'made In Germany' Lies In The 'gutter' After Volkswagen Caught Cheating

[Coss]

And I like to ridicule SEA for corruption, just shows how wrong one can be...

 

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11880921/Made-in-Germany-lies-in-the-gutter-after-Volkswagen-caught-cheating.html

 

 

VW's conspiracy to rig emissions exposes it as the 'Lance Armstrong' of the car industry, once again revealing corrupt reflexes in German boardrooms

 

Diesels may actually be emitting three times the pollution allowed under current emissions tests

Volkswagen's own vow to become the 'greenest' car producer in the world by 2018 has been exposed a hollow publicity stunt

 

 

Volkswagen has suffered a shocking loss of credibility after conspiring to violate US pollution laws and dupe customers on a systemic scale.

The scandal has once again exposed a culture of corrupt practices at the top of German export industry.

“We are facing a blatant abuse of consumer trust and a degradation of the environment,†said Jochen Flasbarth, the German state secretary in charge of pollution enforcement.

 

Hundreds of thousands of Volkswagen cars have already been recalled

The scandal is intrinsically worse than the explosion of BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. While BP and its contractors may have been negligent, VW appears to have engaged in a cynical plan to trick regulators in a wholesale breach of the US Clean Air Act.

“It is profoundly serious. The accusation is that VW deliberately set out to mislead regulators with a cleverly hidden piece of software,†said Max Warburton from AllianceBernstein.

It is of an entirely different character from earlier breaches of US law by Hyundai and Ford, which stemmed mostly from errors. The US Justice Department is weighing serious criminal charges.

“‘Made in Germany’ in the gutter,†said German newspaper Bundesdeutsche Zeitung.

 

The financial daily Handelsblatt called the deception a “catastrophe for the whole of German industryâ€, warning that it had completely undermined a joint campaign by Audi, BMW, Mercedes, Bosch and VW to convince Americans that diesel is no longer dirty and is the best way to meet tougher US emission standards.

Germany is the world leader in clean diesel. Its car companies have bet heavily on the technology, hoping to win the strategic prize in the US as new rules come into force imposing fuel efficiency of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025.

"We are worried that the justifiably excellent reputation of the German car industry and in particular that of Volkswagen will suffer," said Sigmar Gabriel, the country’s vice-chancellor and economy minister.

Volkswagen’s own vow to become the “greenest†car producer in the world by 2018 has been exposed a hollow publicity stunt.

 

Theoretically, the company could face fines of $18bn in the US, based on a standard penalty of $37,500 for each of the 482,000 cars fitted with "defeat devices", which allowed them to mask exhaust emissions of nitrogen oxide (NOx) in pollution control tests.

The actual release of these toxic particles – blamed for emphysema and respiratory diseases – is in reality 40 times above the acceptable levels imposed by the US Environmental Protection Agency. The cars will be recalled and modified, greatly reducing their fuel efficiency.

The US press is already calling VW the “Lance Armstrong†of the car market, an apt allusion to drug cheating in sport, and a deadly epithet in an industry where brand image and goodwill are the lifeblood of sales.

 

'Very sorry': Volkswagen chief executive Martin Winterkorn

VW’s share price crashed 19pc in Frankfurt. The company’s strategic ambition to dominate clean diesel sales in the US lies in ruins.

“There is no way to put an optimistic spin on this. The best case for VW is probably still a multi-billion dollar fine, pariah status in the US, and damage to its leading position in diesel,†said Mr Warburton.

The suspicion is that other car companies with diesel models may also be cutting corners, much as the Libor scandal in the City of London revealed common practices by other parts of the banking industry. The US authorities said they would widen the probe to other manufacturers.

 

Martin Winterkorn, VW’s chief executive, said he was “very sorry†and ordered an internal investigation but it is hard to see how he can survive.

Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer, from Germany’s Centre for Automotive Research, said Mr Winterkorn is either complicit or has failed to establish control over the corporation. “Either way, he is no longer viable. No politician could remain in his post in such circumstances. It is an unimaginable disaster,†he said.

It is barely a decade since it came to light that VW – still 20pc owned by the state of Lower Saxony - had set up front companies in India and Czech Republic to win contracts.

Volkswagen touched a raw nerve on the German Left by using slush funds to compromise union members on the works council with extravagant trips abroad and visits to brothels, at a time when the company was pushing through a wage freeze. That scandal led to a purge of senior management and a prison sentence for one member of the board.

 

Transparency International in Berlin said VW scores a middling grade of 5.5 out of 10 for corporate purity, but refuses to offer any breakdown of its activities in each country where it operates. This can be a warning flag. “VW provides zero information on a country-by-country basis. We find this very important,†it said.

Volkswagen is not the only German group that has lurched from scandal to scandal. The chairman of the engineering giant Siemens was forced to resign in 2007 following the exposure of bribery on an epic scale, though the company has since sought to clean out the Augean Stables.

A Siemens official revealed that he had run a bribery budget of €40m a year through a network of secret accounts from Venezuela, to Israel, Italy and Vietnam. He described overseas pay-offs as the company’s “business modelâ€.

 

Siemens was later fined $1.6bn in the US after pleading guilty to running slush funds. It then had to settle with the Greek authorities for bribing officials on a raft on contracts for the Athens Olympics in 2004.

Bribes were tax-deductible in Germany until 1997, reflecting the general attitude that whatever went on in foreign markets was fair game. The country has since tightened standards and scores relatively well in global corruption league tables.

The problem for Germany is that its global market niche is for expensive cars and machines, charging a premium for what is supposed to be the most reliable technology in the world.

Germany’s other problem is that Berlin has been lecturing the rest of the eurozone for five years that the root cause of the continent's crisis is the failure of some countries in the monetary union to abide by the law. Southern Europeans might feel entitled to a moment of Schadenfreude.

[jitagawn]

:rotl:Yes the stock tanked 20% this morning

[cavanami]

Not only Germany...Japan, Toyota had their stink a few years ago...no need to mention all the stick in the USA...

[Mekong]

The way that VAG did it was a little bit more than a cleverly hidden piece of software, there was some hardware involved also

 

Software wise the Engine Management System knew when the vehicle is under laboratory testing since systems such as anti-collision monitoring are disabled, simple part of the software.

 

Hardware wise, when under laboratory test conditions the Catalytic Converter is run in Selective Catalytic Reduction Mode, this is to inject Aqueous Ammonia or more commonly nowadays Urea into the exhaust gas upstream of the Catalytic Converter. Urea is 2(NH₂), NOx is NO and other exhaust gases are CO Carbon Monoxide and O₂ Oxygen

 

With the correct injection of Urea upstream of SCR is 4NO + 2(NH₂) + CO + O_2, downstream of the SCR it is changed to 4N₂ + 4H₂O + 2CO₂ basically 4 parts Nitrogen 4 Parts Water and 2 Parts Carbon Dioxide.

 

The clever part of the software is the mapping, dependent upon engine load, throttle position, fuel injected and exhaust gas flow the software then calculates the NO + CO + O₂ content by volume and injects a proportional amount of NH₂ for the chemical reaction to occur correctly across the catalyst.

 

The reason why Urea injection is not operational during normal road use is due to the finite storage capacity of the Urea tank.

 

SCR technology is deployed on Power Plants and since 2010 also on Heavy Duty Diesel Engines.

 

 

 

 

 

I am also the geek who understands the chemistry in Breaking Bad.

[baa99]

VW should pay the full $18 billion. This was entirely deliberate and approved by upper management. This was designed and tested by a whole team of engineers. Not a single one exposed this scam.

[My Penis is hungry]

I've always said corruption rampant in west as well as other places.

 

As mate says, "The answer is money, what's the question?"

[buffalo_bill]

An act of glorious stupidity . On the other hand , if the US now feel environmentally polluted by the Germans why do they drive millions of monster pickups consuming over 20 L / 100 km ? Just a theoretical thought , US-related boardmembers should not feel intimidated . Germany has been doing too well for too long , the world needs a painkiller .

 

Disclaimer 1 : I am not a nationalist , my grandmother was French . Or Danish or something .

 

Disclaimer 2 : all 3 family cars come from a) Italy France c) UK .

[cavanami]

> drive millions of monster pickups consuming over 20 L / 100 km

 

...dat don't count...stay on the subject

[Guest]

Considering there were nearly half a million cars built and programmed for this deception over six years. The most incredible part, not one single automobile engineer out of the hundreds involved who knew about this in the assembly or the testing, stepped forward and leaked information on what was going on, until now ..

[pasathai1]

brilliant german "craftymanship"