VW Emissions Scandal Thread V2

[punyXpress]

The EA189 engineer has pleaded guilty. The court papers (linked within the article) make interesting reading in the extensive cover up:-

Volkswagen engineer charged in emissions probe

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-37320113

 

Just how much is VW paying Liang not to tell the full sordid story ?

ie: to take the rap.

Edited 12 September, 2016 by punyXpress

[PaveyArk]

Diesel doesn't have a dirty little secret - it is what it is, city air quality is better than it has ever been in the developed world since the middle ages - lowering air quality limits to a point where no cost effective tech. can meet them doesn't make them dirty or bad - that is just the political game being played where objective assessment of the risks no longer matters and is replaced with vacuous irrational emotional appeals and the promulgation of lies/factoids. Ban private diesel cars outright and the air quality limits will still be missed because their emissions are a minority contributor.

 

Neodymium has a very dirty radioactive waste secret, all current EV batteries are nasty, solar PV panels have a toxic wasteland dirty secret, turbines have a bird chopping bat lung exploding dirty secret, solar concentrators have a dirty bird incineration secret. Describing any of these things as green or environmentally friendly is the height of hypocrisy.

All these so called green and environmentally friendly power sources won't even scratch the surface of our insatiable demand for power. After all, you still need to build enough conventional power stations to generate when the sun isn't shining or wind blowing.

With the current options available we should just bite the bullet and build the nuclear power stations required for guaranteed energy requirements. Long term, quite possibly a lot safer than continued CO2 emissions.

[Ootohere]

They are a bit late now because they dithered for years and nothing new will generate electricity for years.

 

They might as well get on with the Carbon Capture Schemes that were ready to go ahead.

http://bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-37306766

http://bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-34943034

Then the UK being a island nation or 4 nations there is always tides. 

Day & Night.

http://bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-37321639

Edited 12 September, 2016 by GoneOffSKi

[lol-lol]

I thought the VW CFO spoke very well on Bloomberg....

 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-12/how-to-pay-15b-in-fines-and-fund-electric-cars-ask-vw-s-cfo

 

 

VW CFO Explains How to Take a $20 Billion Hit and Fund E-Cars

 

http://bloom.bg/2c4LAh8

 

VW Far From Fully Overcoming Crisis, Says CFO Witter

 

• Witter’s challenge is spurring growth while paying for crisis
• CFO says VW is using the scandal as a ‘catalyst for change’

Last October, Frank Witter got a late-night e-mail that sounded equally daunting and thrilling.  The mail invited Witter to a 9 a.m. meeting at Braunschweig airport, a half-hour’s drive from Volkswagen AG’s Wolfsburg headquarters. By the end of the day, Witter -- at the time the head of VW’s financial-services division -- had been named chief financial officer of the entire 12-brand group, taking on one of Germany’s toughest jobs.

Frank Witter interviewed on Sept. 9.

 

Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg

At the time of his appointment, the company Witter had served for decades was staring into the abyss. VW’s admission that it had rigged millions of diesel engines to cheat on emissions tests had felled its CEO and was hammering the stock price, and speculation was swirling that VW, a cornerstone of Germany’s engineering pride, might unravel altogether.  As CFO, it falls to Witter to figure out how to fund the innovation needed to succeed in a rapidly changing auto market -- electric vehicles, driverless technology and ride-sharing services -- while digesting an unprecedented 18 billion-euro hit ($20 billion) from fines and other costs related to the scandal. That means enforcing much stricter financial discipline on an organization accustomed to unbridled spending and engineering excess.

 

Moving Mountain

“The mountain is moving,” Witter said in his first extended interview since taking the job. “Maybe not as fast as I’d wish as CFO, but it’s moving.”   The challenges are immense. VW has set aside 17.8 billion euros to cover costs related to the scandal, but Witter said the total damage remains difficult to predict, even if the company now has a better grasp on the risks. Sales, meanwhile, have plunged in the U.S., Brazil, and Russia. In China, VW’s largest market, competition is intensifying as demand for new cars ebbs after years of rapid growth.

 

Click here to see the Bloomberg Television interview with Witter

 

Succeeding Hans Dieter Poetsch, who moved up to the chairman post, Witter took over as CFO two weeks after U.S. authorities revealed the company had manipulated emissions tests with a so-called defeat device, which was installed in as many as 11 million diesel cars globally. The scandal erupted just as VW was about to dethrone Toyota Motor Corp. as the world’s bestselling automaker after almost a decade of empire building through acquisitions and a strong focus on aggressive sales growth.

With the money for fines starting to fly out of the door in the fourth quarter, Witter is the financial gatekeeper for the company’s strategy. The 57-year-old also directly oversees projects including an effort to bundle together the sprawling components operations and evaluate the future structure of an equally complicated portfolio of assets. A year into the scandal, VW’s structure remains intact. While the new leadership has vowed to direct more power to regions and units, the company wasn’t forced into emergency disposals.  To reflect elevated financial risks, Witter doubled VW’s targeted average net liquidity to 20 billion euros to help ensure funding in volatile markets and protect credit ratings.

Bloated Costs

Witter is “challenging the status quo, trying to break down some of these thick walls in Wolfsburg,” said Arndt Ellinghorst, a London-based analyst at Evercore ISI, who has a buy rating on the stock. “Witter stands for focus and discipline which is what VW needs -- not just talk change but to actually get it done.”  Still, the fallout from the year-long crisis has left a visible mark on the manufacturer. VW’s stock price is down by 27 percent over the past 12 months, cutting its market value by some $17 billion. And after rating agencies downgraded VW amid mounting financial risks, Witter said the company -- previously among the busiest issuers of debt -- was effectively locked out of the corporate bond market.

Edited 12 September, 2016 by lol-lol

[Ryeman]

Bargaining over jail time tends concentrate the mind and loosen tongues.....and they're GERMANS!

[Ryeman]

Engineering challenges for the trucking industry's emissions

http://www.transportengineer.org.uk/article-images/116005/Next_generation_engines.pdf

I guess the lobbying industry will be grateful for the extra work.

[Breezy_Pete]

Very interesting Ryeman, thanks.

[Aspman]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/09/12/vw_engineer_state_witness_in_dieselgate/

 

 

A Volkswagen engineer has agreed to spill the details of his involvement in the VW emissions scandal.

Former engineer James Robert Liang took a plea deal with the US federal government to cooperate with its ongoing investigation of how the German carmaker cheated American emissions tests and passed off its "clean diesel" engines as meeting state and government clean air standards.

 

That'll be the first one. Just waiting now for someone to turn on the execs.

 

[Ootohere]

I await any mention yet of the top man in charge of VW  North America from 2007-2010 until he huffed off to head Volvo then to a very senior position in GM.

I seem to be the only one ever mentioning him in relation to the VW Euro 5 Emission in TDI's threads.

 

Stefan Jacoby.  

http://sg.linkedin.com/in/stefanjacoby

The man that announced & launched the new greener VW diesels in the US. 

The buck stops here type person.

(Crowd fund soap on a rope for him maybe. Uplugged or plugged, only time will tell.)

Edited 13 September, 2016 by GoneOffSKi

[Ootohere]

'Sings like a canary'.  Nice for the VW seniors that now believe in honesty.  

I wonder how many will be taking their families to Disney World any time soon.

  'It wisna me, i wisna there, i never seen nothing, i was just in charge, bad boys and girls did it.'

that is the VW way..

http://theregister.co.uk/2016/09/12/vw_engineer_state_witness_in_dieselgate

Edited 13 September, 2016 by GoneOffSKi

[Breezy_Pete]

And yet you just bought another VW, no? Ever heard the phrase "vote with your feet"? :p

[Ootohere]

Not me, i leased one.  I will not own it.

 No need to cut off your nose to spite your face if there is money to be saved and you get what you need.

[Breezy_Pete]

[Ryeman]

The yanks are being looked after on the buyback .......advice to hold til the last minute

http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1106078_why-vw-diesel-buyback-pays-owners-to-keep-their-cars-for-two-more-years

[Tony R]

Is anyone else using Solicitors and Leigh Day in particular in group action for owners affected by dieselgate. I am and as messaged a few weeks ago on this thread, have not heard from them since March, so I sent them an e mail of reasonable length, supplying my full name and vehicle details and today received a response referring to their having received my blank e mail "as shown underneath" which was anything but blank and which they were sending back to me clearly showing was not blank. In addition their e mail asked for my address and details enabling them to trace me, all of which my appended blank e mail contained. So I must confess I am more than rather " confused " as the result of the content of the first e mail from them in over six months. So I ask if anyone else is registered with a firm of solicitors who supposedly are acting on behalf of " victims " of VAG's misbehaviour and what has their experience been?.

[TallAds]

Had a conversation with VWFS this morning. They have someone tasked especially to deal with emissions queries. They will read you a carefully drafted statement about how VW/Skoda/whoever are working to rebuild customer relations (blah,blah blah) and how the performance of the vehicle is not affected on the road, only in test procedures. Not really able to give a satisfactory answer I pointed out that Skoda UK haven't been in touch for months, and the dealer have no information and the aim is to leave the car unaffected, how does that show rebuilding of trust?

When I ask why there is even a fix if the vehicle is only affected in test conditions, and is it not the case that the NOx figures published are based on these test conditions which are in no way reflected by vehicle performance on the road due to this 'defeat device'? The response was that the NOx figures are not published in the UK sales literature, so basically pi$$ off.

Maybe this is the case that they are not published, but the EU5 spec was, and just because something is not published does not mean it was not part of the compliance information for the vehicle, or in any way important. The literature doesn't explicitly state that the wheels will not fall off at 90mph, but i'd be unhappy if they did!

[Ryeman]

I still think the cheat made the non U.S. standard very easily, but now 'just', because the bar wasn't that high: so that would confirm the on-road v test multiple will not be as extreme as the often quoted 35-40 times........maybe 10-15 now.

They've said all along that outside of the U.S. there's nothing to compensate for with regard to on road power and torque, but if VW used the cheat to claim a lower consumption and CO2 figure, maybe they still have a problem.

[punyXpress]

Yesterday was the first anniversary of the scandal hitting the fan.

[ejstubbs]

Surprised no-one has posted this yet:

 

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/sep/19/many-car-brands-emit-more-pollution-than-volkswagen-report-finds

 

A year on from the “Dieselgate” scandal that engulfed Volkswagen, damning new research reveals that all major diesel car brands, including Fiat, Vauxhall and Suzuki, are selling models that emit far higher levels of pollution than the shamed German carmaker.

 

(Utterly not surprised by the article itself, though.)

Edited 19 September, 2016 by ejstubbs

[Ryeman]

^^^^^^^Did they use a cheat during the certification process?.

[ejstubbs]

Who knows?

 

VAG were singled out from a study of three vehicles - two VWs and a BMW - performed in the US in 2014.  No other manufacturers' vehicles were involved in those tests.  Eventually, as a result of the test findings, VAG acknowledged the existence of the defeat device to the US EPA early in September 2015.  The DfT report of 2016 which was commissioned as a result states that, outside of VAG: "Our tests have not detected evidence of test cycle manipulation strategies as used by the Volkswagen Group [outside of the ."  As any scientist worth their salt will tell you, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.  It's also worth noting that other defeat strategies were not reported to have been investigated: they only looked to see if anyone else was doing what VAG did.  (As a side note, the Euro 6 VW Golf they tested, and which they concluded did not have a defeat device, came the third-best out of the 19 Euro 6 vehicles they tested.)

 

The fact that VAG come out of the 'real world' tests reported in the link in my previous post rather better than a lot of other manufacturers is really just further evidence - if evidence were needed - that the lab-based certification tests were never fit for purpose in the first place.  Even if the other manufacturers managed to pass the tests without cheating, it doesn't mean that their engines were less polluting in real-world use.  (In that context, it's worth reading Annex A of the DfT report which explains the various different definitions of "defeat device" between the US, the EC and the UN-ECE, as well as highlighting the common wordings and the allowable exceptions.)

[Ryeman]

VW may cease diesel sales in the U.S.

http://www.thecarconnection.com/news/1106174_volkswagen-dieselgate-update-1-year-later-u-s-diesels-dead#src=10065

[Ryeman]

It was 'known' 7 years ago

http://www.carsguide.com.au/car-news/volkswagen-diesel-cheat-was-known-seven-years-ago-42276

[lol-lol]

It was 'known' 7 years ago

http://www.carsguide.com.au/car-news/volkswagen-diesel-cheat-was-known-seven-years-ago-42276

We knew catalitic converters did not work at low ambient temperatures quarter of a century ago.

[Tony R]

VW may cease diesel sales in the U.S.

http://www.thecarconnection.com/news/1106174_volkswagen-dieselgate-update-1-year-later-u-s-diesels-dead#src=10065

And market  diesels  under the Skoda  brand instead. Skoda have not been sold in America as yet but the Kandiaq apparently will be sold in America, probably the forerunner of other Skoda models?