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Volkswagen Could Face $18 Billion Fine Over Emission-Cheating Software
After getting caught cheating on emissions testing by means of software, Volkswagen could face up to $18 billion in fines, reports USA Today. That number is based on the company being assessed the maximum penalty of $37,500 per affected vehicle. That's not the only bad news for Volkswagen, which has halted sales of its 4-cylinder diesel cars; the linked article reports that the violations "could also invite charges of false marketing by regulators, a vehicle recall and payment to car owners, either voluntarily or through lawsuits. Volkswagen advertised the cars under the 'Clean Diesel' moniker. The state of California is also investigating the emissions violations."
The $18B doesn't cover the cost of 500,000 customers who not only got ripped off, but also were exposed to dangerous levels of harmful fumes. This is a torts lawyer wet dream.
Ripped off by getting better performance than they would have if the emissions controls were in 'test mode' all the time?
And, if you're worried about 'harmful fumes', you wouldn't have bought a stinky, polluting, smoke-spewing diesel in the first place.
"The state of California is also investigating the emissions violations"
Oh boy are they in trouble now. I've heard they're worse than the Feds when it comes to issues like these.
No sig for you! Come back one year!
In October 2012 I bought a new car. it was a close decision between the VW Jetta TDI and Ford Fiesta. The slightly better highway mileage on the Jetta was the deciding factor for me.
Ford probably lost a sale because of this deception.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
18 USC section 1031 would apply if Volkswagen obtained any EPA credits or other direct gain as a result of this testing.
I skimmed through the Federal Test Procedures, and didn't find an explicit rule saying "car should be in normal operating mode", however, I did not search exhaustively, and this is a SECRET mode. It isn't a turbo switch you push, it's picking up on the exact sequence of RPMs performed during FTP. It definitely violated the intent of the EPA regulations, which were explicitly stated to be "accurately simulating real-world conditions". There is no reason for this to exist except to sell cars that violate EPA regulations, and I don't think "you didn't write a law specifically against it" should stop them from getting fined.
Not for diesels, which is what we are talking about here. In this case the American standards are stricter.
The American standards are different. They focus on emissions per gallon burned, not per mile traveled. I have yet to see a study which shows that this actually produces less pollution than the european standard, but I would be interested in such a thing.
To me, this is like the argument over THC and driving. OK, criminalize use before/while driving... if you can show that it causes accidents. Well, is this actually causing more pollution?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Which Beetles are you referring to? The older first gen beetles, with the air cooled flat four chirped because the stock exhaust pipes had perforated baffles that whistled as the exhaust gas flowed through. Replace those tailpipes with, say straight pipe, and the chirp went away. My dad's '61 didn't chirp after he put on some flared stainless pipes. Valves faces and seats aren't lubricated by oil. The valve guides and stems are, but the faces are not. Unless the piston rings are bad. You may be referring to the cylinder behind the oil cooler, which I believe is number 3. It would starve for cooling air and the exhaust valve would eventually fail, popping the valve head off the stem and frag the cylinder. My '70 did that. Good times.
We have algae that can turn cellulose grown on scrubland into a direct substitute for gasoline (butanol), we can make biofuel substitute for diesel. But there is no serious investment that way, only token efforts.
No, it's worse than that; Butamax, a holding company owned by BP and DuPont, managed to get a patent on the process for efficiently producing butanol and are now actively preventing Gevo (a GE energy ventures subsidiary) from making butanol fuel and selling it to the public, which they would like to be doing right now — on a small scale at first, but ramping up over time.
BP, some of the most evil fucks ever, and DuPont, more of the most evil fucks ever, are actively preventing us from having the best biofuel we could be burning.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Not really. The US actually has stricter regulations than the EU across a number of major areas, like air pollution standards for power plants (definitely not a "tiny, select area[]" by anyone's definition), The US' Endangered Species Act is stronger and more comprehensive than the EU's. Even where standards are technically higher under EU directives than US federal environmental policy, such as in drinking water, failure to meet those standards is rampant, particularly in Eastern European countries.
Maybe if the shareholders were held responsible for things like this, then they'd pick managers less likely to endorse such behavior.
Learn to love Alaska
If stockholders held any actual power in a company, I'd be fine with making fines punitive for stockholders.
But we live in a world where senior management in collusion with the board have essentially stripped shareholders of any power. Most shareholder initiated proxies are non-binding, when they're allowed at all. Boards routinely rubber stamp management decisions-- mostly because they are so often comprised of managers from other companies (boards have more recursion than CompSci 3104).
The idea that officers don't know what might be happening seems a practical truth, but it flies in the face of stratospheric executive salaries justified with the general logic that CEOs and senior management are geniuses, singularly responsible for the success and advancement of their organizations. If they want to get paid as if that was true, they should face the concomitant assignment of responsibility.
Saying "they didn't know" seems to be a failure of management (the verb) -- failure to setup adequate reporting and oversight processes.
Further, in this specific case it seems unlikely that a rogue employee or even rogue engineering group would have been unlikely to be solely responsible. The scale of risk, cost remediation and fixing the problem (emissions) correctly seems to have been something that would have naturally bubbled up through management.