Volkswagen will not change name of U.S. operations: sources | Hacker News Reader

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

reuters.com

158 points43920133 comments

So it was just a stunt. We're in the decadent phase of the April Fool's arms race.

Previous thread: Voltswagen of America - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26634857 - March 2021 (561 comments)

Moniker does hold voltswagen.com, so maybe not entirely far fetched from a marketing standpoint

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.

- they're changing the almost 100 years old name with... a pun on that name? Even a teenager would see it as a joke.

- the announcement comes out 2 days before April 1st and is deleted from the website shortly after publishing?

- the media packages it as an amazing "leak" and spins it into VW attempting to distance themselves from the diesel scandal?!

I'm worried if we trust a press that can be so easily and obviously misled.

I certainly didn't think it was a joke, it's seemed a perfectly reasonable thing to do

* They got in trouble for diesel

* They're pivoting to electric

* The name sounds really similar, within the bounds of accent changes between cultures

* The logo (VW) wouldn't have to change

If it was a joke, then it failed because it was too realistic

I don't see it as a joke, but rather a marketing gimmick. IHOP did it a year ago (IHOB to announce their new burgers), and it got them a ton of press. I bet Volkswagon saw that and wanted in.

Probably kind of both at the same time, I think.

Clever puns and wordplay gimmicks seem to always stir up a bit more press and word-of-mouth than just regular business decisions.

Making it interesting without being too complicated to hold the interest of the public is a fine line that a lot of marketing firms are good at walking, although unfortunately some are just terrible.

My thoughts exactly.

http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

Also, why is this such a big deal?

Just change the name and change it back, the media can have at it, not their problem. Ultimately it's the car that matters.

> Just change the name and change it back

For real? A company with global presence, to LEGALLY change their name? And then run through the bureaucratic hell with countries, tax authorities, customs, contracts, insurance companies, changing logos/templates..

Do you have what is the actual cost to change a name for a company?

The top hit on a DDG search:

https://www.thebalancesmb.com/how-do-i-change-my-business-na...

Before you start the process, think about the costs and time to change a business name. The legal change of business name is only one part of the process and the cost. The other part is making the change in all the places where your business name is displayed to the public and internally and on legal documents.

Now take this and apply it in (practically) every country on the planet, as VW is not a single store across the street.

You don't have to legally change your name, you can just change it on your website as long as nobody else is using it.

Well, Daimler announced something similar just about two months ago: https://www.daimler.com/investors/reports-news/financial-new...

It wants to separate its car business from truck business and plans to rename the car business to Mercedes-Benz - the brand name it's been using since virtually forever. It's probably also a PR stunt, I don't know.

Oddly enough, they are taking their name off the Superdome.

You don't need to legally change the business name. In fact, many of the businesses you're familiar with are incorporated under unfamiliar names. Rather, you can often just register a trade name (aka DBA name), which is a sort of formal alias which in principle is readily resolvable to the business name. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_name

But that still requires plenty of costly changes. They will still have to amend the name in every country, every poster/sign, paper templates, stamps, cards. When you create yor company you still have to declare both the legal entity name "XYZ Ltd" and trade name "X".

It means that they have to send teams (outsource most likely) to every building, in every country, measure, create new models for each dimension, replace. Then, one month(?) later after the fun part is done, they will have to go back and redo everything.

Perhaps it won't cost them 100m, but it will cost them 50m. And then another 50m to change it back.

Didn't IHOP do this a couple years ago?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/07/10/ihop-fake...

Yes, the media reporting makes those outlets who did look foolish; that being said, this could have been a trial balloon or one hell of news play by VW to get a lot of people to realize they have a fleet of EVs.

The latter being actually true, but whithout the cost of actually changing their name, right?

Or just a tiny fraction of the cost..

Minimum of investigation? It's a story about a company's self-reported intention.

So investigate why it’s their intention. If you’re just going to repeat the press release I might as well read the wire myself. What are the journalists for?

The criticism I was replying to was that the info the journalists were reporting wasn't reliable, not that they weren't adding additional value.

I mean, that's exactly what they did:

> - the media packages it as an amazing "leak" and spins it into VW attempting to distance themselves from the diesel scandal?!

Turns out they are making the change after all.

> I'm worried if we trust a press that can be so easily and obviously misled.

Roughly ~55% of Americans don't trust the press. What's more worrying is the void that leaves, to be filled with marketing / spam / "fake news" style manipulation that tells people what they want to hear.

They quite literally - and it is still this way - changed the branding on their Twitter account AND TWEETED ABOUT IT so I am not sure why we should be beating up the press over this.

ref: https://twitter.com/VW/status/1376868756782219266

There’s nothing unprecedented about a company temporarily changing branding and tweeting about it during April Fools day.

2 days before April Fools day is not April Fools day.

Sure, but if a global company pulls a stunt like that (pun and all) 2 days before April Fools day, it’s probably related to April Fools day.

Given all of the signals, and the proximity to April 1st, a little bit of sobriety and common sense would have gone a long way. As it is, the news outlets added zero (0) new information on top of what was in the press releases.

Like how Halloween is now the entirety of October, should we expect the duration of "April Fools" to inflate, leading to an entire Mischievous March?

Regardless of proximity to April Fools; VAG is a publicly traded company. I think that a lot of people would prefer they didn't misuse their official press releases for banal pranks.

Who said anything about a holiday being an entire month? We’re talking about 2 days; and really 1 day for the time zone that’s furthest along.

If someone tweeted about pumpkins and skeletons on October 29th/30th, it’s probably related to Halloween.

Which ones of VW’s size, on March 30?

> On March 30

You mean publishing what sounds like a joke 2 days before April 1st? Occam’s razor would suggest that it’s just a premature April Fools joke.

Except it is not April Fools day

Your criticism is fair in general, but in this case CNBC claims the fact checkers were actually lied to when they attempted to confirm:

"Media outlets, including CNBC, reported it as news after it was confirmed by unnamed sources within the company, who apparently lied to several reporters."

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/30/volkswagens-name-change-of-u...

Also, I took a screenshot of the press release in case anyone missed it:

https://i.imgur.com/kJLMX5L.png

There was verification - and intentional misleading on VWs part - before talking about it. It was not quite the "read press release and instantly write articles" timeline you've dreamt.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/30/volkswagens-name-change-of-u...

> An unfinished version of the initial press release went out briefly on VW’s U.S. media newsroom website Monday morning before it was taken down. Media outlets, including CNBC, *reported it as news __after__ it was confirmed by unnamed sources within the company, who apparently lied to several reporters.*

Or the "unnamed source" checked their website, assumed it was what it was and confirmed it.

I don't like the name but it begs the question...

Is April fools the 'marketing dept' version of 'Staging' in a CI/CD pipeline? (or maybe blue/green deployment is better analogy !)

Like, if the tests fail (the public is enraged at your tweak ex. 'volt'swagen) , rollback the change under the guise of 'April fools'

Obituaries are prematurely published all the time. I'm surprised April's Fools aren't published early more often.

> Obituaries are prematurely published all the time

Unless you're describing Death Note I'm not sure what you mean by this.

Publications have pre-written obituaries for famous people to make sure they can respond immediately when somebody famous dies. Occasionally these obituaries get published in response to incorrect rumors or simply through some kind of internal error—always a bit awkward!

That’s actually how we got the Nobel Prizes. Nobel was famous for inventing dynamite. After his brother died, some newspapers reported his death with their prewritten obituary about how “The merchant of death is dead”. After seeing that, he changed his outlook and modified his will to create the Nobel Prizes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize

I particularly appreciate the irony in the Nobel Peace Prize, especially as Henry Kissinger is a laureate.

Good ol' Henry Kissinger, one of only two Nobel Peace Prize laureates with the distinction of having bombed another Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

I once worked on the same floor as an online magazine publishing group. Their niche included reporting on famous figures within a specific domain. In order to be able to react to news of a famous figure's death, they had pre-written memorial articles for any of these figures whose age seemed to suggest their time was near. Unfortunately, a bug in the CMS and/or a fat finger occasionally allowed one of these pre-prepared obituaries to go live while the famous person was still alive.

Another interesting thing I observed: since that magazine was also owned by the central organization in their domain, they sometimes had to take down interesting articles (e.g. about this organization's holdings or business dealings) after receiving a phone call from somebody important.

It invites the question.

http://begthequestion.info/

English is pliable and sometimes a word or phrase becomes what the masses think of it, especially when "journalists, advertisers, and major mass media entities" use it that way. See literally, irregardless

Irregardless, it literally begs the question.

I don't really want to get into it, those days are long behind me. But I couldn't help feeling dissatisfied with the content you linked.

  A simple example would be "My favorite author is always right because he says so in his latest book." The proof is merely a restatement of the premise. The sentence has begged the question.

Ok, but... why? It asserts that "begging the question" is misused, asserts a "real" meaning, but doesn't explain it. In what way is a restatement of the premise a form of "begging the question"?

I don't get it and just wanted to vent a little bit, putting my feelings about linguistic prescriptivism aside.

The idiom is a mistranslation of petitio principii, which is the Latin phrase meaning to assume the intended point, and which itself is a 16th-century mistranslation of Aristotle from around 2,300 years ago, so it’s a wonder that anyone still understands this phrase at all.

I recommend treating this phrase, “to beg the question”, as an irregular verb. The component words provide the inflections, but not the meaning, although there may be some poetic utility.

You could almost say it...

...begs the question.

Prescriptivism is bullshit.

In politics, they call this a "trial balloon".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_balloon

I wonder if it was really just a joke or if they backpedaled because the public thought the name was ridiculous.

In both cases, what a weird episode.

No press is bad press.

Pretty sure they'd rather have not had all that press about their emissions scandal.

Maybe it should have been an joke for april 1st.

I like Voltswagen, it's cool, but zero loss if they don't rename too.

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?

Sometime around March 2020

It's the 30th of March

You want grumpy? Gonna be some real grumpy if companies start treating April 1st like Christmas:

"Oh, lighten up, it's an April Fools joke."

"It's fucking January."

You’ll have to forgive people, many of whom are the victims of VWs emissions scandal, which by the way resulted in many premature deaths, for not finding this “prank” funny.

Edited to update the death count.

I was curious, so I read Wikipedia.

"A peer-reviewed study published in Environmental Research Letters estimated that approximately 59 premature deaths will be caused by the excess pollution produced between 2008 and 2015 by vehicles equipped with the defeat device in the United States"

Not quite "thousands". Obviously still an egregious act from the company.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal#D...

That’s fair and it’s not a subject I’ve had to talk about in a while. I should have looked at the stats again.

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

Yup, funny for an April fools joke, would have worked better on April 1st though.

What has happened to everyone?

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

Even in NZ! Still a day to go.

Someone must have pressed the wrong button ... or the right button too early ...

Or it was all a marketing stunt.

Maybe they can get the true fools on this day

And here I thought it was some difference between metric months and imperial months.

Or diesel months vs. gasoline months.

It's not even 1 April on the Julian calendar.

My money was on ANSI Standard Months v. ISO Lunar Cycles.

And too late for International Fixed calendar.

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

I'd be shocked if there wasn't a shareholder class action.

I'd almost think they had to price it in, but VW really seems to misunderstand regulatory risk. If a car was going to have shrimp tails in it, it'd be VW.

They really are learning from Elon

That’s a good point, they are learning from him how to do marketing without passing as a boomer: A bit of ecologic transition, and a joke. Add a meme and we’re complete.

It is very 2020ies. Doing this in 2030 will make you pass as a millenial.

They registered the Voltswagen Twitter in 2019. Looks legit. And the Volts name is pretty brilliant.

https://twitter.com/Voltswagen

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?

You wonder what it WOULD take for VW, Chevy, Ford, Toyota etc to convince you their product and commitment was on par with Tesla

I see what you mean from a focus standpoint, but I feel like the traditional carmakers will likely always do better at quality, safety, and longevity for traditional stuff. Panel gaps, paint, proper automotive grade components, and so on.

Me too, cars are just much more than their engines and drivetrains.

They are, and even so, these companies still know far more about the engineering principles that go into both.

Tesla certainly has heaps of special knowledge that these companies will need to catch up on or innovate themselves, but I suspect in the scheme of things, even lower end car manufactures are better-rounded across the design/build process.

I think that Skoda CityGo and the VW 1UP second gen are probably the best town cars there are (in EU sense).

Ford putting the Mustang brand on an EV is a pretty big indicator to me.

Feels a bit like Nokia getting serious about smartphones a year after the iPhone has come out.

Nah if anything Ford is more like Microsoft.

That would have worked if they had built something that was actually good. I mean, Google did pretty well with that strategy.

The Mach E is a great competitor too.

This, Ford’s new CEO seems like he’s putting the company full steam ahead on electric. Plus outwardly admires Tesla, he’s a real car geek.

Volvo's commitment has convinced me, at least. But does it matter if the brand is all electric or not? I'd base my decision on the specific model.

You wonder what it WOULD take for VW, Chevy, Ford, Toyota etc to convince you their product and commitment was on par with Tesla

That they've been making production electric cars longer than Tesla, like Nissan has?

(Though my singular Nissan dealer experience kinda put me off Nissans for a while.)

Yeah, and its not like the Leaf is great. It is fairly recent that they've started making cars as good as the Model 3 and Y.

Seriously? How much does a Leaf cost in comparison to a Model Y? For the price of a Model Y, I expect the body panels aligned, and the paint not orange-peeled, like the Nissan. After that, we can compare the $35K car to the $90K car.

I fear the other way, that Elon will jump on the next thing before Tesla becomes more than a rounding error.

Toyota actually made a plugin hybrid with a reasonable electric only range (68km or so), which is a great way to gradually switch people to electric. That seems to be a sweet spot range-wise -- to the point that they say to run on gasoline occasionally otherwise it can go bad in a year and corrode fuel system.

It would take an excellent product, that's it. Best in class performance, efficiency, range, reliability, design, value, etc. for a single model is what is needed to prove their ability.

So https://www.vw.com/en/models/id-4.html says voltswagen and https://www.vw.com/en/models/atlas.html says volkswagen. Seems like it might stay around as a marketing name for the electrics.

Seems like since their 4/1 joke got leaked yesterday, they'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?

Long live IHOB.

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

Can't wait for cryptogate when we find out that all cars are mining Voltcoin/Bitcoin and depositing back into VWs bank accounts as a type of carbon payback loop "well, unless you can prove your energy is 100% renewable we're going to assume your city is powered by natural gas/coal" while 100% profiting from it e.g..

That's an interesting idea. I could see car companies offering discounts for ad- and/or cryptomining-supported models (similar to Amazon's model with Kindle hardware).

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

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

Only in our HN bubble it could make sense folks. We'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't cause their customers to re-volt.

Ohm my, Watt is going on here?

Terrans: Yes, we are social creatures. We play we joke, and this particular culture sets aside one day a year for especially silly silliness.

Volts going on here?

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

How ever could anyone believed in VOLTSWAGEN?

Qwikster.

War of the Worlds.

I thought it plausible since a lot of people pronounce the k as a t (I used to when I was a kid) and this would just formalize it.

Even more notable is the change in the v. Volt and volk are pronounced differently in German (not just in the t/k part).

Now I'm not sure what to call their nonexistent electric cars!

Call them market leaders in Europe. Volkswagen owns 12 automotive brands and they sold the most BEVs in Europe in 2020:

https://ev-sales.blogspot.com/2021/01/europe-december-2020.h...

So far they're still leading in Europe in 2021:

https://ev-sales.blogspot.com/2021/03/europe-february-2021.h...

Eventually they'll be the biggest BEV maker worldwide.

It's not surprising. Volkswagen and Toyota are the world's biggest car companies and Volkswagen started its BEV push earlier than Toyota.

It's interesting that despite its international leadership position, Volkswagen has a rather small share of the U.S. car market. VW captured 2.21% of U.S. car sales in 2020[1].

By contrast, Toyota was 12.53%, GM 17.30%, Ford 13.87%, etc.

1. https://www.goodcarbadcar.net/volkswagen-us-sales-figures/

Those charts are just for the VW brand, not the entire Volkswagen group. But it's true that Volkswagen's biggest markets are Europe and China:

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/22/investing/volkswagen-earn...

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

I guess it's an uncommon sentiment but I'm really happy that April Fool's jokes are coming back this year after almost all tech companies cancelled theirs last year (or at least went easy on them).

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't a joke, but it fell flat, and so they'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's supposed to be affordable...

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