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Negative marketing
VW has to give back the "Green Car of the YEAR" award in USA.
Pulls back now Public Relations in several countries in Europe.
Tax reducing and subvention
Several countries especially in Europe give subvention on low emission cars
on new buys. And / or giving tax reduction on such cars.
As VW with some models obviously did not meet this criteria some countries
want to get back subventions and tax reduction back from 2005 (first cars
with the fraudulent software) up to now.
This sums up to quite a good sum counting the 11 million cars affected.
Know How erased
It is known that the boss Winterkorn as well as 3 chiefs of the technical
divisions are no longer working. This means that four heads with excellent
technical knowledge and knowledge on the latest developments are missing
from one day to another.
This will have for sure negative impact on actual pipeline of new cars.
It goes without saying that VW Management was stupid to deceive the world BUT the biggest idiot move was that they were investigated by the CARB and EPA starting end of 2014. Basically, CARB/EPA were reproducing the tests conducted by the ICCT, who did the original tests that uncovered VW's deceit in 2013, and had contacted VW for answers. VW just stonewalled with excuses like "must be the test equipment" for 9 months before CARB/EPA threated to not certify 2016 vehicles so VW then admitted that they cheated! This brings up a few points:
When a company is investigated by a Government agency, the topic usually goes to the legal department/ownership/top management. So what were they thinking? 9 Months is enough time to scrabble and do damage control...."yes, there is a problem with the car and we must recall and delay 2016!". Management must have thought they could somehow win...
Yeah, that's the part that puzzles me. They knew it was coming. Piech tried to get rid of Winterkorn at the time, but the board sided with MW. Everyone was very confused as to why Piech would just drop his protege like this, but now we know. How could the board/C-level people NOT know exactly what would happen? They should have disabled the defeat device and spin it as "the EPA forced us to decrease these car's milage to be sure they don't give off high emissions, even though it happened only in very few cases". Instead they were incredibly arrogant and crashed it into the wall at full speed.
I doubt that. These managers have not done any actual R&D work for years and they are being replaced by people who have been a little closer to the people who do the work.
- France has started officially to investigate against VW in case of fraud.
- Switzerland has stopped the license for new cars with fraudulent software
on brands Audi, VW, Seat and Skoda per next monday. To prevent bringing
in more cars that do not reach the minimal standards.
This may be right for Martin Winterkorn.
But the head of development (manager) HAS to be the pushing force - and of course is involved in every step
of a development in his department.
Hey - he IS responsible - so he needs to know.
I agree that the development guy had to know, but this was a major decision involving how to position the product line, especially in the US, where Diesel cars had very little penetration, and where VW was attempting to make a big strategic push.
The decision certainly came from Winterkorn. It was too important. The others were, of course, also part of it and perhaps came up with the particular idea of using a defeat device -- or rather, told their subordinates to solve the emissions problem and then approved their solution -- but the final OK had to be made at the top.
By the way, although I'm sure it would be hard to prove, the board, or key members of it, almost certainly also knew, and gave their approval.
And by the way, in the US, the VW TV commercials for the last couple of years have usually included the words "clean Diesel" as a reference to how good these cars were, leaning on the appeal of German engineering. There is something of a negative bias toward Diesel cars in the US, and VW knew they had to overcome it. This was a major, top-level decision.
Bob.
Edit: I have to agree with @skoa, that the loss of these top-level executives has not left a hole in VW's technical expertise. That still resides with the engineers and the lower-level managers who direct them at a closer level. What is gone is some of the top-level decision-making, which is probably a good thing....