> Many of your top executives will go to jail.
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.
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.
And WV reacted like Lance Armstrong caught with doping: like cycling I'm assuming all the other manufacturers are doing the same. Maybe they were less aggressive or maybe they were just were not as successful with it, therefore they were not caught, yet.
Here is a paper I found related to that claim:
"Understanding the Health Impacts of Air Pollution in London"
https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/HIAinLondon_Ki...
Pollution is only important because tax level of the car is directly related to the emission of the car. IMO that is highly unlikely that government will take action against car owner like retroactive taxation, so as far as customers are concerned, nothing has changed.
As an illustration, I remember as a kid when VW turbo diesel became really performant. Since Diesel is much cheaper, diesel car became really popular. People were claiming that they did it for the environment as at the time, diesel was thought to be cleaner. A decade or more later, diesel was recognised as being more polluting but that did not change at all the diesel use in the country at all. ( Let's be realistic for a moment - Prius type car are popular but they would have stormed the market if pollution was a top concern for people. Instead, we got SUV taking the European market by storm - SUV !!! )
So yeah that will be rough time for VW, but the analysis in the document does not seem realistic at all.
That main assumption is correct. When your car resale value tanks and you'll have to sell your car at a massive loss, you've been duped. When you've paid a massive premium for a more rapidly depreciating asset due to willfully deceptive marketing, you've been duped. When you can't re-register your car because it doesn't comply with emission standards in your state and you lose your economic livelihood, you've been duped.
Government action against car owners is unlikely for the very reason you list (i.e. it would only affect primarily the victim), and the yearly emission checks your car need to pass are way less restrictive than for new cars.
I see what you are saying and agree that it is a possible scenario. But it does not match to the reality around me or even the trends like european fastest growing car segment being SUV and Crossovers. Pollution on its own merit and not simply as a tax artefact is just not something that people look for and the article fails to give any sort of metric to prove I'm wrong.
No, it doesn't. To have a massive loss in resale value, other people contributing to the car sale/purchasing market need to be willing to pay less for that car. A car that now pollutes like a semi, will have worse fuel economy or handling after a fix, and has a tarnished image is likely to have a massive loss in resale value, when compared to others who do not have those values. And you better believe their competitors will take advantage of this problem and widen the gap even further.
That ignores the thousands killed by pollution each year, and the increased spending of health services directly caused by pollution.
Now the regulators have to act in face of the public outrage, and I'm going all in that we're going to have some pretty nasty surprises being uncovered.
This is widely discussed here in Germany for some years now, but the government chose not to act. A form of corruption and a fear of loss of jobs -> voters.
When it comes to electric vehicles, I'm not so sure they make that much more sense environmentally: lot's of energy and materials used during production, new large scale infrastructure needed, electricity mostly produced by coal and nuclear power plants, exotic materials used for the battery, etc etc.
Here in Germany the number of electric cars is tiny. We are seeing lots of electric bicycles and public transport is starting to invest in electric busses on a larger scale.
What could have quicker some positive environmental impact and would be relatively simple, would be to have more cars use natural gas, since a lot of cars could be using it.
regular cars also cost energy to produce. so unless there is a huge discrepancy it still means a relative reduction in emissions when compared to gas-guzzling ones
> electricity mostly produced by coal and nuclear power plants
that is a separate problem which is also supposed to get tackled over time. just because B hasn't been completely solved yet doesn't mean we can't start working on A which will depend on B to realize its full potential.
Not to mention that autonomous vehicles might very well become a third prong attacking the problem by making electric, autonomous fleets not owned by individuals a possible scenario.
Since cars wouldn't have to be individually-owned this might also drive down the overall fleet size and thus reduce the overall energy invested in vehicle production.
That and banks get away with worse all the time, even ignoring 2008 which is hard to pin on a single actor. You have LIBOR scandals, HSBC violating sanctions with Iran - clear deliberate legal violations that result in fines and maybe some new regs but that's it. If you extend the criteria into gross negligence there are tons of horrible examples - BP spilling a gazillion barrels of crude into the gulf. Executives are forced to pull the golden ripcord a little early. The companies keep ticking.