irenesbob

I agree. Audi survived the unintended acceleration issue which (if real) would directly and immediately have endangered lives. My take is that consumers may howl for a year or two about any "scandal", but in the long run as long as the "offending" company cleans up its act it is "business as usual". Unfortunately for VW, part of "business as usual" may well be seeing more US sales going to competing Japanese, Korean and now US brands, especially once the (in my view) temporary low cost of gas is history.
VW has got to up its game in terms of reliability, repair costs and fuel economy.

BrentCPA

I suspect this is mostly angry puffing by one guy who is probably feeling the pressure. It was incredibly short sighted to make a statement like that and I am sure he is going to hear it from the Board. Internally I think VAG has always considered themselves better than Toyota, Honda, etc. but they had to "dumb down" their fleet to make it affordable for the masses. I doubt that everyone agreed with that marketing shift and a statement like this is almost certainly a product of that dissension. I personally preferred the boutique VWs, as well, but I also bought a diesel 2012 VW Passat after Motor Trend made it the car of the year. I kept it less than a year, however, because the seats were awful and it lacked the sex appeal of my Audis.

I think VAG can weather this storm much as Toyota survived their crisis, but they will need to present a united front; statements like this paint a picture of a house divided and, to me at least, that is much more alarming for the future of the brand.

directorguy7

Gotta say this whole thing is getting a little stupid. Leave it to 'Murica to bitch and moan like never before on something really trivial when compared to what other car brands have covered up involving deaths, safety violations. It MIGHT be even a little ok if the country even cared about the environment like the rest of the adult world. Just so much whiny contradictions and irony its ridiculous.

irenesbob

I tend to agree. For me this "scandal" re: emissions is pretty minor, and I am a "hair shirt" "tree-hugging" liberal (well usually). Pinto's with exploding gas tanks on rear end collisions was something worth a fuss IMO

snagitseven

It's an election year. Politics abound.

2014a6tdi

Here in 'merica we're actually setting the emissions standards. The new euro standards actually harmonize with US standards as they've been more lax.

The bottom line is VW shouldn't have signed on the certification line when it came to their diesels. 'merica didn't hold a gun to their head saying "you must bring diesel". If you can meet the standards, welcome. If you cannot, don't bring the cars here. Comparing this to death and safety violations is a false premise argument.

This is not a time for VW to renegotiate emissions standards they evidently had no desire to meet initially. This is not bitching and whining, its the law. If you don't like it, then lobby your representatives to change it.

Sportstick

Respectfully, I think some are missing the point. If VW had reported emissions non-compliance of equal magnitude from a component failure, normal service campaign/recall actions would have ensued with little additional fuss. The assessment of this event is not the degree of harm. Comparing an emissions variance to loss of life from other manufacturer's design shortcomings is not the proper analogy. The issue here is, in modern automotive industry history, this is the most egregious conspiracy by a manufacturer to intentionally commit fraud and violate government regulations. When a company undertakes to engage in that kind of blatantly illegal action, whether for emissions or safety, the rule of law may be expected to react with severity.

Fahrer

Defeat devices have been used by numerous auto producers many times over the years. This one was simply more sophisticated. It is true that it is clearly a violation but it is not the same as when one of the "big 3" decided it was calculated to be less expensive to pay for lawsuits from accident fatalities rather than pay too re-engineer a poorly designed safety related car part to prevent the fatalities. The ironic part is that this recent event will be orders of magnitude more costly to VW than the fines paid for the previously described event.

2014a6tdi

If the proper solution added $5K per car and VW has sold half a million cars, that's $2.5B.

Reason for cheating == cheaper car == more sales/higher margins. VW stated they thought the fine was going to be ~$100M

Lets say they clear $12K per car (20% GM likely low), that means their profit was $6B. If they would have passed the $5K on, how many less would they have sold? (1/2?) $3B profit. That's $2.9B up for grabs after token fine. Tough to argue against cheating, amiright?

If the fines aren't setup to not only destroy the additional sales lost + some punitive stuffs, I don't know how you give the emissions standards teeth to prevent it happening again. $100M fine almost encourages it.

Fahrer

The initial fine estimates were in the $37K per ( violating) car range.

Volkswagen won't pay the US $18 billion in fines for cheating on emissions tests - Business Insider