[Thad E Ginathom]

I think that CEO resignation is a damned-if-you-do/damned-if-you-don't thing.

On the one hand, it is "Nice fat salary, followed by a golden handshake: no sympathies there." On the other, it's "The buck has to stop somewhere; surely it should be with the boss? But there he is, still, plush office, fat salary..."

The departure of a good CEO might, in fact, weaken the company at the worst time. A strong CEO would be a key person in ruthlessly rooting out the actual wrong-doers and carry the company forward.

On a lighter note:

Yes, VW has achieved meme status. I'm sure there will be a lot more of these:

[::CMS::]

I dont see an impact in India as the BS IV is yet to be implemented in all states. The problem is that the mileage and performance are inversely proportional, its the mileage game on their 2.0L engine caused the issue. This mileage craze and clean diesel is a new thing in US and hence VW became a test mule for their studies to make the NOx norms more stringent. Also there are no cars in India other than the commercial vehicles from Leyland \ Volvo has SCR Technology that needs the urea injection to the exhaust (AdBlue). The cheat seems to be to control the AdBlue injection in the ECU. There is an agreement between EPA of US and auto-manufacturers wherein independent bodies can't test the internal software or decode the same citing theft of code or duplication of the same. VW might have tried to use this as an opportunity.

As of now the DOF\EGR is more than enough as per the BSIII. Emission control in India is a joke, the so called 6 -month testing will only test the temp at the probe and dont find the NOx\CO levels , rather compare with the preset values and predicts the values. It works on assumption that the temp will be different for a car with clogged filters or bad fuel and hence the NOx\CO levels.

[pgsagar]

I never liked VW. Thirteen years ago they came to my town to set up VW car factory. Countess visits and a scandal later they withdrew and parked themselves in Pune. A senior official from VW, Mr. Schuster and a local politician turned the whole thing into a real estate scam around that time. Like most things in our country the investigation into this case got buried under the sands of time and is forgotten. There was even a call locally at that time not to buy VW cars as a mark of protest. But thanks to short memory of my town-folk, VW cars did sell in good numbers.

Coming to US fiasco, Americans had always been wary of diesel cars and just when they were warming up to the idea of diesel cars, this happened. Now, heaven help diesel cars in US. VW has set the clock back by a decade or two. BTW, thanks to VW, almost a million tonnes of extra emission is released. This is a cardinal sin.

So, this diesel being a clean fuel has always been a myth. Yes, diesels are economical to run but I think all this torque talk seems a little hyped up. Sure, it comes on early but it also goes off early. And once past peak torque, the increased rpm only adds to the din and not speed. Unlike petrols which perform all the way up to redline. May be that is why all the supercars are still petrol-powered.

I think too much hype surrounds German cars in our country. DSG had countless issues. I have seen 2 BMW 3-series (less than 6 months old) spewing smoke-screens like municipal fumigator vans. Heard about some more. Then there are so may reliability issues and yet we say wow German cars. This should be an eye opener.

[joe1980]

I could only remember Dr. Abdul Kalam's words about a leader! A leader should stand up to failures! VW is in such a situation and the CEO resigns!

Damn I have a Golf TDI and it is a waiting game!

[sushantr5]

Well, in this difficult time I happen to be in Wolfsburg, VW Home Town. As the news broke and started getting serious attention, People are disappearing from the road. Suddenly city is feeling more silent and I could feel anger inside people here. German's are considered masters of Engineering and they could never imagine such a awkward situation.

Wolfsburg is a small town and all dependent on VW, is now more worried about what will happen next. Presence of media is felt on the road. Small October fest at city center suddenly turned into some soar event. Seeing some movement of choppers over the factory, may be higher ups are running for high drama meetings.

This may not be real or may be real, I don't know. Event might have changed my perception to look at the Wolfsburg.

[sumeethaldankar]

Got this from yahoo..
"Volkswagen Scandal Opens Door to Possible Fiat Takeover"

http://www.thestreet.com/story/13298...o&cm_ven=YAHOO

[mukul32]

Was stunned hearing the news of the resignation of Prof. Dr. Winterkorn. It is really unfortunate, or rather shameful, that the Volkswagen Group lost such a stalwart to the emission norm debacle. I say 'lost' because at 68, I don't think he is very likely to work again, especially after facing such a big controversy.

On another note, this US emission norms controversy, the sudden resignation of Dr. Winterkorn, his denial of knowledge about the issue, the Piech-Winterkorn tussle earlier, all together point out that despite their rise in sales and spread, and recent elevation to the world no.1 crown, all is certainly not well at the top brass in the Volkswagen group.

Maybe the decentralisation policy that's been announced will help things get better, but I hope it doesn't lead to more differences or controversies, and hence further division among sub-brands and further differences between managements.

A huge challenge for the management right now is to find a new and strong enough replacement for Dr. Winterkorn to properly lead the huge juggernaut that is the VW group. There are reports saying that Mr. Matthias Muller, the current Porsche boss, is likely going to be the new man for the job, while the VW board has stated that the decision about the next CEO will be taken in their next general meet.

To OP: Please edit the title of the thread indicating the resignation of Dr. Winterkorn.

[Sawyer]

Originally Posted by GTO

I certainly don't agree with the CEO's head rolling in this,

For something that clearly isn't the act of just one rogue individual in VW, the CEO deserves to go. Not knowing that something like this is happening in your company is almost as grave a crime as knowing it and allowing it to happen. An ignorant CEO is culpable of allowing himself to be ignorant.

[drsingh]

It could be something like the GM ignition switch scandal. The Engineering team in charge was under pressure to deliver in a tight time line and he decided to buy time by fudging the software till they got everything right.

Institutional culture putting profits above ethics is to blame.

Bureaucracy at work for you.

[Sawyer]

Originally Posted by graaja

You are correct. If there was 40x higher emission, that would be more than Indian norms as well. One unknown factor is if Indian test procedure covers worst case driving conditions as thoroughly as the US procedure. Till Indian authorities investigate and issue an official statement, nothing else to do other than keeping fingers crossed!

I suspect things are more complicated than what we know.

Because just on the basis of what we read, the logical thinking says that VW cars will fail Indian laws as well.

And if someone like VW can't meet even Indian norms, then how come they can't do what people like Tata/Fiat and others in India can? VW is at least as good as the others in diesel emission tech, surely.

Another thought process says that diesel tech can never be made to be clean enough and is best discarded.

All this is speculation until more fact based analysis is made known.

[arunphilip]

Here's a photo of the test-rig that Univ. of West Virginia used:

Source/credit: http://www.vox.com/2015/9/23/9383663...-scandal-photo

Two bits of interest from that article:

• A VW Jetta tested was emitting 15 to 35 times the legal limit of NOx
• A VW Passat tested was emitting 5 to 20 times the limit

Also, using some very crude calculations, Vox states that the estimated extra pollution from Volkswagen's US cars could be expected to lead to an additional 3 to 23 premature deaths each year. The same article also states that globally, the added pollution is 25 times what a typical coal plant without emission controls puts out in a year.

Quite understandably, VW have pulled down their 'clean diesel' page (link returns a page not found). Google's cached copy of the same page throws up very interesting sales talk, which is indicative of the extent to which VW believed it could get away with this:

And the icing on the cake:

[::CMS::]

Originally Posted by Sawyer

I suspect things are more complicated than what we know.

Because just on the basis of what we read, the logical thinking says that VW cars will fail Indian laws as well.

And if someone like VW can't meet even Indian norms, then how come they can't do what people like Tata/Fiat and others in India can? VW is at least as good as the others in diesel emission tech, surely.

Another thought process says that diesel tech can never be made to be clean enough and is best discarded.

All this is speculation until more fact based analysis is made known.

Yes, this helped in making people panic everywhere. As I had mentioned earlier, it seems the ECU cheats are in the AdBlue injection, I dont think it has any effect in India until BS-IV is mandated in all states. To meet the BS-III standards, hope they are not fiddling with any exhaust valve timing, EGR \ DOF filters are enough. Also the 6-month PUC is nothing but a joke as it doesnt check the NOx\CO levels, but the temperature.

With BS-IV also, unless the PUC machines are changed, nothing will be detected. Even now people are doing EGR Delete (permanent) and those are not being detected by those m/c s.

[amalji]

Originally Posted by Sawyer

I suspect things are more complicated than what we know.

Because just on the basis of what we read, the logical thinking says that VW cars will fail Indian laws as well.

And if someone like VW can't meet even Indian norms, then how come they can't do what people like Tata/Fiat and others in India can? VW is at least as good as the others in diesel emission tech, surely.

It's not about whether they can or not. If it was just about that they would have cheated only for the 500,000 cars in the US. But, it turns out that 11,000,000 cars across the globe is affected. That means they wanted to keep their torque, PS, mileage, durability high by compromising on emission. Again, time will tell the full picture.

[::CMS::]

I think they did the update in cars with the 2.0L engine, the mileage game was for that engine

[reignofchaos]

Originally Posted by ::CMS::

Yes, this helped in making people panic everywhere. As I had mentioned earlier, it seems the ECU cheats are in the AdBlue injection, I dont think it has any effect in India until BS-IV is mandated in all states. To meet the BS-III standards, hope they are not fiddling with any exhaust valve timing, EGR \ DOF filters are enough. Also the 6-month PUC is nothing but a joke as it doesnt check the NOx\CO levels, but the temperature.

With BS-IV also, unless the PUC machines are changed, nothing will be detected. Even now people are doing EGR Delete (permanent) and those are not being detected by those m/c s.

The issue is with the 2l diesel which has no adblue urea injection. The fact that it achieved this feat itself was taken with a sceptical mind by experts which caused them to probe the issue.