[saket77]

Originally Posted by volkman10

Volkswagen to recall 11 million cars globally.The figures also include 1.8 million light commercial vehicles.

To date, it has only been confirmed that 480,000 VWs will be recalled in the USA.

German carmaker says to recall up to 11 million vehicles in its efforts to tackle the emissions scandal.

That is going to have huge financial implications on VW & the entire group. Plus the fines that VW will have to pay in developed countries. Could this be curtains to the business of one of the largest auto manufacturers? Or a takeover?

[dark.knight]

Originally Posted by saket77

That is going to have huge financial implications on VW & the entire group. Plus the fines that VW will have to pay in developed countries. Could this be curtains to the business of one of the largest auto manufacturers? Or a takeover?

Not at all, of course the greatest danger the group faces is in long-term image/reliability concerns. It is well known by now that the company was caught "soot" handed in the emissions scandal & enough important people have admitted the same despite cheekily refusing to directly admit intentional doing. As far as the fines go VW Groups profit was over 12 billion $ last year itself (EAT) with a liquidity of 20$ billion. Going by what needs to be done, including legal fire-fighting, recalls & penalty VW can comfortably take care of them all without a pinch. The ultimate pay-out will be much less than initial estimates.

The only real danger is losing customers in the long-haul due to this scandal, this will amount to quite a hit in revenue. Its a complete failure for the company when the ex-CEO himself pleaded ignorance to the software tweaks, I'm sure that's not what happened. There is one business mantra which works like a charm every single time yet is ignored > under-promise & over-deliver. VW over-promised with little substantiation and under-delivered. In a world where people believe tech-specs & efficiency just by looking at sheets/brochures, its about time now that either the truth be told about the side-effects of emissions rather than bury the head in the sand & talk of blue-diesels & eco-friendly diesel engines as the future. High power and high mileage will always be 2 ends of the spectrum. China today is among the most polluted countries on earth, with data saying that in Beijing the damage to the lungs is equal to smoking 40 cigarettes a day, China is also the only country despite being the largest market for VW, that is not uttering a word about emission standards. In the end VW's fault is its cover-up to pass emissions and they've been caught, now the only thing left to do is to maintain a standard testing procedure world over to find & control all vehicle makers from deviating. To me in the end clear air, sustainability & a better tomorrow is most important. If things are left to deteriorate the government of India will step in tomorrow and make unconstitutional vague rules like no cars for short distances & compulsory car pooling (in discussion just now on t.v).

[D C]

Germany launches criminal probe against the VW ex-CEO.

Source:

German prosecutors have begun a criminal investigation into the former CEO after the automaker admitted rigging pollution tests on millions of diesel vehicles.
"The investigation will focus on allegations of fraud in the sale of vehicles with manipulated exhaust emissions," the state prosecutor said in a statement.
Winterkorn resigned on Wednesday, just days after the company admitted to U.S. regulators that it had programed nearly 500,000 vehicles to emit far fewer harmful gases in official tests than in normal road driving.
The group later said the manipulation may have affected 11 million of its vehicles worldwide.

Prosecutors have also launched a wider investigation against unnamed employees at Volkswagen with the aim of establishing who was responsible. If found guilty of serious fraud, Winterkorn could face a hefty personal fine or as much as 10 years in jail.

Volkswagen named Porsche boss Matthias Mueller as Winterkorn's successor on Friday.

The group has started to publish more details about which of its diesel cars will need fixing to ensure they meet pollution limits.

On Monday, it confirmed that five million Volkswagen cars with 1.6 liter and 2.0 liter diesel engines are affected worldwide. They include the sixth generation of the VW Golf (2008-2012), the seventh generation of the VW Passat (2010-2014) and the first generation of the Tiguan.

Some 2.1 million Audi cars are also affected worldwide, including 577,000 in Germany and 13,000 in the U.S. The models affected are fitted with EA189 engines and include: the A1, A3, A4, A5, A6, TT, Q3 and Q5.
Experts say the remainder are likely to come from other group brands such as Skoda and Seat.

[Cowardly Lion]

So the ceo is going to be the fall guy..!
By throwing the CEO under the bus everyone else will claim the high ground.
People have short memories. A big $ number on fine and a couple of people in jail will take care of general public and in another year or so it will be business as usual...

..and yeah i forgot to ask.. are they giving big discounts on Jetta yet? 50% off and they shall have my forgiveness.. ;-)

[Thad E Ginathom]

One thing, at this point, I do not understand, or have not caught up with.

It is one thing agreeing to recall 11 million vehicles, and another to have a fix to apply to them. Do they?

[RavenAvi]

Three top executives of the VW Group have been suspended - Audi development chief Ulrich Hackenberg, VW research and development boss Dr. Heinz-Jakob Neusser, and Porsche development head Wolfgang Hatz.

Hackenberg, 65, and Hatz, 56, previously ran units at the heart of the VW diesel emissions scandal.

Hackenberg, a Winterkorn confidante, was responsible for VW brand development from 2007 to 2013, while Hatz ran the group’s engine development from 2007 to 2011.

Neusser, 55, has been VW brand's development boss since 2013 and head of VW Group powertrain development since 2012.

All three deny they knew about any illegal activities, media reports in Germany said. One source said Hackenberg was taking legal action against the decision.

Automotive News Europe

[drsingh]

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom

One thing, at this point, I do not understand, or have not caught up with.

It is one thing agreeing to recall 11 million vehicles, and another to have a fix to apply to them. Do they?

They have the urea based technology already. They use it on some cars.

[johannskaria]

Mexico too?
ET article link

[msprabhakar]

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom

One thing, at this point, I do not understand, or have not caught up with.

It is one thing agreeing to recall 11 million vehicles, and another to have a fix to apply to them. Do they?

According to a Wall Street Journal article By HENDRIK VARNHOLT on Sept. 29, 2015, "Volkswagen has a refit plan for emissions-rigged vehicles, its CEO has said. Matthias Müller, newly appointed CEO of German car maker Volkswagen, said the company has “a comprehensive action plan” to refit vehicles in the emission-rigging scandal. Matthias Müller told managers at Volkswagen headquarters in Wolfsburg that a project team put together “a comprehensive action plan” over the weekend and would inform customers shortly about refitting their vehicles.

On Tuesday, Volkswagen said it would submit its technical solutions to regulators and environmental authorities for approval in October, and set up websites to inform affected customers."

The Indian-origin scientist who took a test drive, exposed VW
Dr.Arvind Thiruvengadam loves going for long rides, and it is often a part of his job. But when this assistant professor at the West Virginia Center for Alternative Fuels, Engines and Emissions (CAFEE), went for a long 2,400 mile round trip between Los Angeles and Seattle in first week of March in 2013, to test a rented Volkswagen Passat, he didn’t know that the journey would be a landmark in the history of automotive Industry.

Thirty-two-year-old Thiruvengadam, who hails from Chennai, and his colleague Marc Besch, were surprised that during the journey, the NOx (mono nitrogen oxide) emission level of the Passat – the test vehicle that came to them accidentally in response to their newspaper advertisement requesting for a European make diesel car test vehicle – was five to 20 times higher than the European standards.

Thiruvengadam did his engineering in 2004 from Madras university, in Chennai – where his parents still live -- and went to the US to study at West Virginia university. He did his masters and PhD there and later on became a research assistant professor in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the university and a part of the core group of the CAFEE.

Read More...

[$t@llion kh@n]

WOW!! Thanks for sharing msprabhakar....

What an awesome experience to write in the resume for Mr Arvind Thiruvengadam.

Unearthed one of the biggest scandals in the Automotive history.

[Ace F355]

So at last someone dares to come to defence of VW, and he is none other than our beloved Jeremy Clarkson!

According to Jezza, the trick is no different to everyday deceptions like lying on a CV or parking on double yellow lines!!

A few excerpts from his side...

1. The company's senior management should "stop wringing their hands and sweating in press conferences and go on the attack."

2. The whole issue has come about due to "eco-mentalists" telling people first that diesel engines were less polluting than other engines before changing their minds and drawing attention to the damaging properties of the blend of nitrogen and oxygen – or NOX – the engines produced.

Various "soft-in-the-head governments" listened to those critiques and introduced new regulations on how much NOX a car could produce, Clarkson notes.

3. The new rules left VW with no choice but to redesign its engines, but the company went further and "fitted its engines with a clever bit of software that exaggerated their economy and cleanliness when they were being tested."

4. "Put simply, then, Volkswagen looked at a set of arbitrary figures that had been dreamt up by a bunch of ill-informed, woolly-headed government officials and chose to ignore them. We are not talking about thalidomide here. Or Bhopal. It’s just a bit of good-natured rule-bending, and we all do that."

5. The whole issue is "rubbish" because "about 60 per cent of man-made NOX emissions do not come from road transport, and of the 40 per cent that do, the vast majority are from lorries and buses. So in the big scheme of things, your neighbour's Golf diesel makes no discernible difference."

6. The risks to car makers and indeed Europe as a whole are huge if VW is "driven into the wilderness" by lawsuits, fines and damage to the company's reputation and sales. Because if VW goes out of business "the fallout would be immense because it owns Audi, Bugatti, Bentley, Lamborghini, Porsche, Seat and Skoda as well. So they'd also go to the wall.

7. "And without the profits from these engineering powerhouses Germany would no longer be in a position to bail out the Greeks or house half of Syria. Which would cause global economic collapse, a humanitarian catastrophe and many plagues."

I can already see Jezza being trolled for his opinions here... lol.

Source: http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/...cle1611750.ece

[RavenAvi]

Another startling revelation!

VB Group Board member Olaf Lies (nice name BTW!) has confirmed that some VW employees knew about the cheat scandal more than a year ago!

He added that the board of directors was informed only just before the news broke worldwide.

He has also stated he believed that some employees acted criminally in order to instigate the emissions cheat.
Lies, who is also the economy minister of Lower Saxony, told the BBC: "Those people who allowed this to happen, or who made the decision to install this software - they acted criminally. They must take personal responsibility.
"We only found out about the problems in the last board meeting, shortly before the media did. I want to be quite open. So we need to find out why the board wasn't informed earlier about the problems when they were known about over a year ago in the United States."
Lies told the BBC the firm had no clear idea about the final cost of the scandal, but said: "Huge damage has been done because millions of people have lost their faith in VW. We are surely going to have a lot of people suing for damages. We have to recall lots of cars and it has to happen really fast."

ACI

[alpha1]

Originally Posted by Ace F355

4. "Put simply, then, Volkswagen looked at a set of arbitrary figures that had been dreamt up by a bunch of ill-informed, woolly-headed government officials and chose to ignore them. We are not talking about thalidomide here. Or Bhopal. It’s just a bit of good-natured rule-bending, and we all do that."

5. The whole issue is "rubbish" because "about 60 per cent of man-made NOX emissions do not come from road transport, and of the 40 per cent that do, the vast majority are from lorries and buses. So in the big scheme of things, your neighbour's Golf diesel makes no discernible difference."

And to add the salt, the esteemed Indian regulators are also thinking about checking VW.

Mr. Highly esteemed and thoroughly intelligent Indian regulators, can you please stop the sham and catch hold of millions of LCVs and HCVs roaming around on the the roads belching and spewing toxic noxious fumes?

In addition, would you please ring up Mr absolutely incorruptible pollution inspector of the industries and ask him to pull up his socks and perform a better job controlling pollution?

7. "And without the profits from these engineering powerhouses Germany would no longer be in a position to bail out the Greeks or house half of Syria. Which would cause global economic collapse, a humanitarian catastrophe and many plagues."

Attaboy Jeremy, you really have brains man!

[etrast75]

Originally Posted by Ace F355

So at last someone dares to come to defence of VW, and he is none other than our beloved Jeremy Clarkson!

I was hoping hat he would come to VW's defense and glad that he did. He loves VW cars..

Various "soft-in-the-head governments" listened to those critiques and introduced new regulations on how much NOX a car could produce, Clarkson notes.

Isn't that true to a large extent? There seems to be no scientific approach to setting emission limits. It just looks like a bunch of numbers someone decided to put together. One cannot argue with that limit because then you branded as "anti-environment" and the mob mentality takes over

5. The whole issue is "rubbish" because "about 60 per cent of man-made NOX emissions do not come from road transport, and of the 40 per cent that do, the vast majority are from lorries and buses. So in the big scheme of things, your neighbour's Golf diesel makes no discernible difference."

This is the most important point everyone seems to be missing in the argument. Take India for example.. Have you seen the amount of thick black smoke that comes out a truck in front of you? Commercial diesel vehicles are much more polluting than any modern diesel passenger car but yet they seem to be held to lax standards. A car is driven probably about 10,000 kms a year but a truck is driven for over 100,000 kms a year and the truck has higher emissions. Which one pollutes more?

Passenger cars are easy targets because we do not have unions like the truck guys do.

7. "And without the profits from these engineering powerhouses Germany would no longer be in a position to bail out the Greeks or house half of Syria. Which would cause global economic collapse, a humanitarian catastrophe and many plagues."

He is exaggerating a bit here (after all it is clarkson we are talking about) but it is not out of the realm of possibility

[Thad E Ginathom]

Originally Posted by msprabhakar

According to a [Wall Street Journal article[/url] By HENDRIK VARNHOLT on Sept. 29, 2015, "Volkswagen has a refit plan for emissions-rigged vehicles, its CEO has said. Matthias Müller, newly appointed CEO of German car maker Volkswagen, said the company has “a comprehensive action plan” to refit vehicles in the emission-rigging scandal. Matthias Müller told managers at Volkswagen headquarters in Wolfsburg that a project team put together “a comprehensive action plan” over the weekend and would inform customers shortly about refitting their vehicles.

On Tuesday, Volkswagen said it would submit its technical solutions to regulators and environmental authorities for approval in October, and set up websites to inform affected customers."

Thank you. It is tough to keep up with the news on this!

The Indian-origin scientist who took a test drive, exposed VW

... ... ...

Thirty-two-year-old Thiruvengadam, who hails from Chennai

Nice to know

Originally Posted by Ace F355

So at last someone dares to come to defence of VW, and he is none other than our beloved Jeremy Clarkson!

Jeremy Clarkson is a great entertainer who has turned controversy into a self-advertising art form.

OK, he does make some good points, but what will he say next? That many frauds don't appear to actually harm individual, so let them go? That some murder victims wouldn't be missed, so, hey...?

Somebody once told me that air travel does more harm to the environment than all the world's cars. None of those look at this instead arguments excuse VW.