Volkswagen's CEO Was Told About Emissions Software Months Before Scandal, Says Report (reuters.com) 93
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Volkswagen Chief Executive Herbert Diess was told about the existence of cheating software in cars two months before regulators blew the whistle on a multi-billion exhaust emissions scandal, German magazine Der Spiegel said. Der Spiegel's story, based on recently unsealed documents from the Braunschweig prosecutor's office, raises questions about whether VW informed investors in a timely manner about the scope of a scandal which it said has cost it more than $27 billion in penalties and fines.
Responding to the magazine report, the carmaker reiterated on Saturday that the management board had not violated its disclosure duties, and had decided to not inform investors earlier because they had failed to grasp the scope of the potential fines and penalties. Citing documents unsealed by the Braunschweig prosecutor's office, Der Spiegel said Diess was present at a meeting on July 27, 2015 when senior engineers and executives discussed how to deal with U.S. regulators, who were threatening to ban VW cars because of excessive pollution levels. Diess, who had defected from BMW to become head of the VW brand on July 1, 2015, joined the July 27 meeting with Volkswagen's then Chief Executive Martin Winterkorn to discuss how to convince regulators that VW's cars could be sold, a VW defense document filed with a court in Braunschweig in February, shows.
Responding to the magazine report, the carmaker reiterated on Saturday that the management board had not violated its disclosure duties, and had decided to not inform investors earlier because they had failed to grasp the scope of the potential fines and penalties. Citing documents unsealed by the Braunschweig prosecutor's office, Der Spiegel said Diess was present at a meeting on July 27, 2015 when senior engineers and executives discussed how to deal with U.S. regulators, who were threatening to ban VW cars because of excessive pollution levels. Diess, who had defected from BMW to become head of the VW brand on July 1, 2015, joined the July 27 meeting with Volkswagen's then Chief Executive Martin Winterkorn to discuss how to convince regulators that VW's cars could be sold, a VW defense document filed with a court in Braunschweig in February, shows.
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Another shitty misleading headline and story by the incompetent morons at Slashdot.
>>"Volkswagen Chief Executive Herbert Diess was told about the existence of cheating software in cars two months before regulators blew the whistle"
Except he wasn't VW's chief executive at the time. Martin Winterkorn was.
>>"Diess was present at a meeting on July 27, 2015 when senior engineers and executives discussed how to deal with U.S. regulators, who were threatening to ban VW cars because of excessive pollut
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Time to break up volkwswagen (Score:2, Interesting)
I hope Germany is troubled by this and will figure out a proper punishment and corrective action. Big businesses need to be feared more than big governments
Re:Time to break up volkwswagen (Score:5, Interesting)
In other words VW is "too big to fail"? Where have I heard that before?
If a company is "too big to fail" then it is too big to exist. If a nation's economy is so tied up into these large corporations then they are essentially free to break the rules as they please. Break them up into smaller companies and make them compete against each other.
I'm old enough to remember the bailout of the "big three" automakers in the USA. Well, Ford was doing just fine economically but if the government only bailed out the other two then that might be considered some kind of violation of the law. Ford was forced to take the money. At the time Tesla was just salivating at the idea of scooping up Detroit automotive factories at fire sale prices. The workers at those factories might be out of a job for like a month or two, until Tesla was able to finalize the sale and retool for making electric cars. Well, maybe they couldn't make electric cars that quickly but those factories would be making cars under a new badge and with improved efficiency. Tesla would have made out like a bandit on the deal and they'd be on much better financial footing now.
What killed the electric car? That's a question that's been asked many times. The answer is a government too scared to let the market forces work it's way out.
I don't believe that electric cars would dominate today, only 10 years after this automobile industry "crisis". I do believe that we'd probably see an industry more willing to innovate past the problem of tailpipe emissions rather than trying to game the system. We'd likely be seeing more electric hybrids, more natural gas vehicles, and a healthier economy in the long term.
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"an industry more willing to innovate past the problem of tailpipe emissions rather than trying to game the system. "
Unfortunately, this is what you get when the mileage numbers they have to meet are just made up from thin air, without consideration to what's reasonably possible. All they did was say "Hmm, you know, whatever mileage vehicles get today, it should be possible to double that number in ten years' time.". Well, no - not really. Part of the solution ws gaming how vehicles were classified - that's
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Big businesses need to be feared more than big governments
Why bother making the distinction? The line is beyond blurred, in the US anyway.
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To what end? Breaking up companies is something that is normally suggested for large market behemoths who control an unstoppable monopoly. What do you hope to achieve by breaking up a car manufacturer who is being pounded by the market anyway?
Or are you hoping to kill the company and a long with it the pensions of many people as well as raising taxes on constituents to compensate for the lack of dividend payments to the government?
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Easy answer: the company is nationalized with upper management getting fired and shareholders getting wiped out. Workers wouldn't lose their jobs or pensions as they would go back to the same plant and do the same job the next week.
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Easy answer: the company is nationalized
You should see who is a shareholder and who sits on the board before you make pointless statements.
shareholders getting wiped out. Workers wouldn't lose their jobs or pensions
It's not the worker's pensions I was talking about. Again you should look at who the shareholders are before you punish the population of a nation for your silly vendetta against a few.
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Not remotely pointless, and the statements remain the same.
The only way to keep capitalism as a justifiable enterprise is to impose appropriate penalties when the system fails. Otherwise, fuck capitalism.
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You didn't look did you. Again whom are you trying to punish? A company, or the government and citizens who had nothing to do with it.
Personally I would like to see the people involved directly in trouble for something that capitalism has done without knock-on effects on my own retirement / taxes. Throw people in jail, levi huge fines, make em shovel poop for the rest of their lives, but senselessly shouting anger at companies themselves is actually quite pointless.
So again, back to the beginning. What are
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Different parent poster called for breaking it up, I'm calling for nationalization.
Because it's irrelevant. The much-needed corporate death penalty for massive conglomerates will inevitably hit some Widows and Orphaned Kids Pension Fund, and produce cries of "will no one think of the capitalist children?"
Tough cookies. Any retirement or investment plan needs to be diversified so the failure of one business - or even an entire industry - wi
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Different parent poster called for breaking it up, I'm calling for nationalization.
Appologies
Because it's irrelevant. The much-needed corporate death penalty for massive conglomerates will inevitably hit some Widows and Orphaned Kids Pension Fund, and produce cries of "will no one think of the capitalist children?"
No it's not. Because if you did check you would see how much of the company is already owned by the government in the first place. VW is not Ford, built by some capitalist venture. Its very roots are as a nationalised company and I think you completely underestimate the sheer costs of nationalising a multinational company both direct costs (can the government afford it?) and indirect costs. Nationalising a multinational has in the past led directly to war and the downfall of a nation, though it is
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Did you? The most incompetent bureaucrat at the worst Soviet institution didn't have a personal incentive to screw over everyone and everything in the name of a bonus, or ordered to do so to boost share price.
One good thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
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A fine is not enough in this case, this is massive fraud. Prison AND a massive fine, at the very least.
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I have to degree with this; in this case it is not enough to fine the company. The persons leading the company and performing the fraud should be locked up for a long time, if just for the damage they have performed on the environment. Remember that they have been caching since the start of this fiasco; just slamming the company does nothing to disparage the next management team.
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Company my friend worked for had a similar problem with cheating a standards body. In the end, company was fined and no single person/team was found guilty. Lower level employees were shifting blame one level up, upper level said it wasn't even a decision just a team issued directive to reach a milestone, programmers said it started as a test that never went away, CEO claimed he was under too much pressure from shareholders (to be able to stop it once he learned about it).
Unless you are willing to fine shar
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Umm... yeah.
At its basic level, a c
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Everybody will say they were trying to protect their job.
But that isn't a valid excuse to do illegal shit. Why were they allowed to get away with it? Even if it was just fines, why didn't the shareholders string up the management team?
Re:One good thing... (Score:5, Informative)
When he resigned as CEO, he collected a $32 million golden parachute [autonews.com]. Fines won't solve the problem. We need jail time.
* (To their credit, the engineers almost succeeded. The earlier 2-liter engines were a disaster - up to 5x the legal limit of NOx emissions (0.2-0.3 g/mi). But the 2015 2-liter diesel engines met EPA emissions limits [ca.gov] without using DEF. They're just included in the scandal because they barely exceeded CARB's limits (0.05 g/mi).)
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thank you for the informative links. IMHO VW fail way behind their competition. They produce the worst and the most unreliable diesel engines compared to BMW, Mercedes and PSA. That is why they resorted to cheating.
VW is by far very overrated, they manage to sell car thanks to a very aggressive marketing and lots of product placement. They deserve to be forgotten and their management to be jailed.
Re:Only two months? Bullshit (Score:5, Interesting)
You are most certainly correct. In reading a number of histories of geopolitical affairs (the machinations leading to WWI, Soviet decisions during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Mideast Crisis that led to the Six Day War, the Invasion of Afghanistan) and repeatedly in Israel's nuclear weapons program, decisions were made in closed meetings with no notes taken. It was enough that the lieutants tasked with carrying out the plans and who were present, knew what that were supposed to do.
This is certainly the case here. Top management orchestrated and approved this, but made sure no records were kept.
We know how high it went, now how wide? (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea that this great fraud was perpetrated by some rogue engineers never made much sense.
Even if we assume this is an accurate depiction of when the CEO was told, there almost had to be some degree of lower management complicity in this from the outset, even if it was in the form of setting impossible goals for employees, much like the Wells Fargo [cnn.com] fake accounts debacle.
Re:We know how high it went, now how wide? (Score:4, Insightful)
"Credit travels upwards, blame travels downwards. That's the way it works." - The Pointy-Haired Boss, from the Dilbert animated series.
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Insulting (Score:2)
So they're in a meeting about how to avoid being banned from selling in the entire U.S. market and we're to believe they weren't certain the problem was serious enough to tell the stockholders about it?
I smell pants burning.
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It's still a large enough market that it's hard to believe they didn't think there was anything the stockholders should know about.
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They cared enough to pay the huge fines rather than withdraw from the market.
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In other words, their concern was ALL cars sold in the U.S. not just Diesel.
And they thought it was important enough to cheat, important enough to keep the market alive, but not important enough to tell their shareholders.
Yeah, right.
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TFA states that they definitely knew before the scandal went public and that they didn't inform the shareholders. They read about it in the news like everyone else.
Very likely he knew a lot earlier (Score:5, Interesting)
The guy is an engine expert with a reputation of wanting to know all the details at all times. He could probably have looked at the AdBlue numbers and immediately know what was going on. Also has a reputation as a control freak, so nobody will have dared to make these changes without checking with him first. As basically every other car maker with diesel cars (except for the the Japanese, it seems) had this fraud-device in their diesel cars, they will have coordinated on it. Makes sense, because one brand doing much better sticks out and could raise suspicion. I expect this was a coordinated decision a year or so before they started doing it and all the CEOs did sign off on it. No paper-trail, of course.
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Winterkorn was CEO of VW from January 1st, 2007 until September 23th, 2015 and that is the CEO I am talking about. However Diess very, very likely knew what he was walking into.
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The guy is an engine expert with a reputation of wanting to know all the details at all times. He could probably have looked at the AdBlue numbers and immediately know what was going on. Also has a reputation as a control freak, so nobody will have dared to make these changes without checking with him first. As basically every other car maker with diesel cars (except for the the Japanese, it seems) had this fraud-device in their diesel cars, they will have coordinated on it. Makes sense, because one brand doing much better sticks out and could raise suspicion. I expect this was a coordinated decision a year or so before they started doing it and all the CEOs did sign off on it. No paper-trail, of course.
The "fraud" device is a standard part of any car, a programmable ECU (Engine Control Unit). Its due to this fantastic little device that we can use fuels of varying quality and engines can dynamically adjust timing to produce the best fuel/air mix which both reduces emissions and improves fuel efficiency. Just about every car made today will have one. The unit in question with VW's Diesels was a Bosch EDC17 ECU.
The problem wasn't hardware, every car has a programmable ECU, the problem was software. Bosch
You must be (Score:2)
new to Slashdot.
Diesel engines are the future, do the math (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is there so much concern on diesel cycle engines? As heat engines go they are quite efficient devices. As far as providing a lightweight and compact power source for transportation these things are close to miraculous. So, where is the problem? It's not the engine, it's the fuel.
Right now diesel fuel is primarily petroleum. I use the modifier "primarily" because there are places that burn bio-mass derived diesel in their engines, either pure bio-fuel or as a mix with petroleum fuel. The US Army has been burning 20% bio-diesel in their trucks on bases all over the world for at least a decade. I can say that because I saw the fuel pumps on an Army base while serving and I have a friend that works for the National Guard. The trucks the Army uses on bases at home and in "friendly" nations are just commercial off the shelf stuff. The battlefield vehicles though will run on just about anything. I had a conversation with someone about this and he told me those Army helicopters will run on just about anything that is liquid and flammable. I asked if that included Wild Turkey and cheap perfume, he said it might not like it but that will get you home if you are in dire need.
I hear people claim that electric cars are the future, charged up by electricity from wind, water, and sun. But has anyone done the math on what it would take to make that happen? It turns out that people have and the math does not work out for such a world.
Here's how we start with that math. The world uses about 2.3 TW of electricity. That's the consumption if we were to average out all the use in the world. Citation:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
In 2008, the world total of electricity production was 20.279 petawatt-hours (PWh). This number corresponds to an average power of 2.31 TW continuously during the year.
So, let's do the math on everyone in the world driving an electric car. First thing is to do the math on how much in resources we'd need to just make up for the electrical use right now and replace that with wind, water, and solar. Looking at the page I linked to above we see that we are about 1/4 the way there, with most of that in water. A common one megawatt windmill takes one ton of rare earth elements in its magnets. Does it have to use rare earth metals? No, but then it's not as efficient, will need more copper and steel to make, and therefore will not be as cheap as it is now with rare earth metals. Windmills don't run all the time at maximum output, in real life they produce maybe 30% of their maximum rated output. So we don't need 2.3 TW of wind to replace what we need, we'd have to start with 3 times that, 7 TW. But, as I pointed out before, existing renewable energy has 1/4 of the total electrical supply already so, in round numbers we'd need about 5 TW of new wind, water, and sun to replace the coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear (if you believe nuclear is "bad").
Go figure out how much rare earth metals we'd need in windmills to replace even half of the current electrical production, assuming that solar and hydro would make up the rest. Then add in the rare earth metals needed for those electric cars. Then add in the steel and concrete needed, because those windmills need something to hold them up. Then do the math on how much silicon we'd need for the solar panels. Then compare all of this to current production of these materials worldwide. There simply is not enough of current production to switch over to anything "green", except nuclear power.
Can we improve our output of things like rare earth metals, concrete, steel, copper, silicon, and whatever else we might need? Sure, given enough time I would expect that to happen. Here's another thing to add to your calculations, how much dirt would we have to dig up, sift through, and process, to get these materials we need? You think mining for coal and uranium is bad for the environment, how muc
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Production follows demand. As we start building more windmills, more rare earth will be mined. It's not like it's actually rare.
This is where it gets funny. The earth is 7.3% silicon, you know.
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Production follows demand. As we start building more windmills, more rare earth will be mined. It's not like it's actually rare.
This is where it gets funny. The earth is 7.3% silicon, you know.
Yes, I know that. These are exceedingly common elements. Now, tell me, just how much dirt would we need to dig up and sift through to get these metals? I am truly curious. I've seen the math done before but I'd like to see you verify these numbers yourself and see how they match with other computations.
While digging up these metals there will be the stuff left over. These leftovers will have some very toxic elements in them, and having dug them up we've introduced them to the environment. What do we d
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Sorry, when you said the rare earth thing I stopped taking you seriously.
And you didn't present any math yourself, so why should I?
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Okay, here's some more math. Picking up where I left off we would need 5 TW of electricity production capacity from wind and solar to merely replace the current production from coal, natural gas, oil, and nuclear. Wind power requires 1 ton of rare earth metals per megawatt of capacity, assuming we use current windmill technology and not older less efficient types that do not make use of rare earth elements. Solar PV requires 5 tons of silicon per megawatt of capacity. Wind requires 500 tons of steel and
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An evidence review published in the journal Renewable Energy in 2010, which included data from 119 turbines across 50 sites going back 30 years, concluded that the average windfarm produces 20-25 times more energy during its operational life than was used to construct and install its turbines. [theguardian.com]
In other words, the concrete, the rare earths and the steel can all be mined and refined for less than 5% of the energy output of the windmill. Even if increased demand causes us to use slightly less easily mined mat
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In other words, the concrete, the rare earths and the steel can all be mined and refined for less than 5% of the energy output of the windmill. Even if increased demand causes us to use slightly less easily mined materials, increasing the energy use by a few percentage points, so what? It would still be immensely profitable from an energy standpoint.
So what? Nuclear power has an energy return between 40 and 80.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/i... [world-nuclear.org]
That energy return on investment is with 40 year old reactors, reactors that do not use the fuel very efficiently. As the article points out the EROI on nuclear power has a lot of room for improvement but it already beats everything except the best locations for wind and hydro. Third generation reactors have not been operating long enough yet to have good data, and fourth generation reactors are expected to hav
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We weren't discussing nuclear. We were discussing whether, from a raw materials point of view, solar and wind energy could plausibly be expanded to cover all our energy needs.
Thanks for the chat, but I don't want to start another discussion with you on another subject, related though it may be. I don't necessarily disagree with you on nuclear.
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We weren't discussing nuclear. We were discussing whether, from a raw materials point of view, solar and wind energy could plausibly be expanded to cover all our energy needs.
Nothing exists in a vacuum. Wind is a nice energy source but it cannot replace coal and nuclear on it's own based solely on the resources needed for construction, both in material resources and in human resources. From a raw materials point of view wind and solar take far too much material capital investment to compete with far less resource intensive (considering energy returned) coal, natural gas, nuclear, and hydro.
You tried to just hand wave away the materials needed by pointing out the energy returne
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You were using current production as a proxy for maximum capacity. Well, you can't do that, as they say.
Since you're the one making claims that revolve around there being a maximum production capacity for certain raw materials, the burden of proof is on you.
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Production follows demand. As we start building more windmills, more rare earth will be mined. It's not like it's actually rare.
That rare earth production has an impact on the environment.
https://earthjournalism.net/st... [earthjournalism.net]
We have inexpensive rare earth elements for now because China is just dumping the waste in a lake, where it can contaminate the ground water for miles around. This is a huge problem and if countries like the USA would mine this responsibly then they'd do so only at a price that included proper management of the waste, which means higher prices for the minerals. This will affect the prices of windmills and electric
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From your own source, 21% of the world's energy already comes from renewables, and 11% from nuclear. So scaling up renewables seems like it'd be easier than scaling up nuclear, and a heck of a lot safer.
I say that as someone who is a big fan of nuclear power. I think that modern reactors, in modern safety regimes are very safe and could be built, run and decommissioned cost-effectively. I'm less convinced that every country in the world can be trusted to operate their own nuclear plants.
So setting the sourc
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From your own source, 21% of the world's energy already comes from renewables, and 11% from nuclear. So scaling up renewables seems like it'd be easier than scaling up nuclear, and a heck of a lot safer.
Are you certain of that? Can you show me your math?
Here's an example of some people that did the math.
http://www.climatecentral.org/... [climatecentral.org]
They say that to match the power generated by fossil fuels or nuclear power stations, the construction of solar energy farms and wind turbines will gobble up 15 times more concrete, 90 times more aluminum and 50 times more iron, copper and glass. Right now wind and solar energy meet only about 1 percent of global demand; hydroelectricity meets about 7 percent.
Just think about the environmental impact of having to dig up that much material to build all these windmills and solar panels. Then tell me how "easy" it would be to meet that demand for these materials.
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Why is there so much concern on diesel cycle engines? As heat engines go they are quite efficient devices.
Yes, very efficient at producing NOx emissions in confined living spaces for many.
If it surprises you that there's more to life than CO2 and fuel economy it's probably from lead exposure from cars when you were younger.
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First, let me preface this by saying I've been doing the full Philip "shut up and take my money" Fry impression ever since Dodge announced they were putting a V6 diesel in a Ram truck....but not in the Durango. Now Ford and Chevy are jumping on the 3.0L bandwagon, so if another model year goes by without a diesel going into a durango/explorer/expedition/tahoe imma gonna cut a bitch. Mercedes has a diesel for the GL line, but for 19 mpg on the highway I want a lot more than 7500 lbs towing. Now, that said..
ROGUE ENGINEER STRIKES AGAIN! (Score:2)
Shocking (Score:1)
I'm absolutely shocked that in a large bureaucratic organisation senior management knew about and were complicit in what was going on, rather than the far more believable narrative that a single lowly engineer somehow conceived of the scheme entirely on their own and was able to secretly introduce changes (in collusion with other industry partners) into a diverse range of product lines in mass production without oversight.