Given that VW was caught cheating emissions on a global scale, and far worse than other carmakers, i find it surprising that anyone on hackernews would consider buying their cars.
"Since the Volkswagen 'Dieselgate' emissions cheating scandal broke in September 2015, nearly every major automaker including--Daimler, General Motors, Suzuki and Mitsubishi have all been caught up in falsifying fuel economy figures or cheating on emissions testing."
I am not justifying VW's actions, but it's pretty obvious to any critical reader of news articles that VW was just the unlucky one whose head met the chopping block -- so in terms of a single targeted boycott of VW as a consumer, I don't think it makes sense. They still make great cars, despite some bad apples that work there (every company has them -- also see Lenovo / SuperFish).
I can't think of a reason folks here would hate on Toyota, Honda, etc: companies that build practical, efficient, cheap cars, have well regarded engineering, and have met with incredible economic success.
False equivalency to say all car brands are like VW, which lied and cheated about emissions whilst marketing their product as Clean Diesel, and left their own customers and everyone else on planet Earth holding the bag.
I buy goods/services based on the future expected utility and effects of my purchase. If VW has a vehicle that's otherwise the best option for me to purchase, I'm not clear that there's any benefit to me, based on their past actions, opting to go with the next best alternative instead.
Boycotts come at the cost of the participants but to the benefit of the greater good. You’re being asked not to cross the picket line.
If you don’t believe VWs transgressions were enough to warrant a boycott, that’s a fair point to make. I’m not in the car market so I don’t even have an opinion on it, myself. But to the parent’s credit: they never meant to talk about you benefitting personally. It’s about teaching car makers that actions have consequences. For the greater good.
Put another way: how bad does VW have to mess up before you consider more than your personal benefit?
I'm not saying I won't participate in a boycott, I'm saying it's not clear that a boycott of VW benefits the greater good, because a) It's not clear that current or future VW is behaving or will behave any worse than other car manufacturers. and b) There's pretty free movement in decision-makers between various car manufacturers.
I don't anthropomorphize companies; they aren't people. They can be economically incentivized or legislatively regulated, but they can't learn.
> Put another way: how bad does VW have to mess up before you consider more than your personal benefit?
There'd have to be some indication that me buying a VW would be contributing to future mess ups.
Toyota had an Unintended Acceleration problem that actually put peoples' lives at stake, and they denied everything / covered it up [1]. I don't recall people boycotting Toyota.
[1] Toyota to Pay $1.2B for Hiding Deadly ‘Unintended Acceleration’
They certainly didn't put the fault there by design, and over a number of years. I think VW has done irreversible damage to the environment systematically over a long number of years.
My understanding is just about every car maker does this, and VW is just the company to fall on the sword. Hopefully in a few years there will be more data and journalism on this to substantiate or refute these rumors.
Indeed, I cite a source corroborating this in my cousin post.
Every car manufacturer that is building ICE vehicles is damaging the environment. Even though VW fudged some numbers in their report like everybody else did, the fact that there are even cars on the road to begin with is by far the main contributor to global warming, much more than any incremental damage (if any) caused by people who could have been mislead into buying a "clean diesel" vehicle based on sheer (mis-)reporting.
If there was a TDI next to an F-250 on the road, and I asked someone to point to the biggest offender, everyone would point at the F-250. It's really unfortunate to see VW become the scapegoat here in the US (but unfortunately also quite predictable since they are a "foreign" car manufacturer).
