
Volkswagen Chief Martin Winterkorn Resigns Amid Emissions Scandal - aaronharnly
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/24/business/international/volkswagen-chief-martin-winterkorn-resigns-amid-emissions-scandal.html
======
jeromeflipo
In July, France 2 (the #1 public national television channel in France)
released a documentary [0] that showed to which extent the French auto
manufacturer PSA lied about NO2 emissions.

At 1h19s [1], Pierre Macaudière, head of emission control systems at PSA,
admits that the model tested emits 1700 ppm of NO2, after measuring 200 ppm
(the legal limit) with their own machines.

At 1h17m11s [2], the researchers commissioned by the EU shows the journalist
that _not one_ manufacturer respects the legal limits of 200 ppm. He's
frightened to tell the journalist that it's all just a widespread fraud.

* [0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JFprj6v37Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JFprj6v37Q)

* [1] [https://youtu.be/5JFprj6v37Q?t=1h19s](https://youtu.be/5JFprj6v37Q?t=1h19s)

* [2] [https://youtu.be/5JFprj6v37Q?t=1h17m11s](https://youtu.be/5JFprj6v37Q?t=1h17m11s)

~~~
differentView
If that's true, then there's no way government officials weren't bribed and
need to be prosecuted.

~~~
ekianjo
Which calls for decentralized inspection, instead of relying again and again
on governments to do the right thing. The only thing they are good at is
accepting bribes.

~~~
anigbrowl
Kind of throwing the baby out with the bathwater there, no? I was in and out
of publicly-run hospitals as a child, I wouldn't be alive today if not for
socialized medicine.

~~~
duncan_bayne
That's incorrect. You wouldn't be alive today without medicine; the fact that
it was provided by a socialized system is almost certainly irrelevant. There
exist other, better and fairer mechanisms to provide healthcare, especially to
those in genuine need.

 _Edited_ : to put it another way, imagine if you lived in a country with
socialized car mechanics. You could easily make the claim that the only thing
keeping you on the road was your good comrades at State Autoworks ...

~~~
kefka
That's right, the capitalist-libertarian answer is always "Fuck you, pay me",
or in this case, "fuck you, die".

We have insurance. Its a great way to leverage the group so that all get a low
rate. That given, "socialized" medicine is a group policy population wide:
which should give the lowest rates split equally between all. Certainly makes
the most sense.

~~~
duncan_bayne
Further to this, in Rand's words:

=====

“Dear [socialists], our objective, like yours, is the welfare of the poor,
more general wealth, and a higher standard of living for everybody—so please
let us capitalists function, because the capitalist system will achieve all
these objectives for you. It is in fact the only system that can achieve
them.”

This last statement is true and has been proved and demonstrated in history,
and yet it has not and will not win converts to the capitalist system. Because
the above argument is self-contradictory. It is not the purpose of the
capitalist system to cater to the welfare of the poor; it is not the purpose
of a capitalist enterpriser to spread social benefits; an industrialist does
not operate a factory for the purpose of providing jobs for his workers. A
capitalist system could not function on such a premise.

=====

~~~
dragonwriter
> This last statement is true and has been proved and demonstrated in history

On the contrary, that last statement is false, which has been demonstrated in
history, and is largely why the system for which the term "capitalism" was
coined is no longer the dominant system of the developed world, having been
replaced by mixed economies -- which transition Rand was part of the rear
guard arguing against, and to reverse -- which retain in outline the property
structure of capitalism, but import many aspects of socialism to deal better
with exactly those problems than capitalism ever did.

~~~
duncan_bayne
"... which retain in outline the property structure of capitalism, but import
many aspects of socialism to deal better with exactly those problems than
capitalism ever did."

That's a contradiction. You can't have both the property structure of
capitalism, and state socialism. You have to violate the former to achieve the
latter. I'd argue that current systems _claim_ to keep the structure of the
former, but violate it at will.

In terms of dealing better with the provision of healthcare than capitalism
... have you _seen_ the state of the American healthcare system recently?

~~~
dragonwriter
Yes, US healthcare sucks, but is still-- despite being less universal and less
efficient than that of any other modern advanced economy (all of which are
also mixed economies) -- better than anything that existed anywhere when
capitalism was the dominant model, and not just due to (non-social) technical
advances.

Of course, the US has adopted, in many areas and healthcare particularly, less
elements of socialism than other advanced mixed economies. So maybe there's a
reason US healthcare sucks so hard, and its not insufficient devotion to
capitalism.

~~~
duncan_bayne
"So maybe there's a reason US healthcare sucks so hard, and its not
insufficient devotion to capitalism."

The list of problems that the previous poster provided were almost all (
_especially_ cronyism and cartels) characteristics of systems _other_ than
capitalism.

Is it possible we're using different definitions of capitalism, here? I think
you might mean crony-capitalism, a.k.a. fascism.

~~~
dragonwriter
I mean the real economic system that was dominant in the developed world from
the late 19th to early 20th Century, which certain of its socialist critics
created the word "capitalism" to refer to, since criticising it without a name
was problematic, and it was an economic system by which property arrangements,
policy, etc., were organized around the interests of the capitalist class.

Cronyism and cartels were certainly not infrequent features of that system.

Fascism is something different and newer.

~~~
duncan_bayne
... which was also the system that produced _this_ :

[http://crfblog.org/wp-
content/uploads/2010/03/2007112238img1...](http://crfblog.org/wp-
content/uploads/2010/03/2007112238img1.gif)

Sure, there were problems. Abuses of power, cronyism, etc. But capitalism
quite literally rescued the world from poverty, and continues to do so:

[http://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/wordpovert...](http://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/wordpoverty2-600x387.jpg)

------
lordnacho
How is it possible that the real emission is 40x the allowed limit? Wouldn't
you see VW being the only manufacturer under the limit, and everyone else
unable to get the car approved? Or alternatively, everyone is cheating?
Because you can imagine a world where some firms cheat to get 10-20-30% less
than rated, so that they're in line with the industry.

But if VW's normal car is 40x worse than advertised, and most cars were close
to the correct standard, wouldn't they just hire a guy who knew how to fix
their cars? Did VW's internal testing test competitors' cars?

Is this going to explode across the industry?

Also, this isn't the only kind of test that a car goes through. There's crash
tests, MPG tests, and all sorts of things that I wouldn't know about. If you
can game an emissions test, you can game the crash test and the MPG test,
which are probably both things people care about a fair bit more than
emissions.

~~~
joshmoz
When I was car shopping the VW diesel numbers, for tdi sportwagen in
particular, were impressive. Nothing else came close to VW's combination of
power, space, and mileage. Now maybe there are people who know more about cars
than I do and can dispute that, but that was my perception a couple of years
ago.

If I were the other car companies, I'd want to know exactly how VW was pulling
that off. They must have looked into it, and surely they're not as easily
misled as I apparently was (how would I know if VW was outright lying about
the car?).

This suggests to me that the other car companies must have known that VW was
doing something wrong. The fact that they didn't rat VW out suggests to me
that they were either doing the same thing (maybe not as aggressively as VW)
or they hoped to get away with the same thing. The former seems more likely,
and if that's true then I expect this to spread beyond VW soon.

~~~
Nelson69
VW has also built a huge reputation on diesel. They go and win Le Mans with
diesels. They have a giant budget and research ability. They've pushed diesel
forward in a lot of ways.

Maybe the others knew they were cheating, I can't imagine that it wouldn't
leak out some how. I also can't imagine how you wouldn't go buy a hundred VWs
and meticulously take them apart and understand them after getting brutalized
in the diesel market.

With mid-sized and heavy trucks, there is an entire subculture of guys that
mod them for "more power" and such. There is a little industry built on it and
nearly a religion surrounding the "better mileage" and "more power." Some of
the systems and devices are sophisticated enough that they have integrated
on/off switches for passing smog tests and such. If we really really cared
about it, that would be illegal, there would be much more stringent emissions
testing more frequently.

I'm of the belief that the regulators knew or suspected there was some
cheating but it's political to make waves.

~~~
CamperBob2
_I also can 't imagine how you wouldn't go buy a hundred VWs and meticulously
take them apart and understand them after getting brutalized in the diesel
market._

This is exactly how the auto industry works, contrary to the uninformed
person(s) who modded you down. People should refrain from moderating posts
from users who actually know what they're talking about.

For example, the first thing GM did when they began work on the current-
generation Corvette was buy a Porsche 911 (from Volkswagen, no less) and study
it in detail. This is an objective fact by GM's own admission
([http://www.edmunds.com/porsche/911/2013/comparison-
test.html](http://www.edmunds.com/porsche/911/2013/comparison-test.html)).
Competitive analysis is a key engineering strategy, no less important than any
other.

It's inconceivable that other manufacturers weren't aware of exactly how VW's
seemingly-impossible engineering worked. The only question is why _they_
didn't rat them out to the EPA.

~~~
henrikschroder
> It's inconceivable that other manufacturers weren't aware of exactly how
> VW's seemingly-impossible engineering worked. The only question is why they
> didn't rat them out to the EPA.

Everyone cheats, and preserving status quo is in the best interest of
everyone.

~~~
SapphireSun
What worries me is that if this explodes across the industry, the common
refrain will become that EPA guidelines are unrealistic and that's why
everyone is cheating. Just what we need as the world is coming around to
direly needed environmental regulation.

------
codeshaman
As I'm observing this scandal unfold, I find it amusing that all the eyes are
on the VW company and how it affects it's finances, it's reputation, etc

While the effects on the company are extreme, I think we should also consider
the broader and ultimate consequences of this trickery.

The fact that those cars pollute a lot more than officially acknowledged. I've
read figures like 40x as much.

Does that make those 11 million VW cars caught cheating the politically
accepted pollution equivalent of 440 million cars ?

Another interesting question - if VW was caught doing it, who else is doing it
?

And if other companies (and factories, etc) are doing it, what is the purpose
of the international pollution treaties ? How does it affect the plans to
reduce pollution, given that the numbers that we base our calculations on
might be off by factors of 40x ?

~~~
rcthompson
Nitrous oxide is about 300x more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2[1]. It also
depletes the ozone layer. So yes, this could be a major issue for climate
change.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrous_oxide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrous_oxide)

~~~
refurb
Is nitrous oxide a major component of the nitrogen oxides from car exhaust? I
thought it was mostly nitrogen dioxide (NO2)and dinitrogen tetroxide (N2O4).

I haven't heard of nitrous oxide (N2O) being much of a concern.

------
hackuser
Will the EPA and other automotive regulators test other brands for similar
problems? Perhaps this practice is widespread. Testing them seems obvious, but
I know little about how regulators work.

EDIT: VW isn't the first. From the other story on HN's front page right now
[1]

 _[Caterpillar Inc and Cummins Engine Co] agreed to pay $83.4 million in civil
penalties after federal officials found evidence that they were selling heavy
duty diesel engines equipped with “defeat devices” that allowed the engines to
meet EPA emission standards during testing but disabled the emission control
system during normal highway driving._

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10264894](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10264894)

EDIT2: On queue, from the NY Times: "Volkswagen Test Rigging Follows a Long
Auto Industry Pattern"

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/24/business/international/vol...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/24/business/international/volkswagen-
test-rigging-follows-a-long-auto-industry-pattern.html)

~~~
Shivetya
The EPA has already stated that all diesel passenger cars will be retested. I
think all cars should go through the same complete testing process and by more
than one organizations.

The EPA didn't find this issue, a university testing team did

~~~
e40
Does anyone know how the test was detected? I'm thinking they noticed either
the revving of the engine without the wheels turning or just one set of wheels
were turning.

Hopefully the EPA will test in a real situation, by attaching the test
equipment to the car and actually driving it. That should foil the cheaters.

~~~
tzs
From the EPA's description: "The 'switch' senses whether the vehicle is being
tested or not based on various inputs including the position of the steering
wheel, vehicle speed, the duration of the engine's operation, and barometric
pressure. These inputs precisely track the parameters of the federal test
procedure used for emission testing for EPA certification purposes."

Somewhere I saw a description of the EPA test procedure. It is not just a
simple small set of test points. It is a long sequence of operations, calling
for specific speeds and durations and rates of change simulating a variety of
operating conditions ranging from a wide open freeway to a New York City
traffic jam. I believe I read that the order of the various test segments
might change from test to test, but each segment's parameters were very
strict.

~~~
tlb
But keep in mind it has to detect the test pretty early. Because non-test-mode
emissions are 40x, it has to detect it well before 1/40th of the test is over
or it will dominate the average.

You can see the test schedule at [http://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-
idx?SID=457ac7ef4b94883cc2c...](http://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-
idx?SID=457ac7ef4b94883cc2c6bdca43e80640&mc=true&node=ap40.19.86_11931_686_11999.i&rgn=div9).
It starts with 21 seconds of warm-up at zero speed, which is probably unusual
for real drivers.

~~~
marincounty
The engineer/engineers who pulled this off were pretty slick. I don't condone
the cheat, but I am still trying to figure out how they turned on specific
emmissions devises, or fooled with pulse cycles, etc.

I have a weird feeling it wasn't fool proof, and they're a bunch of VW owners
who failed smog? They brought the auto back, or to a different shop and the
code somehow turned on the right components, leaned out injectors, etc? The
problem is the customer had to pay for this slick trick. These smog tests are
not cheap in my neck of the woods. Every two years, I end up paying close to
$100. They always try to nail me with the "leaky" fuel cap. I just keep a new
one in the back storage area, and bring it out at the right time. I'm an ex-
mechanic so my vechicle always pass the emmission test, but boy, I have had
problems with the visual test.

While I'm here, some of us drive older cars, for a long time. Smog shops in
California are required to have one copy of an Emissions Publication. Most use
use Motor Publications. That manual is filled with errors. It's is the
cheapest emmission manual on the market.

If you happen to fail a visual smog test, go to a smog shop that has access to
Mitchell Emission Smog manuals(OnDemand5). I have yet to find an error in
Mitchell manuals.

(The only reason so many smog shops only buy the Motor publications is because
they are cheap. Any Smog technician will tell you they have found multiple
errors in Motor Emission Publications. Vechicle owners don't have a clue to
this problem, and are just sent home with a failed Smog test, or end up
spending a day taking to CARB--just praying they will get an exemption. All of
this is due to errors in Motor Emission Publications.)

------
harryh
Two things that are surprising to me about this story:

1) The secret was kept for so long. How many programmers were involved with
the relevant code? How many project managers signed off on it? Surely VW does
its own emissions testing internally so some of them must have known. How high
up in management did this go? It seems like it must have been quite a few.
Amazing that none of them got mad and told someone outside the company.

2) I would never have guessed that emissions from a car engine could vary so
widely. 20%? Sure. 50%? Sure. But news outlets are reporting that these cars
are emitting at least 10x and possibly as much as 40x NOx as they should. This
is clearly because of my ignorance of the details of the engineering here, but
I was shocked that such a difference could happen.

~~~
hackuser
> The secret was kept for so long. How many programmers were involved with the
> relevant code? How many project managers signed off on it? Surely VW does
> its own emissions testing internally so some of them must have known. How
> high up in management did this go? It seems like it must have been quite a
> few. Amazing that none of them got mad and told someone outside the company.

We should not be surprised; we need to learn to expect it and manage that
risk. Institutions of all types have long histories of such conspiracies to
cover illicit activity. Think of the many recent financial industry scandals,
the Catholic Church (and Penn State University) covering widespread rape of
children, various military scandals, US government spying on citizens, IT
companies spying on their users, performance enhancing drugs in baseball ...
in fact we should be surprised when someone steps forward.

The #1 rule of any institution is loyalty. Rape will be covered for; blowing
the whistle is a mortal sin. It shouldn't be that way but we can't deal with
these problems until we accept that it's human nature, at least in certain
situations.

EDIT: I don't mean to preach. A certain part of me is always surprised too.

~~~
notvladputin
The used of PEDs in baseball was a well known issue dating back to the 1980s.
Players, front office types, writers, and anyone in the public paying
attention knew about it. I can't comment on the other items, but it's pretty
clear that everyone knew about PEDs but just didn't care enough to ban them.

(That said, my personal opinion is that steroid testing done in baseball is
much more about using the issue as a wedge to weaken the MLB Players
Association, rather than "fixing" the game.)

~~~
hackuser
I don't agree: Back then I was a very knowledgable baseball fan (I probably
could have named almost every player on every team) and I didn't know. I heard
occasional rumors but nothing more persuasive than that, and nothing at all
which indicated, in any convincing way, how widespread it was. When Jose
Conseco talked about it, he was ridiculed as a nutcase and shunned (as
expected; see my comment above about loyalty).

I remember when home runs and offense increased dramatically, to record
levels, and everyone was saying that the ball was juiced - nobody suspected it
was the players who were juiced.

~~~
notvladputin
In 1991, the commissioner tried to institute a policy banning steroids. He
didn't have the authority, so it was no different than if I tried to write
that. But it's a clear indication that MLB was aware of the steroid problem
and tried taking a small step to fix it.

Regarding the "players being juiced", it's never been shown that juiced
players performed better. There have been a number of studies comparing
players who were caught using PEDs, before and after, comparing to clean
players, etc. None of them show any indication that taking steroids helped
players perform better on the field.

If you look at the power-on-contact or ISO of players across periods (the 90s,
00s, current game), you find that there is just as much power on contact in
the game now as before. The different is strikeouts, which is clearly tied to
strike zone enforcement and some other tradeoffs hitters are making now that
teams understand strikeouts are fine if you have power.

I apologize if my tone has some frustration in it, but my pet peeve is people
saying that steroids = strength = McGwire hit ball far. The reality is far
more nuanced, and if you are able to come into the analyses without
preconceived conclusions, it's pretty clear that the 'steroid slugger' era
happened to overlap with the power era, but it does not appear to have driven
the higher rate of home runs and offense during the time.

~~~
hackuser
I don't know about studies, but the evidence is strong. Let's look at home
runs:

* Since 1920 [1], excluding the PED era, only twice have players hit 60 or more home runs in a season and both barely passed the threshold: Babe Ruth hit 60 in 1927 and Roger Maris hit 61 in 1961.

* In the 4 years from 1998 to 2001, the feat was accomplished 6 times by 3 different players (2 very strongly associated with PEDs, the other widely supsected of it), many blowing away the former threshold, hitting 73, 70, 66, 65, 64, and 63 home runs.

* Since PEDs were banned in baseball, only one player has hit more than 55 home runs in a season.

[1] 1920 is when hitters embraced the modern strategy of trying to hit home
runs, led by innovator Babe Ruth. Before that, a period called the 'Dead Ball
Era', they generally just tried to get any hit they could and home runs were
much more rare. Also, there were technological and rule changes which may have
facillitated home run hitting. Before 1919 players regularly led the league
with 10-15 home runs; in 1919 Ruth hit 29, a record at the time and more than
most entire teams hit; in 1920 he hit 54.

~~~
notvladputin
The problem with this type of evidence is that it assumes the single change in
the game was the presence or absence of steroids. To learn more from the data,
check out the references I included at the bottom. The TL;DR is that there is
no compelling statistical evidence that suggests steroids impacted homers, or
offense in general.

The facile argument fails to address the fact that the game underwent
expansion (weakening the average pitcher). The strike zone was changed a
number of times (if you normalize for strikeout rate, the power in today's MLB
is the same as in the 90s). Umpires got a lot better once PitchFX was able
provide them feedback. (Lots were let go as well). Colorado started using a
humidor, reducing home runs at the greatest hitters park of all time.

There's not really any way of knowing who did or did not use. MLB and
mainstream sports media "strongly suspected" PED usage is closer to HUAC
findings than real evidence. Also, it doesn't acknowledge the fact that a lot
of pitchers were found using PEDs.

In short, it's incredibly facile to look at some superficial stats and hints
of suspicion in order to reach the "steroids = homers" conclusion. But when
you look at the underlying component numbers and adjust for the changing
environment in the game, there is no evidence to support that conclusion.
(That does not mean steroids had no effect, just that we cannot detect them
with our best efforts.)

Here's an incredibly strong counter argument from Joe Sheehan's paywalled
newsletter [I added it to pastebin for reference, I doubt Joe will mind].
[http://pastebin.com/DXW0HSSt](http://pastebin.com/DXW0HSSt)

Dan Szymborski is one of the top baseball data analysts in the country. From
[0] (paywall) "Despite the rhetoric surrounding PEDs, players caught for
steroid/testosterone use do not show a pattern of overperforming their
projections in the years leading up to the drug suspension or a pattern of
underperforming their projections in the years after a drug suspension."

In layman's terms, if all you knew about players the past 10-15 years was
their past OPS+ and whether they were busted for steroids -- now or at any
time in the past -- it appears the PEDs had no noticeable effect on the
projection of their future OPS+.

What this means is that, even with the knowledge of what outliers such as
Barry Bonds accomplished while allegedly using performance-enhancing drugs, as
a whole, there's extremely limited evidence of a significant effect on
statistics of the drug users as whole. And without double-blind research
studies of PED use among major leaguers and/or detailed information of what
players are using, all we have to go by so far is the bottom-line results.

Now, none of this should be taken as endorsing the idea that MLB should simply
open the floodgates and allow players to do whatever they want. Instituting
drug testing is a very good thing for the sport -- but that improvement is for
reasons other than the record books, such as the long-term health of players
and the public trust. As far as the record books being tainted by PED use,
well, it appears there isn't much evidence of that."

[0]
[http://insider.espn.go.com/mlb/insider/story/_/id/10922627/m...](http://insider.espn.go.com/mlb/insider/story/_/id/10922627/melky-
cabrera-strong-start-helps-demonstrate-why-peds-really-enhance-performance-
mlb)

------
korisnik
Somewhat relevant, allegations have come out that the German government was
aware of VW cheating on emissions tests

[http://www.independent.ie/world-news/volkswagen-scandal-
germ...](http://www.independent.ie/world-news/volkswagen-scandal-german-
government-accused-of-covering-up-rigged-emissions-data-31552152.html)

~~~
yc1010
I am currently shopping for a car and now need to keep in mind which
brands/models are affected by this fiasco as another factor in my shopping.

Here in Ireland motor tax is based on CO2 emissions

I can see some very very unhappy VW drivers in this country in coming months
if their tax suddenly jumps by an order of magnitude due to this avoidance
scheme putting these cars into the high emission bands

I do wonder how Revenue will handle this, not only some people might find
themselves with a more polluting car but a larger and unexpected tax bill will
impact peoples pockets directly.

~~~
organsnyder
The CO2 amount should remain the same—the issue is with other pollutants that
cause smog. The only reason that CO2 might go up is if the fix involves
increasing fuel consumption. However, you might not even need the fix in
Ireland, as many European countries (as I understand it) have laxer smog
requirements to begin with.

Regardless, though, I wouldn't buy a VW product right now, wherever I lived.

~~~
tadfisher
Euro standards are backwards; they have stricter CO2 emissions regulations,
but are lax on NOx. I'd imagine they don't have a lot of smog events like what
happened in California during the 60s and 70s.

~~~
organsnyder
I wouldn't call them "backwards". They're opposite of the US, but that's
because they're optimizing for reducing a different pollutant. Smog is
certainly undesirable (as an asthmatic, I know that from experience), but CO2
may well have more dire long-term costs.

Of course, the optimal situation would be to tightly regulate both pollutants.

~~~
ars
I would definitely call them backwards.

The amount of extra CO2 from a car running a better NoX system is utterly
irrelevant compared to how much CO2 is emitted.

Trading CO2 for NoX is completely indefensible. NoX is really really bad for
the environment.

------
WalterBright
The emissions standards are particularly inefficient. They say things like
emitting 101ppm is bad and 100 ppm is good. But pollution isn't like that.

A much more practical solution is to annually measure the pollution emitted,
multiply by the number of miles driven in the last year, and multiply by the
tax rate.

What this does is:

1\. cause the consumer to care about the emissions 2\. introduce competition
to have better numbers, rather than merely meeting the standard 3\. enable
higher polluting occasional uses rather than banning them outright

------
ArkyBeagle
Other than border disputes, when has _measurement_ been a political football
before? The nerd in me is happy about this, but the rest of me is kinda ...
sad.

It's also interesting that there appears to be a tradeoff between NOx and CO2
here.

IMO, VW sort of ... prematurely fell on the grenade in a PR way of thinking
about it. Actually proving it as fraud would have taken some doing. Admitting
it up front does not have clear advantages that I see. If we use the GM
keyswitch debacle as a yardstick, there's evidence than being a cheeseball is
rewarded. GM managed to constrain the damage to $99M .

Not saying anyone did the right thing here, but the adversarial approach has
consequences.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
They appear to have been denying it for a year at this point, before they
admitted it. So presumably something happened in that period of time that made
them calculate that admitting it now was better than continuing to deny it.

~~~
whatthesmack
I don't recall where I saw it, but there was mention of 2016 VW TDI models not
getting road certification until the issue was dealt with. Maybe this was
incentive for VW to come clean.

------
DrNuke
Problem is they've got the money and the market, CEO can't resign and get away
with it, they should pay back all plus a hefty fine. This is much too common
nowadays, big corps have no face and are too big to fail, no one is directly
accountable and geopolitics are at stake. Hit them hard in the monies, would
say, but the risk is fear and a market bubble.

------
floor__
As bad as it is to screw the environment.. I am still shocked by all the out
rage coming from countries. Its like everyone forgot GM knowingly left faulty
parts that were killing people for 10 years. This entire thing seems so
political.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Diesel pollution is deadly. And it seems that more people at a higher level
are complicit in this scandal than in the GM one.

Besides which, what does it matter how bad GM was? This scandal stands on its
own.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque)

~~~
floor__
Yeah that is kinda my point. I am upset that GM wasn't held to this standard
of accountability or any other car company for that matter. I agree with you
that this one is as bad or worse.

------
JustSomeNobody
Really? 11M vehicles affected and you knew nothing about it and you simply get
to resign?

I'm growing more and more disappointed in the world we are living in.

------
hodder
[1] Winterkorn studied metallurgy and metal physics at the University of
Stuttgart from 1966 to 1973. From 1973 to 1977 he was a PhD student at the
Max-Planck-Institute for Metal Research and Metal Physics, where he received
his doctorate in 1977.

Winterkorn embarked on his career in 1977, as a specialist assistant in the
research division "Process Engineering" at Robert Bosch GmbH.[4] From 1978 to
1981, he headed the refrigerant compressor development group "Substances and
Processes" at Robert Bosch and Bosch-Siemens-Hausgeräte GmbH.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Winterkorn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Winterkorn)

------
jhallenworld
I wish this scandal would somehow add pressure to clean up ship and truck
pollution. VW is having severe consequences, but their contribution to the
problem might not be that significant:

[http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/apr/09/shipping-...](http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/apr/09/shipping-
pollution)

[http://www.ucsusa.org/clean-vehicles/california-and-
western-...](http://www.ucsusa.org/clean-vehicles/california-and-western-
states/diesel-trucks-air-pollution.html)

------
deegles
I'm expecting a snarky press release from Tesla any moment now...

~~~
TeMPOraL
They'll probably start installing NOx emitters in their cars - with defeat
devices that will make them active only during tests) - in order to bring
Teslas in line with the rest of the industry.

------
Scramblejams
He was only in his job for about 5 months, but I'm not familiar with his
previous work history at VW. Was he in some significant sense responsible for
the scandal by way of his prior responsibilities? Or is his resignation, for
lack of a better way I can think of to put it, an honor move?

Edit: Thanks for the clarifications, all. Although he assumed Ferdinand
Piëch's former position as chairman in April 2015, he was VW's CEO since 2007.

~~~
pc86
He has said publicly that he is not aware of any wrong-doing on his part. I
imagine that just about any board would require just about any CEO to resign
after something like this, though.

~~~
Scramblejams
When it comes to a relatively new CEO, I'm not so sure about that. GM didn't
require Mary Barra's resignation over the ignition switch scandal, for
example. (Though admittedly that one was smaller than VW's.)

Edit: Winterkorn took over as chairman of the supervisory board of VW in
April, but as petewailes pointed out, he's been CEO since 2007, so his
resignation makes more sense.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Is it the difference between deliberate/undefendable and simple cost savings?
I'm not very familiar with the switch issue.

------
arbuge
There is usually more than one cockroach in the kitchen if you spot one. I
wonder how many other aspects of their software they messed with in ways they
probably shouldn't have...

------
largote
What surprises me is that VW thought they wouldn't be caught doing this, it
took a while but it seems like sooner or later someone would figure it out.

------
jschulenklopper
Well, you could say that Volkswagen implemented an A/B test on the emission
control, but with an unfortunate population segmentation.

------
gherkin0
Does anyone have an technical details on what their "defeat device" was
actually doing (like what systems it was disabling)?

~~~
thrownaway2424
It doesn't disable anything, it just uses a different engine management map
that runs the engine hotter or leaner (probably both) to get more power and
better fuel economy while producing more NOx.

------
emodendroket
I just can't see how someone sits down and green-lights this decision. It
seems like it'd be sure to come out eventually.

~~~
jtriangle
It's market demand for efficient yet sporty cars. They saw a market and made
their cars dominate that market. To that end they were wildly successful, so
if you set aside any ideological barriers that would speak against creating
more pollution than is allowed, it's a fairly logical decision.

~~~
emodendroket
Yes, but what's not logical is cheating by means that seem so blatant as to be
sure to be discovered and potentially vaporizing all the gains you made by
cheating in the first place.

~~~
jtriangle
Weirdly enough, it wasn't the EPA that caught them, so they were doing a good
job hiding it from the people that are in charge of finding these things out.

So you could say, they would have gotten away with it if it weren't for those
meddling kids!

------
twblalock
I would be very surprised if VW was the only company that did this.

I hope this is a catalyst for the EPA to change to real-world emissions
testing.

~~~
Kenji
'a catalyst for [...] emissions testing'

Hahaha, that is a fantastic pun that lightens up the mood of this comment
section.

------
mtgx
And if all of that wasn't bad enough to make you dislike VW, they've now hired
BP oil spill lawyers to defend them:

[http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/sep/23/volkswagen-h...](http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/sep/23/volkswagen-
hires-kirkland-ellis-to-defend-emissions-cases)

~~~
ArkyBeagle
Well, yeah.

------
paulojreis
Is he going to jail?

------
iamleppert
I think someone at the EPA should be held liable for their lousy testing
practices. They test cars on a dyno, which is far from real-world testing.
They would have easily caught this if they tested cars in the way and same
environment that they are driven.

I fully expect corporations to try and skirt the law whenever possible, that's
why we have institutions like the EPA. Their practices need to be sound and
tamper-proof. It's not impossible. It's engineering 101.

The head of the EPA should resign in disgrace for letting this situation get
this far.

~~~
robwilliams
I mean, they caught it. This is a win for the EPA.

~~~
setpatchaddress
Well, they didn't catch it, but when it was brought to their attention, they
verified it and went after VW. This exposed a gap in their their testing
practices, but the overall process certainly worked as it should.

------
simi_
Edit: Thank you for the several downvotes.

I initially wrote a stupid rant based on this [0] about how VW's ex-CEO
doesn't speak English, but a quick Youtube search proved that was wrong [1].
Oops!

I'll just leave some quick facts that I dug up in the process:

* VW just had another scandal that made it to HN recently, regarding hiding security vulnerabilities [2]

* VW Group numbers for 2014: €204B of which €12.7B revenue, 583k employees [3]

* the board made some weird-ass declarations about the ex-CEO [4]

My confidence in VW is shaken to the point that I'll never buy another car
from them again (I didn't like how they artificially segment the market by
owning Audi/VW/Skoda/etc anyway), but how do other German manufacturers
compare? [5]

0: [http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/17/9347275/auto-industry-
meet...](http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/17/9347275/auto-industry-meet-the-
apple-effect)

1:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEPJluU09RU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEPJluU09RU)

2: [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-14/vw-has-
spe...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-14/vw-has-spent-two-
years-trying-to-hide-a-big-security-flaw)

3:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Group](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Group)

4: [http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/23/9383835/volkswagen-
board-s...](http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/23/9383835/volkswagen-board-
statement-diesel-scandal)

5: [http://finance.yahoo.com/news/volkswagen-may-not-only-
car-18...](http://finance.yahoo.com/news/volkswagen-may-not-only-
car-185400060.html)

~~~
mason55
> _I didn 't like how they artificially segment the market by owning
> Audi/VW/Skoda/etc anyway_

How is this different from Honda/Acura, GM/Cadillac, or Toyota/Lexus?

~~~
joezydeco
Not just GM/Cadillac, but GM/Chevrolet/Buick/GMC/Opel/Vauxhall/Holden/Cadillac

~~~
function_seven
I miss the old days:

GM/Chevrolet/Buick/GMC/Opel/Vauxhall/Holden/Cadillac/Oldsmobile/Pontiac/Hummer/Saturn/Saab

~~~
joezydeco
What, no love for Geo? =)

~~~
ams6110
Those were actually Toyotas.

~~~
joezydeco
More than Toyotas...

"Geo models were manufactured by GM in joint ventures with three Japanese
automakers. The Prizm was produced at the GM/Toyota joint-venture NUMMI
assembly plant in Fremont, California, and the Metro and Tracker were produced
at the GM/Suzuki joint-venture CAMI assembly plant in Ingersoll, Ontario. The
exceptions, the Spectrum and Storm, were entirely manufactured by Isuzu in
Japan. Geo Metro convertibles and early Geo Trackers were built by Suzuki in
Japan."

Postscript: The NUMMI plant is now owned by Tesla.

------
vaadu
GM killed more than 100 people with a known defective ignition switch.
Volkswagen killed ... the air.

Guess which company will get the greater penalty from the US government?

BTW, GM spends significantly more on lobbying and campaign contributions to
political candidates.

Source: OpenSecrets <a
href="[https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000042113&a...](https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000042113&amp;cycle=A">Volkswagen</a>)
and <a
href="[https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000000155&a...](https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000000155&amp;cycle=A">GM</a>)

~~~
jeromeflipo
Seriously? Just in France, diesel emissions kill 42,000 persons every year
[0]. In California, they kill at 1,500 to 2,400 people a year [1].

It might be possible that these estimations rely on measurements communicated
by the manufacturers (i.e underestimated by 40x)!

[0]
[http://www.lemonde.fr/sante/article/2013/03/02/diesel-42000-...](http://www.lemonde.fr/sante/article/2013/03/02/diesel-42000-morts-
prematurees-chaque-annee-en-france_1841726_1651302.html)

[1] [http://www.arb.ca.gov/research/diesel/diesel-
health.htm](http://www.arb.ca.gov/research/diesel/diesel-health.htm)

~~~
happyscrappy
European cities have much worse air pollution than American ones because they
went with diesels instead of hybrids in an attempt to be more green and partly
because of German auto lobbying.

