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VW "Clean" Diesel not really clean

Reli said:
I only use my climate control like once every 1 or 2 weeks. I don't need the AC compressor to activate, hurting fuel economy, just because the outside temp is 5 degrees different than the inside temp. :|
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windows down, stereo up, climate control on full. it is amazing I work in the clean power business. :laughing :twofinger
 
Kornholio said:
Call me out all you want, dude. Plenty of people here know what I did and that I'm not making it up. Tell you what, though, feel free to PM me any time you want and we'll setup and meeting to chat about it over any drink of your choice. I absolutely know what all the tier levels. I worked in the diesel exhaust retrofit industry for 10 years with two different manufacturers so yeah, you could say it was my job to know all that and more. 90+% of the time, the shops and mechanics were flat out clueless about how the exhaust treatment systems on the engines worked, how to properly maintain them and certainly how to follow instructions to prevent common failures. You speak about it like the industry was filled with a bunch of sharp people when the reality is that they are by and large knobs with basic mechanic skills at best. The sharp ones don't stay around long before moving on to bigger and better things.
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I'm talking OEM level stuff, not shops and willfitters. Bottom line, CAT has been using SCR for years, ITEC didn't and it nearly killed them. VW cheated the system to do it and finally got caught, and there's no reason why they did it other than to save money. You cannot pass FT4 NOx levels without SCR. You couldn't really even do it on IT4 engines. Well, not without providing competetive performance.
 
Too many acronyms in this thread. VAG obviously doesn't mean what I think it means. Makes me wonder about past conversations I've had.
 
One thing to note when comparing cars to trucks/suvs is that the emissions requirements for trucks/suvs are relaxed.
 
Sharky said:
I always associated sandy VAG with camaro owners.
:laughing
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Being slow and lacking reliability causes enough pain for them, no need to rub it in :shame
 
That didn't take long. From what I hear, the board has been trying to push him out for some time. This was a last straw.
 
augustiron said:
VW CEO stepped down.

“Volkswagen needs a fresh start,” Winterkorn said in a statement Wednesday. “I am clearing the way for this fresh start with my resignation. I am doing this in the interests of the company even though I am not aware of any wrongdoing on my part.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...-winterkorn-steps-down-over-emissions-scandal
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it's extremely poor form to say "I am not aware of any wrongdoing on my part." Seems like such a whiney dick move. First of all, nobody accused you of any wrongdoing, you're probably too high up to have known about this. Secondly, you're the captain of the ship. Ignorance is no excuse. Your high salary comes with higher risks. As CEO and the most public "face" of the company, the buck stops with you.
 
Reli said:
it's extremely poor form to say "I am not aware of any wrongdoing on my part." Seems like such a whiney dick move. First of all, nobody accused you of any wrongdoing, you're probably too high up to have known about this. Secondly, you're the captain of the ship. Ignorance is no excuse. Your high salary comes with higher risks. As CEO and the most public "face" of the company, the buck stops with you.
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Yep, it's always management's fault. He will likely get a golden parachute and I'm sure is set for life, but he can't say shit like that. I'm actually surprised that a German CEO would say that.

I also doubt he didn't know about it. This was not some secret backdoor skunkworks thing. This was developed and tested and engineers and beancounters got together and determined that it was worth the risk.

I doubt everyone in VW engineering, marketing, accounting and management knew about it, but I'm sure some higher level peepz from each of those departments, and more, knew about it. I'd be a little bit surprised if someone at the Big Table didn't know about it, including the CEO.
 
^^ A few of those board members knew about the cheat code for sure, maybe even kept it from the CEO on purpose. He probably didnt know so he could be convincing in his denial. Light never gets shined on a dozen board members.
 
GAJ said:
All I know is I'm buying VW stock ASAP.
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Why would you buy before the fines are issued?
30-50 billion dollar fine certainly will have an impact on the value of the company.
 
Sharky said:
Why would you buy before the fines are issued?
30-50 billion dollar fine certainly will have an impact on the value of the company.
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Because I don't believe the fine will be as huge as people are saying.

It would be a long term investment, not a short term money grab.
 
Dubbington said:
^^ A few of those board members knew about the cheat code for sure, maybe even kept it from the CEO on purpose. He probably didnt know so he could be convincing in his denial. Light never gets shined on a dozen board members.
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That is possible. Still, he is culpable. He's responsible for knowing. I bet at least one or a few board members knew about it, however.

I read an article stating they saved $50/vehicle by not installing SCR. Knowing what I know, I wager it was significantly more than that. Say that was the cost savings... you're at over half a billion USD in savings over 11 million cars, not to mention government kickbacks, marketing value, etc, etc.

Ok, maybe not all 11m cars needed SCR, only those sold in certain markets. Still, the cost savings by using the cheat code could have been in the hundreds of millions possibly into the billions of dollars.
 
how VW got caught, using onboard equipment on a 2,000mi road trip

http://www.autoblog.com/2015/09/23/researcher-how-vw-got-caught/

Excited by the prospect of breaking new ground, the team of two professors and two students wanted to gather as much data as possible. "And being academics, we went a little overboard," said Arvind Thiruvengadam, one of the students.
Overboard included driving the cars for more miles than they needed to test and verify results. Drivers put about 1,500 miles on each of the first two cars in the study, a Volkswagen Jetta and BMW X5, along California roadways. For their final car, a Volkswagen Passat, they wanted even more mileage. So they took the car on a road trip from Los Angeles to Seattle and back again, collecting data from more than 2,000 miles of testing.

The road trip was Volkswagen's undoing. When the West Virginia team returned to Los Angeles, they were befuddled by the test results. In theory, the Passat should have spewed the lowest levels of pollutants among the three cars. Equipped with the more modern selective catalytic reduction technology, the team expected to find minimal levels of nitrogen oxide. But the car, which had been certified at a California Air Resources Board facility prior to the start of the road trip, had elevated levels of NOx that were 20 times the baseline levels established beforehand.
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Today, Thiruvengadam is careful to say the research team never suspected Volkswagen of cheating on emissions testing, nor did the researchers report such a finding. They merely reported their findings to CARB officials who then further investigated. But the West Virginia team unpeeled the first layer of deception in a cheating scandal that has mushroomed in five short days, encompassing 11 million affected cars worldwide and ousting Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn.

"Our due diligence had been done," Thiruvengadam tells Autoblog. "It wasn't that we tested three vehicles and brought down a corporation. Three vehicles is a very, very small subset of a half-million vehicles, so it was more that we had a role, the data we collected spoke for itself and CARB and EPA did their due diligence. We didn't point and say, 'Volkswagen has a defeat device.'"
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GAJ said:
Because I don't believe the fine will be as huge as people are saying.

It would be a long term investment, not a short term money grab.
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On what basis? You simply believe the market cap decline is higher than the true value impact?

This stock hasn't performed very well in recent years, growth has been relatively anemic, the company is highly leveraged and doesn't have a ton of cash, and the potential reputational damage from this scandal is enormous. Really don't see this as a great long term investment at the moment, given the risks involved. A lot of unknowns and risk today.

While I think there is a potential for some upside and rebound, there's also potential for this thing to get much, much worse. VW is going to be under investigation worldwide and the fines/damages are going to be massive, as is the damage to it's reputation. This scandal has the potential to cripple VW long term.
 
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