The automotive world lived to see the biggest scandal in automotive history. The Volkswagen concern (www.vwmanual.ru/en) was accused of deliberately falsifying the toxicity of its diesel engines. The scandal is growing faster than a snowball, an avalanche of “misfortunes” has fallen on the concern, which has already taken away its super-boss Martin Winterkorn, losses of tens of billions are expected, more and more high-ranking heads are falling, German stock prices have fallen. plummeted, Fallsburg is losing its reputation for last year’s snow…
What’s happened?
On Friday, September 18, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published an official statement stating that Volkswagen deliberately underestimated the data on the level of harmful emissions of its diesel models dozens of times. These are models of the Jeta, Golf, Passat (www.vwmanual.ru/en/passat) and Audi A3 (www.audimanual.ru/en/A3) families, equipped with two-liter turbodiesels from EA189 series engines.
Since 2008, about half a million of them have been sold in the United States alone, each of which can be fined up to $37,500. The line below the bill shows that the total amount of the fine could reach 18 billion greenbacks. And that’s 17 times more than the previous largest fine ever paid in the United States by Toyota for covering up faults related to the accelerator pedal, which led to many deaths.
What is Volkswagen’s fault?
The Environmental Protection Agency said Volkswagen’s “owners” had integrated a “fake device” into the engine management system. The automaker’s specialists have applied a special software algorithm that, when the equipment is started, puts the engine into a special “clean” cycle, measuring its cleanliness. This special program monitors a number of indicators that determine whether the machine is on the stand or on the road. Electronics analyzes data on the position of the steering wheel, vehicle dynamics, engine operating time and changes in atmospheric pressure.
This allows the level of nitrogen oxides emitted in the laboratory and measured according to US standards, but additional analysis, initiated at the suggestion of a small company with mixed German-American participation, proves that during normal road operation, VW diesel vehicles emit 10 to 40 times more harmful than laboratory tests!
How thick is the job?
A lot..o..wow! Volkswagen has already been accused of defrauding the US government and its overseas customers, as well as endangering the health of the Yankees. The situation is aggravated by the fact that this is not a technical flaw or problems in engine tuning, but a deliberate distortion of data using “fraudulent equipment”. After the EPA statement, the US Department of Justice opened a criminal case against the Germans for actually deliberately underreporting the amount of harmful substances emitted.
A detailed review at the EU level is also being initiated in Europe. The concern said that at least 11 million vehicles were affected by the problem.
The storm reached Volkswagen heights. On Wednesday, September 23, the Supervisory Board of VW held an extraordinary meeting, at which the resignation of the head of the concern, Martin Winterkorn, was submitted. He recently won a power battle in VW with the powerful Ferdinand Peach, Ferdinand Porsche’s nephew, but his victory was fiery. The group’s management announced the creation of a special fund in the amount of 6.5 billion euros to resolve the situation and the damage caused, and several collective multimillion-dollar private lawsuits have already been filed against the company in the United States.
The market reacted to the scandal instantly – in recent days, VW shares have fallen on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange by 38%, and the market price of VW has fallen to 25 billion euros.
Only Volkswagen is to blame?
Of course not! Over the past few years in the US, the automaker’s management system has become more efficient, and several major scandals have erupted due to the concealment of defects in cars by their manufacturers. In late 2013, Hyundai and Kia agreed to pay their customers $395 million in compensation for factory underreporting of automotive fuel consumption. EPA has proven that 13 South Korean models consume half a liter of fuel per 100 km more than their factory data indicates.
This May, the Justice Department accused General Motors of deliberately refusing to run a service campaign for cars with a faulty ignition key, a malfunction that stops a car from moving and unnecessarily deploys airbags. More than 100 people have died in the scandal, and a few days ago GM reached an agreement with prosecutors to drop the investigation, agreeing to pay a fine of nearly a billion dollars.
This summer, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration – NHTSA forced the Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) alliance to give nearly 200,000 of its customers the opportunity to return their cars to dealers at the market price due to their defects. It will take several billion dollars to solve the problem with the FCA, but against the backdrop of the VW scandal, this amount may be negligible.
