock, and a fine as big as the one they are talking about and still carry on. They have close to 600.000 employees worldwide, where most of them work in Europe - Thats a large number of people in the danger zone, if the company takes anymore hits.
It’s honestly too bad. I’ve always liked VW. I’ve got an old beater Jetta that was my first new car, from back in 2002, and it still runs well. The AC died, and the paint’s flaking off, but the powertrain is still rock solid (now I said that, so it’ll probably explode next time I drive it). It was a very good car.