I am about halfway through the book right now (so far, very highly recommended).

There is a lot more in the book than is captured in this review. VW's history is extremely interesting, and the company has unique organizational aspects (even by German standards).

And related, an excellent, detailed technical summary of cheating implementations, including the historical evolution across manufacturers: https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~klevchen/diesel-sp17.pdf

It reminds me of the events leading NASA Challenger disaster. The engineers and lower management employees were totally ignored by upper management in that scenario.

Though, I should mention, I haven't read any books about the VW scandal yet.

Unclear. The author of the book takes that position. The author seems to be hostile to worker ownership or state ownership.

Companies with multiple classes of stock to deprive the stockholders of voting control can have a much worse autocratic leader problem. Google and Facebook are set up that way, of course. Here's the list of the 28 S&P 500 companies with restricted voting rights.[1] As a group, they underperform the full S&P 500. Some of those companies that aren't doing well face shareholder litigation. Viacom's minority shareholders did manage to get rid of Sumner Redstone, but he was 93 and really had to go.

For many decades, no big company did this, because the NYSE didn't allow such companies to be listed. (Except for Ford and Hershey, which predated that rule; they were grandfathered in.) It's still rare, but now companies can get away with it.

[1] https://s.thestreet.com/files/tsc/v2008/photos/contrib/uploa...

It's hard to put in perspective just how badly NASA management screwed up though--probably much moreso than here.

I would bet 90%+ of HN user's great grandmothers would not make the same mistake. Of course they wouldn't--it takes a special case of narcissistic manager who can both get himself to the top and also tell his engineers no because he cant admit a mistake and would rather risk blowing up a space shuttle (and it happened).

also http://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/24/reuters-america-update-1-fren...

What?

Especially when we know that the problem isn't even specific to VW, with many manufacturers accused of the same thing.

If anyone really wants to learn more about what happened here, I can't recommend more the 33c3 talk "Software Defined Emissions," which tells you a ton more than this clickbait hack journalism could ever.

https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-7904-software_defined_emissions

[0] https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7331-the_exhaust_emissions_scand...

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=throw%20shade

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=throw%20shad...

Would not surprise me if it is a msm fueled resurgence, akin to whataboutism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_European_Driving_Cycle

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FTP-75

The problem with the testing is that it also followed the exact same unit test. I have not read the law, but they certainly violated the spirit of the law if not also the letter.

What VW did do was more interesting and could be interpreted as exploiting a loophole in the law. They very precisely met the requirements of the emissions test as it was written in the law. I see this as a regulation failure and should be used to inform future emission laws and testing.

This whole video is interesting but at least watch starting at this point to see how clever VW engineers are:

https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7331-the_exhaust_emissions_scand...

If there had not been such a public outcry VW might have pushed back saying they are in compliance with the law as written.

>>> He delves into VW’s origins, when Adolf Hitler ordered the construction of a “people’s car”, or Volkswagen in German. VW set up shop in the German countryside. Wolfsburg bred a “headquarters mentality” that insulated the firm from outside influence. Unprecedented union power, handed over in the 1960s as the price the federal government paid for floating the firm on the stockmarket, and the sway of the state of Lower Saxony, which retained a 20% voting stake in the company, gave outside shareholders little say.

So basically, union power and government involvement (and lack of private investors) lead to cheating ?

come on...

that's just some comtext blurb, you're extrapolating too much out of it

Unless I'm missing something, this is roughly 15 years after Hitler disappeared. Or my english skills are truly fading away :-(

It is definitely NOT what really happened with the emissions scandal, as it omits the most important facts, how this cheating scandals began, and how it spread out.

The first emission cheating scandals happened with US carmakers, then the US and EU emission testing laws deviated, allowing the US to cheat with their drivers, giving national carmakers the advantage, whilst EU and Asia committed to reproducible tests. But only on one model out of R&D, and not every single engine coming out of production. And then of course the tricks began to detect the tests, probably at Audi (certainly not VW), with Bosch being the one who needs to take the blame. They implemented it. Then many others detected the same tricks, and either used the sophisticated cycle detection in the Bosch ECU or used simplier timers. In the last list I saw 50% of all tested engines cheated with the NOx emissions, and VW was not even at the top of the numbers.

VW's conduct both in implementing these cheats, as well as resisting the investigations into them (to this day!) was obviously, morally indefensible, and totally stupid. Health statistics put the most likely number of premature deaths caused by it somewhere in the 4-digits, in the US alone.

The absolute amount of the fine must have punitive component large enough to make it obvious that such crimes don't pay. At the same time, it wold have been unconscientious to level a fine that would bankrupt VW. I believe the US did a pretty good job.

It also shows a deep misunderstanding of the processes by which the Federal Government works. These fines are not determined by some Trump-like egomaniac impulsively acting on his emotions. Nor is the EPA known to be a fan club of US car manufacturers.

Why only VW? It's quite easy: these manipulations are really only relevant to Diesel engines, which for some reason became a fetish for manufacturers in Germany only. VW sells more Diesel cars in the US than all other companies together.

"VW's conduct both in implementing these cheats": No Bosch implemented these cheats. If there was help or demand from outside, it was Audi, not VW.

"Why only VW? VW sells more Diesel cars in the US than all other companies together."

The fines should be on all manifacturers of the cheaters. From the list of the affected engines I see not a single one being targeted. The relevant VW engines are all manifactured by Audi, the relevant cheats were manifactured by Bosch, the other relevant cheaters involve everyone: Audi, Daimler, BMW, Skoda, Volvo, VW, Jaguar, Land Rover, Citroen, Mazda, Peugeot, Hyundai, KIA, Toyota, Ssangyong, Infinity, Fiat, Ford, Mitshubishi, Seat, Vauxhall, Chevrolet, Dacia, Honda, Nissan, MG, Porsche, Renault, ... you name it. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/apr/23/diesel-cars...

Only those 7 diesel cars meet the Euro 6 NOx limits, the other 97% not.

  * Audi	A5	2014
  * BMW	3 Series	2013
  * Skoda	Superb	2016
  * Volkswagen	Golf SV	2015
  * Volkswagen	Passat	2016
  * Volkswagen	Scirocco 2015
  * Volkswagen	Touran	2016