
Volkswagen executive pleads guilty in diesel emissions case - Tomte
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/08/volkswagen-executive-pleads-guilty-in-diesel-emissions-case/
======
mpweiher
With the US justice system being what it is, he probably didn't have much of a
choice. Without the plea, he was facing something upwards of 100 years.

~~~
tryingagainbro
Frankly people like him (if allegations are true) deserve the most time. Yo
can't purposefully harm millions of people and expect to just walk away from
it. Someone made the conscious decision to manipulate the software /test
results.

I wish a lot of bankers in 2008 had been arrested too

~~~
rplst8
There is such a thing as cruel and unusual punishment. Getting 100 years for
that "crime" of essentially violating a regulation is preposterous.

~~~
tryingagainbro
How about 25+ years for defrauding millions of buyers and making our cities
full(er) of smog. How many new cases of asthma, sinus infections,
cancers...can be traced to this fraud?

~~~
DannyBee
"How about 25+ years for defrauding millions of buyers".

Citation needed that it was 25+ years, since, 25 years ago, i don't even
believe there were meaningful regulations in the US they would have been
violating. I believe the first meaningful regulations by the EPA were in 2007,
and by california in 2001.

See, e.g.,
[https://www.dieselnet.com/standards/us/hd.php#pre04](https://www.dieselnet.com/standards/us/hd.php#pre04)

"How many new cases of asthma, sinus infections, cancers...can be traced to
this fraud?"

I'll go with: "Probably a very small number"

The vast majority of car pollution is produced by older cars on the road[1],
and that's true even when considering the real emissions numbers of these
cars. If you would like to provide objective evidence that this isn't the
case, i'd love to see it.

[1] Unfortunately, most people cite the EPA averages, which doesn't help. The
average is of all cars on the road (they even say this), and unfortunately,
the emissions standards are each orders of magnitude better than the last, so
the average is not a good way to see what's up.

IE Every car in california sold since 2004 is at least an LEV. Cars operating
prior to that are basically huge polluters.

Cars that are marked ULEV are 50% better than current average year models (so
they started at 1/2 the emissions, and must stay at 1/2 the emissions of each
model year to stay a ULEV).

Cars marked SULEV are 90% better (IE 1/10th the emissions), ditto.

You can see that as cars get newer, and emissions standards tougher, using the
average to say "what cars on the road produce" is mostly nonsense, but that's
what happens!

~~~
revelation
Huh? The history of defeat devices and corresponding legislation is much
older:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defeat_device](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defeat_device)

------
mschuster91
Going only after VW and other German manufacturers is protectionism. It began
in the Obama era, with Trump now continuing: "The Germans are bad, very bad.
Look at the millions of cars that they sell in the U.S. Terrible. We’re going
to stop that." (source:
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-26/trump-
bla...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-26/trump-blasts-
german-carmakers-u-s-sales-and-threatens-barriers)).

Meanwhile, the US car industry (exception: Tesla) still only builds crap-
quality cars which basically gulp gas. Of course, the political leadership
must damage the presence of German cars so that US car manufacturers stand a
chance without having to reinvent themselves...

And that the VW exec was threatened with 100+ years of jail time... it's
absolutely inhumane and is an extortion. In Germany, even murderers rarely
spend over 15 years in prison.

~~~
dubyah
How dare they go after some members of a cartel?[0] To be fair, they've also
gone after Jeep & Ram diesel trucks recently[1], but I don't know the status
of the lawsuit after they certified updated emissions controls on current
models. Most manufacturers at this point realize lying to and impeding an EPA
investigation on top of the collusion for the defeat devices would yield the
sort of charges that Oliver Schmidt plead guilty for[2]. I mean, they formed
an engineering task force to conceal the defeat device wrt the ICCT study &
regulators.

>“VW employees determined not to disclose to US regulators that the tested
vehicle models operated with a defeat device,” says the criminal complaint.
“Instead, VW employees pursued a strategy of concealing the defeat device in
responding to questions from US regulators, while appearing to co-operate.”

While Trump is unquestionably protectionistic, that doesn't mean the case
isn't without merit and other countries & regions wouldn't have done the same.
The EU is hampered from action because only the member states have the
authority to do so as well as the politics of it all[3].

For the record, South Korea was the first country to jail a VW executive
regarding the scandal[4].

[0]: [http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/the-cartel-
collu...](http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/the-cartel-collusion-
between-germany-s-biggest-carmakers-a-1159471.html)

[1]: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-23/u-s-
files...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-23/u-s-files-
lawsuit-against-fiat-chrysler-over-diesel-emissions)

[2]:
[https://www.ft.com/content/04aa04aa-d648-11e6-944b-e7eb37a6a...](https://www.ft.com/content/04aa04aa-d648-11e6-944b-e7eb37a6aa8e)

[3]: [https://phys.org/news/2017-02-eu-pains-vw-dieselgate-
scandal...](https://phys.org/news/2017-02-eu-pains-vw-dieselgate-scandal.html)

[4]: [http://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-southkorea-
idUS...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-southkorea-
idUSKBN14Q0VR)

------
jaclaz
Just in case:

[https://longtailpipe.com/2015/10/02/differences-in-us-and-
eu...](https://longtailpipe.com/2015/10/02/differences-in-us-and-eu-emissions-
standard-key-cause-of-dieselgate/)

it is not like here in Europe people drop down dead like flies because the Nox
allowed is more than 5 times that allowed in the US and the PM 4 times
(besides any cheating).

The Volkswagen (and Audi, etc.) guys lied, broke the Law, and those found
responsible should be adequately punished, but it is not like they are
responsible for the death of tens or hundreds of thousands of people and of
accelerating the extinction of the humanity.

The estimations (to be taken with more than a pinch of salt) by some MIT
researchers is of 60 (sixty) premature deaths in the US:

[http://news.mit.edu/2015/volkswagen-emissions-cheat-
cause-60...](http://news.mit.edu/2015/volkswagen-emissions-cheat-
cause-60-premature-deaths-1029)

and a later (frankly IMHO hard to believe) one about Europe:

[http://news.mit.edu/2017/volkswagen-emissions-premature-
deat...](http://news.mit.edu/2017/volkswagen-emissions-premature-deaths-
europe-0303)

calculating the amount of premature deads in 1200, which is of course a very
high number in itself but - even if actually proved/provable - nothing
compared to (say) the number of deaths by fire or road accidents that could be
prevented.

------
melling
The good news from all this is that the CEO is pushing hard for electric
vehicles (and plugin hybrids)

“The CEO is pushing forward with his plan to build 2 to 3 million all-electric
cars a year and unveil 30 new models by 2025 within all of Volkswagen’s
brands. It’s among the most aggressive EV goals from legacy automakers.”

[https://electrek.co/2017/08/02/vw-ceo-electric-cars-
backlash...](https://electrek.co/2017/08/02/vw-ceo-electric-cars-backlash-
leadership/)

~~~
rwmj
Having read the book about this scandal ("Faster, Higher, Farther: The
Volkswagen Scandal"), I'm going to predict that this is nonsense. The company
is still run by insiders, and nothing has really changed. Also it will be
either bankrupted or near bankrupted by the scandal in the end and won't be in
any position to research new technologies.

~~~
lostlogin
You really think they will be bankrupted or even come close? Should Germany
allow that?

------
acd
I think diesel gate executive personal assets should be frozen as a result of
the emission scandal.

Thousands will die due to the dirty air pollution caused by these cars.

~~~
Z-Widwil
Is this actually the case? I haven't seen any hard numbers on pollutants. I
was under the impression that even with the rigging, each car released far
less emissions than that of heavier diesel engines.

I should clarify. Regardless of how polluting they are, I agree that assets
should be frozen.

~~~
acd
5000 persons will die per year in the EU due to diesel cheating. 15000 persons
will die per year due to excess Nox emissions i.e. the result of selling in
"clean diesel" by the car industry when in effect it is very dirty.

[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/15/diesel-e...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/15/diesel-
emissions-test-scandal-causes-38000-early-deaths-year-
study?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other)

~~~
Z-Widwil
I'm not trying to defend their actions. It just seems that if NOx emissions
were such a threat, that we'd eliminate those that produce mass qualities of
them. How can it be determined whether people died from these emissions of
those of cargo ships?

~~~
mikeash
Particulates from cargo ships aren't a major concern for human health. They're
not long-lived in the atmosphere, so when emitted over the open ocean, they're
removed from the air long before they reach populated areas.

~~~
lostlogin
Presumably into the sea. Is that a problem or is it a non event?

~~~
mikeash
Not sure! It's way, way better than emitting it in a place where millions of
people will breathe it, but I'm sure it's not harmless.

------
alkonaut
Funny story: I had a '09 Audi with a diesel gate engine. It was "fixed" during
a service, and of course being European, there was no customer compensation.
Just today I went to get a new car (looking for a '16 or '17 model) and would
have preferred a gas car over a diesel, but found not even 1 in 100 cars on
the market were non-diesels. In the end I reluctantly bought a '16 diesel.

A VW.

~~~
Symbiote
You can't have looked very much.

Just under half of new cars sold in Europe are petrol, with just over a third
being diesel. The rest are electric or hybrid.

[http://www.acea.be/statistics/article/trends-in-fuel-type-
of...](http://www.acea.be/statistics/article/trends-in-fuel-type-of-new-cars-
between-2015-and-2016-by-country)

~~~
alkonaut
A lot of 2018 models are petrol here too, but it was barely even an option on
the models from recent years. I'm only looking at full size wagons (5-series,
A6, V70, Passat, etc), only 2015-2017 and only in Sweden. It's seriously about
99% diesel.

~~~
eps
You were looking for an used car then, in which case your number makes far
more sense.

New petrol cars _are_ widely available, but they aren't just as popular as
diesels, so there aren't many of them on the secondary market.

~~~
alkonaut
> > looking for a '16 or '17 model

> You were looking for an used car then

Yes exactly (new/current ones are, at least '18 models). What I'm complaining
about is that there were more or less a decade now that we taxed the hell out
of CO2, leading to every car being a diesel (with known results).

------
mtgx
What about that infamous "rogue engineer" sneakily modifying all of VW's 2009+
cars to cheat?

~~~
jacquesm
I called that well ahead of time.

[https://jacquesmattheij.com/volkswagen-and-the-blame-the-
eng...](https://jacquesmattheij.com/volkswagen-and-the-blame-the-engineer-
game)

Funny how much pushback that got back then.

------
rwmj
I just finished this book which is pretty interesting:
[https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/039325450X](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/039325450X)
"Faster, Higher, Farther: The Volkswagen Scandal"

------
merb
thanks, usa. from a german customer.

------
gragas
>He could face up to seven years in prison, as well as fines from $40,000 to
$400,000

That's bullsh*t. He's taken off well more than seven years of people's lives
and he's made well more than $400k in performance bonuses.

~~~
lostlogin
And he won't get the maximum fine.

