Volkswagen will not change name of U.S. operations: sources

So it was just a stunt. We&#x27;re in the decadent phase of the April Fool&#x27;s arms race.<p>Previous thread: <i>Voltswagen of America</i> - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=26634857" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=26634857</a> - March 2021 (561 comments)

If anything, this is an amazing insight onto how the media will report anything from a press release without a minimum of investigation. The name change was essentially breaking news everywhere.<p>- they&#x27;re changing the almost 100 years old name with... a pun on that name? Even a teenager would see it as a joke.<p>- the announcement comes out 2 days before April 1st and is deleted from the website shortly after publishing?<p>- the media packages it as an amazing &quot;leak&quot; and spins it into VW attempting to distance themselves from the diesel scandal?!<p>I&#x27;m worried if we trust a press that can be so easily and obviously misled.

I don&#x27;t like the name but it begs the question...<p>Is April fools the &#x27;marketing dept&#x27; version of &#x27;Staging&#x27; in a CI&#x2F;CD pipeline? (or maybe blue&#x2F;green deployment is better analogy !)<p>Like, if the tests fail (the public is enraged at your tweak ex. &#x27;volt&#x27;swagen) , rollback the change under the guise of &#x27;April fools&#x27;

I wonder if it was really just a joke or if they backpedaled because the public thought the name was ridiculous.<p>In both cases, what a weird episode.

I keep seeing this being described as a “lie” when it’s really just an April Fools joke. I mean, I get that it’s not super funny, but man... when did we get so grumpy?

I thought the new name was funny. Apparently I’m in the minority because of the incredible amounts of vitriol present ITT.

It’s the wrong day for April Fools, even in Europe

This &quot;marketing stunt&quot; raised their stock price by 8.95% today because people ran to buy stock since it signaled a changed in strategy. It is not &quot;market manipulation&quot;, but I hope somebody gets slapped in the wrist for this.

They really are learning from Elon

They registered the Voltswagen Twitter in 2019. Looks legit. And the Volts name is pretty brilliant.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;Voltswagen" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;Voltswagen</a>

It is quite interesting from a branding perspective how hard it may be for traditional car companies to convince you to buy their electric car. Is a company like VW really investing, in the long run, in electric cars in the way Tesla is? Should I _really_ trust their one-off electric car they build to dip their toe in?<p>You wonder what it WOULD take for VW, Chevy, Ford, Toyota etc to convince you their product and commitment was on par with Tesla

So <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.vw.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;models&#x2F;id-4.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.vw.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;models&#x2F;id-4.html</a> says voltswagen and <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.vw.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;models&#x2F;atlas.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.vw.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;models&#x2F;atlas.html</a> says volkswagen. Seems like it might stay around as a marketing name for the electrics.

Seems like since their 4&#x2F;1 joke got leaked yesterday, they&#x27;re trying to lean into it. And rather being received as a punchline that missed the timing, news outlets are discrediting it and generally the intended audience is going more negative.

The tail is wagging the dog here. A pretty genius marketing move proved to be too clever by half for corporate strategy-types, resulting in lost potential. They will not get this genie back in the bottle - the thrill is gone.

So it was another Pasta Hut moment?

Lying as a stunt? That poor untrusted news media repeating the duplicitous press release...

VW, if you read this please do change the name, I like it!

This does not do much to restore my trust in VW

Seems like my decision to wait until tomorrow to formulate a strong opinion on the name change will pay off.

That&#x27;s a lame self serving joke, it&#x27;s more like they are trolling the internet and news addicted.

Only in our HN bubble it could make sense folks. We&#x27;ve been had.

VW lies again. Shocking.

How do you pronounce the W in Volkswagen?

Maybe this is Volkswagen passive-aggressively mocking the American sustainability crowd.

I honestly thought this was a strategic rebranding to capitalize on their transition to electric vehicles and to get ahead of people shouting the down due to the involvement of Hitler in their early years.

I hope this doesn&#x27;t cause their customers to re-volt.

Ohm my, Watt is going on here?

A

Volts going on here?

German humour. But I bet it will be the name of a subsidiary.

How ever could anyone believed in VOLTSWAGEN?

Now I&#x27;m not sure what to call their nonexistent electric cars!

Easily the best example ever of why you should add &#x2F;s at the end when you are talking to an American audience.

I guess it&#x27;s an uncommon sentiment but I&#x27;m really happy that April Fool&#x27;s jokes are coming back this year after almost all tech companies cancelled theirs last year (or at least went easy on them).<p>Hopefully 2 years to think on their jokes ups their game this year. This was a great prank on the media, albeit a day or two early.

Because lying is press releases two days before April 1 is such a good look. The most reasonable conclusion now is that no, this wasn&#x27;t a joke, but it fell flat, and so they&#x27;re pretending it was. That might have gone off better had they waited a day or two. Anyway, it seems to have worked about as well as their cars, which manage to cram the sky-high maintenance and repair costs of an Audi or BMW into a car that&#x27;s <i>supposed to be</i> affordable...