> Many of your top executives will go to jail.<p>So naiive. I would be very very surprised if anyone goes to jail over this. VW is going to take a huge hit but doomed? Puhleeze... companies have survived worse.
> Second, you haven't just duped millions of people into buying a product they would never have bought had they known the truth<p>This one made me laugh the most. All the potential buyers couldnt care less.
The weird part of this is that if you accept higher NOx emission, you can cut fuel usage by ~20%. Since matter does not disappear, this also has to cut CO2 emissions by similar amount.<p>CO2 has global warming potential for at least hundred year scale. NOx has chemical half life of decade or two.<p>WHO isn't really sure how much NOx you have to emit before it's dangerous. Heating is however more culpable right now than vehicles.<p>I can't decide if Volkswagen is shitty thief or hero. It seems to be that the NOx fuss might be overblown and the costs in CO2 emissions could be far worse. Or not. Could someone enlighten me?
So the solution is to hire software engineers, abandon the motor car and build autonomous vehicles.<p>I may be wrong but I just don't see self driving vehicles being the norm in the next 30 years. If I were VW I wouldn't abandon the traditional motorcar just yet.
Seems a little over-dramatic.<p>Remember the GM switch story? Also had active deception for over a decade & and worse people actually died (169) as a result. That cost them just over a billion.<p>Even if the American regulator wants to make an example of them I doubt it'll exceed 10bn. As for jail: I doubt anyone will end up in jail let alone "many" of their executives.
If americans cared about their car emissions america would be a different country by now. People trust VW cars for their safety mainly, and this is not a safety issue. Watch for VW sales in the next months. Autonomous cars may be good for countries with good infrastructure, but they would be dangerous for many european cities. In any case, now is a good time to buy VW stocks.
What <i>should</i> happen, is that the claimants should tally up the damages and if it is greater than cash on hand, Volkswagen should issue shares to make up the difference. If that does not make up the difference, then the claimants should get a pro-rata portion of the company stock and all original share holders should lose their shares.<p>The reason for this is simple: the idea of a corporation is to shield investors from personal liability - NOT - to shield them from loss due to fraud.<p>What will actually happen is that the German government will meet with their trading partners around the world and pressure them into limiting the damage in order to protect German interests / pension funds.
Volkswagen will certainly take a hit, but it is not going to collapse - the German government will bail it any time it's necessary. An ordinary German loves and cares about the national car-making industry, and quite rightfully so.
> Frankly, it's hard to see how you can come out of this alive.<p>If you can't see how VW will going to come out of this alive, then I'd stay away from prognosticating. Also: clean off your glasses.
and I thought hacking the diesel engine is coal, I mean, cool:<p><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/06/rolling-coal-photos-video_n_5561477.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/06/rolling-coal-photos...</a>
I own a TDI myself and this article seems a bit hasty in its logic. I have mixed feelings at present, but the author's feelings don't seem to be well thought out:<p>> As someone who just recently bought at VW diesel - my first VW ever, and almost certainly my last - I can of course only speak for myself. But everyone I've talked to feels pretty much exactly as I do. And if after some more independent analysis, the numbers come back and they are even close to what we currently read in the press (10-40x more pollutants than advertised), I will sell the car immediately even if it is at an almost total loss.<p>I agree not to reward Volkswagen's fraudulent behavior, but if everyone is made whole as a result of this saga I am not sure that I have an issue with Volkswagen moving forward. I certainly would not sell my car. The only actions that make sense through the author's lens of wanting to be environmentally conscious would be to fix the emissions or crush it. Selling it appears to just move the problem to someone else.<p>>There is one, and only one reason why I would consider buying a VW in the future: massively beat Tesla at their game. Abandon all fuel-powered development today and invest every single cent into long-range electric cars, and build the electric charging infrastructure throughout Europe and the US (and the rest of the world). In addition, the development of the self-driving car has to be your top priority. The car of the future has no human driver in it, and of course you know this (anyone at VW who doesn't, let go of them immediately).<p>The author believes that an entity engaged in a scandal for shady software cheats should engage in making software that once again has the ability to impact people other than their owners in order to make amends for their current software cheat?<p>I can't say as I agree. I believe the amends that they need to make are:
1) fix the emissions issues in all current and future cars,
2) make the environment whole to the fullest extent possible. I'm not sure what options are available for this, but fines and funding third party research would fit the bill if nothing else,
3) make the owners of the cars whole: If the emissions fix alters the car's attributes negatively I want to be compensated for the delta from the car I actually bought.<p>> The new CEO, Matthias Müller from Porsche, thinks autonomous vehicles are an unjustifiable hype. I wish I was kidding, but I'm not: the VW board thought that the best person to replace the guy who oversaw the cheating software scandal (or was unaware of it) is a guy who seems to have even less appreciation of the ongoing software revolution.<p>Finally at the end of the article we get to some actual meat!! That is unfortunate, and would be worth putting at the top of the article and expanding on.
SW as a product is hard. No matter how good your backend or frontend if the whole package does not fit perfectly together.<p>The germans are the most boring "innovators".