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German Automakers Formed a Secret Cartel In the '90s To Collude On Diesel Emissions, Says Report (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Last week, Der Spiegel published an explosive report alleging that the major German automakers formed a secret cartel in the 1990s to collude on diesel emissions. These companies, including Volkswagen, Audi, BMW, Porsche, and Daimler, met in secret working groups to discuss "the technology, costs, suppliers, and even the exhaust gas purification of its diesel vehicles," the German weekly reported. The meetings were disclosed to German competition officials in letters from VW and Daimler and viewed by Der Spiegel. The secret meetings "laid the basis" for the 2015 diesel emission cheating scandal, in which VW was caught installing secret software in more than half a million vehicles sold in the US that it used to fool exhaust emissions tests. The admission of cheating ultimately cost the automaker tens of billions of dollars in fines and legal fees, making it one of the most expensive corporate scandals in history.
Years earlier, VW participated in dozens of secret meetings with its competitors, involving over 200 employees in up to 60 working groups, on how to meet increasingly tough emissions criteria in diesel vehicles. The automakers may have colluded to fix prices of a diesel emission treatment called AdBlue through these working groups, Der Spiegel says. Specifically, VW (which owns Porsche and Audi), Daimler (which owns Mercedes-Benz and Smart), and BMW allegedly agreed to use AdBlue tanks that were too small. AdBlue is a liquid solution used to counteract a vehicle's emissions.
Years earlier, VW participated in dozens of secret meetings with its competitors, involving over 200 employees in up to 60 working groups, on how to meet increasingly tough emissions criteria in diesel vehicles. The automakers may have colluded to fix prices of a diesel emission treatment called AdBlue through these working groups, Der Spiegel says. Specifically, VW (which owns Porsche and Audi), Daimler (which owns Mercedes-Benz and Smart), and BMW allegedly agreed to use AdBlue tanks that were too small. AdBlue is a liquid solution used to counteract a vehicle's emissions.
...when ignorant politicians and regulators set emission goals that are apparently impossible to reach with current technology or far too expensive to include in a consumer vehicle.
If it is any other country/company we could blame it on "low level team cheating" or "midlevel managers were scared to tell the higher level managers the truth" or "simple incompetence and cowboy attitude towards laws".
But in Germany, in VW, these stories do not add up. Given the documentation they do and the way they follow the orders, the cheating was done with full knowledge and compliance of everyone all the way to the top. VW buys our software. I see their acceptance testing reports and how much they test, document and demand explanations. Not only they document, they refer to the docs and use them all the time.
No way the VW diesel cheating was the work of some rogue team in some isolated division. It went all the way up the company, now it appears, it went all the way up the entire damned industry.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Drive behind most diesel cars more than a few years old and you know it is all bs.
Sometimes I am quick enough to switch to recirculation, and at other times you must sit in the stench for a long time. Some even gets pissed when you overtake them to get away from their stench and the black plumes of smoke they emit when they accelerate.
The faster diesel cars get banned, the better. Sadly, too many here in the EU drives diesel cars.
I remember posting about it back when VW diesel cheating was making rounds.
The article is mixing up two different things, and pretending that they are connected. Der Spiegel says that the automakers met in secret to discuss “the technology, costs, suppliers, and even the exhaust gas purification of its diesel vehicles." Then, separately, VW implemented a cheating system to dodge the emissions testing, with other automakers doing similar things, although to lesser degrees.
But the article implies that these two things are connected. Documentation, however, pretty well shows that the original plan of VW was to buy a license for the Mercedes "blueTec" technology, but they abandoned this plan when the Chief Operating Officer changed, who favored using their own developed technology (TDI). TDI didn't work as well as expected, necessitating the cheat.
Der Spiegel attempts to imply that the collusions were to agree on how to cheat, but from the evidence, it looks like the "collusion" was exactly the opposite of what Der Spiegel implies: the "collusion" was to collaborate on technology to avoid producing emissions, but when that collaboration fell apart, they shifted to cheating.
New York Times article here: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/1...
Wall Street Journal article here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/v...
Is this just the natural result of unrealistic or even impossible regulations devised by leftist bureaucrats being forced on companies?
Basically: no.
The regulations were neither unrealistic nor impossible. Gasoline powered cars, for example, met the regulations easily.
The companies involved, however, thought that they could meet the emissions standards using diesel engines. Old-fashioned diesel engines are classically dirty and polluting (although also simple and efficient)-- but new "clean diesel" technology was being developed.
VW, however, chose not to license the Mercedes technology and instead develop their own clean diesel approach... which turned out not to work as well as they had anticipated in stopping nitric oxide emissions. So they cheated.
It's easy for regulators to create policies demanding that unrealistic, if not outright impossible, goals be met.
It wasn't a case of regulations that couldn't be met-- it was a case of VW's "not invented here" syndrome.
You do have to pay attention to the fact that the "collusion" in the Spiegel article was not companies colluding on cheating: it was companies colluding on using each others technologies (which VW eventually decided not to do).
I am a leftist and will never validate any kind of generic nonsense on the lines of the parent poster one. I will also never justify any kind of cheating, much less the one coming from a multinational company and much less the one involving an environmental damage. But engine companies are actually not able to meet the emission targets, certainly not by keeping their clients happy (clients say in loud voice that they want lower emissions, but will never accept a notable power reduction in their cars). It is also true that most of emission targets are determined by political interests with low-to-no realistic technical knowledge.
I worked on this field some years ago and the fact that the upcoming targets, the ones being applied now and in the near future, were almost impossible to be met was a quite common belief in the industry. Also note that big companies only want benefits; they certainly don't care about the environment, but don't want to be fined and get bad press either.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.