Tag Archives: Volkswagen

The Wagen That’s Not for the Volk Anymore, by Eric Peters

Posted on April 11, 2022 | 1 comment

Volkswagen has lost its way. From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:

Some people think that those who’ve been “vaccinated” are already dead – because they will be, soon.

Could the same be true of Volkswagen?

The manufacture of cars for the people – it’s literally what Volkswagen means, in German – announced the other day that it will stop making about 60 percent of the models in its current inventory, all of them the combustion-engined ones that people can afford to buy, in order to focus on “premium” cars, all of them electric, that only a few people can afford to buy.

“The key target is not growth,” said VW’s finance chief Arno Antlitz.

Well, that was tried before – though not intentionally.

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The Great Regression, by Eric Peters

Posted on April 13, 2021 | Leave a comment

Once upon a time progress meant things got better, but under the new definition of progress, that’s not necessarily true, especially when it comes to government-favored technologies. From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:

 
 
 

Volkswagen is touting the 260 mile range of its new ID.4 electric crossover, up 10 whole miles from what the EPA had previously estimated.

This means you can travel as far as 130 miles – one way – before you are forced to stop for a long time in order to keep going that way. Or you can turn around and make it home – maybe. At the risk of maybe not quite making it and having to wait for a long time before you can get home again.

This is what you get for $40,000 to start, the base price of the ID.4.

Well, technically, $39,995. Gotta keep it “under “40k,” which appears to be the new benchmark for EV entry-level.

Here is what you used to be able to get from VW for $22,460 back in 2015 – which was the year before VWs like the TDI diesel-powered Jetta TDI sedan got in trouble with Uncle:

652 miles before you had to stop for a couple of minutes in order to be back on your way again.

To be fair, that was on the highway.

In city driving, the Jetta TDI could only go 449 miles – which is only just shy of twice as far as the ID.4 can go, anywhere – for just shy of twice as much.

Only in a world gone loopy could such a reversion and diminution be cause for anything other than embarrassment – and ridicule. But it is of a piece with the bizarro oh, thank you massa eructing from people who have been graciously allowed to walk around again, provided they wear a Face Diaper and provided they don’t stand too close to anyone else. Or the curious, obsequious gratefulness of restaurant owners allowed to open, provided they only serve half the people they used to be able to – while still being obliged to pay all of the rent and taxes, etc. 

It’s pathological.

That goes double-plus-good for for the car press, which in saner times would have ridiculed a car that went half as far and cost twice as much being purveyed as some sort of boon to the car-buying public.

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Voltswagen vs. Volkswagen, by Eric Peters

Posted on April 6, 2021 | Leave a comment

Once upon a time there were car companies interested in building economical cars that were affordable for even people of very modest means. Those days are long gone, and will be even farther in the rear view mirror when electric cars become the norm. From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:

The name change – even if April Foolsey – is indicative of what this change is all about.

The Volkswagen was – literally – the people’s car. It was Germany’s open emulation of America’s people’s car, the Ford Model T.

In terms of their looks and layouts, they were as different as a square and a circle. Henry’s car had a water-cooled, inline four cylinder engine up front powering rear wheels, out back. It was angular and upright and jacked up off the ground – to enable travel over America’s then mostly dirt roads.

The Beetle – as the first Volkswagen was affectionally called – had its air-cooled horizontally opposed four cylinder engine mounted in the rear – on top of the rear wheels – and it was as round as the T was not.

It sat low, to take advantage of aerodynamics and Germany’s new system of Autobahns, which predated America’s Interstates – which emulated them – by more than 20 years.

Yet both reflected the same wonderful concept, that of putting people behind the wheel. Which opened up not just the road but possibilities that average people of modest means had never previously had. With a people’s car – whether it was the Model T or a Beetle – the people were mobile. Just like that, they were freed from the necessity of having to stay put – or stay close. They could live at a distance from where they worked. They did not have to consider the proximity of the bus stop or the train station to either.

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Well, Now We Know . . . by Eric Peters

Posted on October 4, 2018 | Leave a comment

Consumers are paying a high price for the punishment the government inflicted on Volkswagen. From Eric Peters at theburningplatform.com:

Well, now we know… how much Uncle’s persecution of VW is costing us – on top of the billions it has already cost Volkswagen.

Are you ready, Freddie?

About seven miles per gallon.

That’s how much the mileage of a 2015 Jetta TDI droops after it gets “fixed” – a term also used by farmers and used in the same manner here as well.

The VWs in question – like young male calves – were not broken. “Fixing” is a euphemism for taking something away . . . .

In the case of the VWs, what’s being taken away – by those who brought their cars in for “fixing”- is their formerlyexceptional fuel efficiency.

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Sniffing a Scandal, by Eric Peters

Posted on July 7, 2018 | 1 comment

Has VW been persecuted and fined because it befouled the air, or because it builds diesel cars that people prefer over electrics? From Eric Peters at theburningplatform.com:

They only crucified Jesus once – and that was enough (so we are told) to atone for all mankind’s sins . . . in perpetuity.

And mankind did (and does) sin. In the moral sense. Murder, theft, rape and all the other uglies.

VW suffers crucifixion in perpetuity for its sins – which are of a purely statutory nature. Like failing to buckle-up for safety. So far, the German automaker has been godsmacked to the tune of $30.4 billion (not a typo) in fines and other levies for tuning its diesel-powered cars to pass government emissions certification tests.

To which the obvious rejoinder is – well, what’s the problem? They passed the tests, right?

Ah, but they didn’t really pass the tests. VW “cheated” by programming the cars to make it through the tests, then altered their programming once through the tests.

Here’s where things get . . . interesting.

The tests VW “cheated” on are not the same tests as the tailpipe exhaust emissions tests most of us have to subject our cars to, in order to register them and renew registration. All of the “cheating” VWs passed – and continue to pass – these “tailpipe sniffer” tests, which ought to give you some idea about the amount of “cheating” VW was up to on the other tests.

Think about it.

The smog check joints – thousands of them, across the land – detected no smog (technically, no noxious compounds such as oxides of nitrogen) in excess of the allowable thresholds. The cars passed those tests. If their emissions were not within allowable limits, they wouldn’t have.

They also passed by the automated roadside emissions detectors in ultra-strict California. These snuff the air as cars pass by and if the air is not up to snuff, they snap a photo of the offending car’s plates and send its owner a nasty note informing him that he must bring the car in for examination, pronto – or else.

But not one VW diesel – as far as I have been able to determine – was identified as a “polluter” by these tests. Or the tests you stand in line to go through to get your tags renewed. The absence of any California drive-by smog alarums is particularly noteworthy because the cars being snuffed were being driven. Not idling while hooked to a test rig. But the “cheating” asserted by Uncle asserts that once out in the world, actually driving, the “cheating” cars became churning cauldrons of toxic effluvia-spewing foulness.

To continue reading: Sniffing a Scandal

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The Clover Who Squealed, by Eric Peters

Posted on April 25, 2017 | 2 comments

Just because something’s lawful doesn’t make it morally right, and just because something’s illegal doesn’t make it morally wrong. If you’ve grasped that concept, you’re intellectually more advanced than the “clover who squealed.” From Eric Peters on a guest post at theburningplatform.com:

Late last week, it was revealed who squealed.

The Clover responsible for making it impossible for any of us to buy a diesel-powered Volkswagen henceforth – and a lot more – is Stuart Johnson, the former head of VW’s Engineering and Environmental Office in Auburn Hills, Michigan. He was outed in a book written about the VW “cheating” business by New York Times reporter Jack Ewing.

Johnson, of course, is about to get everything short of a ticker-tape parade. A bust of him will likely be cast and placed in the Hall of Mirrors – or whatever the equivalent is in the foyer of the EPA. He is already being lionized in the Usual Corners as a “hero” (that term, along with “community,” has worn out its welcome and ought to be etymologically euthanized).

You’d think he did something good. I suppose this depends on your perspective.

If you are a government bureaucrat then Johnson is your kind of guy. The sort who is pained by the idea of any action contrary to regulation or edict. Who feels guilty when – as here – a business attempts to get around a ridiculous edict or absurd regulation.

 Which are never perceived as ridiculous or absurd by people like Johnson because they come from the government, are “the law” and therefore must not merely obeyed but reverenced. Visualize the ritual triple curtsey before The Presence of the king. . . .
Such people are the new people in American business, popped out of their molds after 12 years in care of government molding centers, then sent – the smarter ones – for higher technical training. But never training in how to think conceptually, beyond the narrow range of their specialty, such as engineering. And then off to work either for the government or on its behalf in the increasingly not-private sector of the economy. Which has become – operationally speaking – a kind of adjunct or subsidiary operation of the government.

To continue reading: The Clover Who Squealed

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Silence of the Lambs? by Eric Peters

Posted on March 4, 2017 | 3 comments

VW executive Oliver Schmidt is looking at 169 years in prison for a victimless crime. Welcome to American regulatory justice, Herr Schmidt. From Eric Peters on a guest post at theburningplatform.com:

You’d think maybe he killed someone.

Oliver Schmidt is facing 169 years in prison.

Earlier this week, the 48-year-old German national was frog-marched before the judge who will preside over his coming criminal trail, shackled at the ankles and waist, wearing an orange, Hannibal Lector-style one-piece jumpsuit.

All that was missing, really, was the face mask.

That – and a victim.

Schmidt is one of several VW executives implicated in the diesel “cheating” scandal. He is the former chief of the now-writhing-on-the-floor, hoping-for-mercy German car company’s Environmental and Engineering Center in Detroit. VW has thrown him – and six other executives and engineers – under the bus, having already agreed to plead guilty to multiple felony counts.

Not one of them identifying a single specific victim.

This is routine. Which doesn’t make it any less bizarre.

169 years in prison is a sentence harsher than the one meted out to Charles Manson (he has been up for parole several times already) and most run-of-the-mill killers, who generally serve about 20 years.

And they actually killed someone.

If Schmidt gets half the 169 years, he will spend the rest of his natural life behind bars.

What was his “crime” again?

He stands accused of attempted murder . . . of The Law.

And not even that, really.

A regulation.

An EPA-issued fatwa regarding acceptable levels of exhaust emissions. VW – well, Schmidt and the six other fall guys – traduced the EPA’s regulatory standards by programming or otherwise adjusting the ECU (the computer that controls the engine) of TDI diesel-powered VWs to pass the emissions tests required for certification prior to sale, but revert to more mileage-and-performance-friendly programming that resulted in slightly, imperceptibly, higher-than-allowed emissions once out on the road.

To continue reading: Silence of the Lambs?

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The Bank Run, by Eric Peters

Posted on June 29, 2016 | 1 comment

Volkswagen’s survival is in doubt because it tried to subvert one of the US’s picayune, but sacrosanct, regulations. The punishment is all out of proportion to the infraction, but that’s what happens to those who skirt THE LAW. From Eric Peters on a guest post at theburningplatform.com:

If you own a VW diesel guilty of “cheating” Uncle, you’d better scuttle on down to your local VW store. Not to “fix” it (they’re not broken) but to get your money before there’s none left.

On Tuesday, Uncle announced the most draconian punishment ever meted out to a car company over the TDI “cheating” scandal: $15 billion in forced buyback/loan forgiveness offers and funding for “environmental programs” and the promotion of electric/hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.

On top of this, VW has agreed – been forced – to pay out another $600 million in separate settlements with 44 states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.

The cost of pending civil litigation – not covered by the above – hasn’t yet been calculated. But it could be the biggest and most expensive class-action payday ever. There are at least half a million potential litigants.

It could be curtains for Volkswagen.

No joke.

$15 billion is a staggering sum. An impossible sum.

It dwarfs the cost borne by Ford back in the late 1970s over the Exploding Pinto fiasco – a mere $127 million (later reduced to $6 million, or about $24 million in today’s dollars). In the early 2000s, Ford had to pay out about $2.4 billion to settle claims arising from the Ford Explorer/Firestone tire rollover debacle.VW sales

Chump change.

And Ford is a major automaker, one of the Big Three. Its cars account for about 15 percent of all cars sold in the U.S.

VW has – had – a market share around 3 percent.

The math is very, very bad.

Ford would have trouble dealing with a $15 billion dollar hit (probably more like $20 billion once the civil litigation is figured in).

And VW is not Ford.

Where will all the geld come from?

Maybe VW has a geldscheisser. You know – like the private banking cartel that controls the money supply.

The good news is that owners of the “affected” vehicles won’t be forced to turn in their cars (to be destroyed) but VW will be forced to buy them back if they do.

Well, so long as VW has the funds available to do so.

Which could be not for long.

Each owner will get (if he hurries) the pre-scandal “clean” Blue Book value of his car, plus a cash award in addition ranging from $5,100 to $10,000. Or, the owner can elect to keep his car and wait for VW to “fix” it (the details of this have yet to be determined). These people will still get the $5-$10k payday. People who still owe on a loan may have the balance due forgiven and people who are leasing an “affected” model will have the opportunity to turn the car in early without penalty.

About half a million cars are “affected,” dating back to the 2009 model year. Under the terms of the agreement with Uncle, VW must either buy back or “fix” 85 percent of these cars by June 30, 2019. If it fails to do so, Uncle will hit the company with another $85 million in fines for each percentage point below 85 percent.

That alone is four times what Ford had to pay out to make amends for the Exploding Pintos – which actually hurt (actually killed) actual people.

Who has been hurt by VW’s “cheating”?

The fact is no one’s suffered so much as a bad hair day.

To continue reading: The Bank Run

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The Crush, by Eric Peters

Posted on May 5, 2016 | Leave a comment

In The Golden Pinnacle, Robert Gore’s riveting novel of the Industrial Revolution, character James J. Hill, a real life railroad titan, said: ‘If you crawl into bed with the government, you’re laboring under a delusion as to who’s doing the poking and who’s getting poked.” The CEO of VW is trying to crawl into bed with the government, to atone for VW’s sins. Eric Peters says he’s sure to get poked, and he should have tried to make war, not penance. From Peters, on a guest post at theburningplatform.com:

Hidden in VW’s announcement yesterday that it was “setting aside” nearly $9 billion to buy back – and destroy – about half a million diesel-powered cars convicted of “cheating” Uncle’s emissions tests was a statement by CEO Matthias Mueller that tells us how craven – and divorced from reality – car company CEOs are these days.

Mueller told reporters that VW will undergo a “wide-ranging transformation” that will end up with the company “focusing more” on “digital services” and “zero emissions” vehicles; that it would be sinking money into “mobility services” such as ride-sharing apps and car-sharing.

Because it looks like selling cars – economically and functionally viable cars – isn’t working much for them.

Well, it was.

But not anymore.

Because Uncle.

Instead of $22k TDI Jettas that can go 50-plus miles on a gallon of fuel, VW’s Matthias wants to “focus” on Germanic Teslas like the electric Golf – which costs almost $30,000 and goes maybe 70 miles on a full charge. VW can’t send me an eGolf to review because the thing can’t make it here in a single trip, in a single day.

Not unless it is carried here on a flatbed.

But the eGolf is “zero emissions” and that makes it politically appealing to politically correct CEOs like Mueller, whose “customer” is Uncle… not us.

If this weren’t the case, VW would be defending its excellent – and hugely popular – TDI-powered cars instead of crushing them. And not “focusing” on electrified idiocies such as the eGolf.

Mueller told reporters VW intends to “make electric cars one of (its) hallmarks” by 2020, by which time – less than four years from now – it plans to introduce 20 new electrified idiocies, notwithstanding the eGolf’s great success (not) and notwithstanding utterly absent market demand for cars that struggle to go anywhere and which need a very long umbilical cord to get there. And which also cost Ludicrous Sums of money and even then still can’t be sold at a profit without open-ended “help” from Uncle.

Reading between the lines – you can almost see the type – Matthias intends to ditch diesels (politically incorrect) in favor of … electric cars

Because they are “clean” (and, of course, politically correct).

Whether they work being – apparently – beside the point.

To continue reading: The Crush

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The VW “Scandal,” by Eric Peters

Posted on September 24, 2015 | Leave a comment

A different and thought-provoking take on the VW mess, from Eric Peters on a guest post at theburningplatform.com:

This could kill VW – until recently (until last week) the world’s largest car company.

But unlike say the exploding Pinto fiasco this is not a story about defective cars. It is a story about defective public policy.

None of the VW cars now in the crosshairs are unreliable, dangerous or shoddily built. They were simply programmed to give their owners best-case fuel economy and performance. Software embedded within each vehicle’s computer – which monitors and controls the operation of the engine – would furtively adjust those parameters slightly to sneak by emissions tests when the vehicle was plugged in for testing. But once out on the road, the calibrations would revert to optimal – for mileage and performance.

Now, the hysterical media accounts of the above make it seem that the alteration via code of the vehicles’ exhaust emissions was anything but slight. Shrill cries of up to “40 times” the “allowable maximum” echo across the land.

Well, true.

But, misleading.

Because not defined – put in context.

What is the “allowable maximum”?

It is a very small number.

Less than 1 percent of the total volume of the car’s exhaust. We are talking fractions of percentages here. Which is why talk of “40 percent” is so misleading and, frankly, deliberately dishonest.

Left out of context, the figure sounds alarming. As in 40 percent of 100 percent.

As opposed to 40 percent of the remaining unscrubbed 1-3 percent or .05 percent or whatever it is (depending on the specific “harmful” byproduct being belabored).

The truth – explained rarely, for reasons that will become obvious – is that the emissions of new cars (and recent-vintage cars) have been so thoroughly cleaned up they hardly exist at all. Catalytic converters (and especially “three way” catalytic converters with oxygen sensors) and fuel injection alone eliminated about two-thirds of the objectionable effluvia from the exhaust stream – and they’ve been around since the 1980s. Most of the remaining third was dealt with during the ’90s, via more precise forms of fuel delivery (port fuel injection replaced throttle body fuel injection) and more sophisticated engine computers capable of real-time monitoring and adjustment of parameters, and of alerting the vehicle’s owner to the need for a check.

Since the late ’90s/early 2000s, the industry has been chasing diminishing returns. The remaining 3 percent or so of the exhaust stream that’s not been “controlled.”VW 3

You may begin to see the problem here.

Internal combustion is always going to produce some emissions. The engineers have picked the low hanging (and mid-hanging) fruit. But the EPA insists on what amounts to a zero emissions internal combustion engine.

Which, of course, is impossible.

Which may be just the point.

Set unattainable standards – then denounce the victim for “noncompliance.”

To continue reading: The VW “Scandal”

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