My dad used to joke that if you wanted sneakers that were not made by child labor, your best bet was whichever manufacturer last got into trouble for it because of all the extra scrutiny.

That this level of fatalism about immoral acts exists is a failure of society as a whole. I suspect that all of those who got rich either knowingly or being willfully ignorant about emissions cheating walked away completely unpunished. Maybe less rich than if they hadn't gotten caught, but still richer than if they hadn't cheated in the first place.

Instead of posting uninformed speculation, you can just Google it…

> In 2017, the U.S.-based VW executive Oliver Schmidt, who oversaw emissions issues, was sentenced to seven years in prison and fined $400,000, the maximum possible under a plea deal the German national made with prosecutors after admitting to charges of conspiring to mislead U.S regulators and violate clean-air laws.

The US has charged nine people, and Germany at least five, though they aren't moving quickly with the prosecutions.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-emissions/u-s-...

More recently, he has been released on parole after roughly half his term served.[1] Interestingly, the article says:

In Germany, inmates can be released after serving two thirds of their term. Parole after only half of the time is rare, but can be granted to first time offenders who demonstrated good behavior and are deemed unlikely to commit crimes in the future.

I don't doubt he exhibited good behavior. I'm not sure I believe he's unlikely to commit a crime in the future. I wonder if he thinks he was singled out for something everyone in the industry was doing, and thus it wasn't his fault. He wouldn't be wrong about the first thing, but he would about the second. It's admittedly speculation on my part though.

1: https://www.autonews.com/executives/ex-vw-manager-schmidt-ge...

A close associate is an engine designer at a VW group company.

VW is not some bottoms up startup. It has a clear micromanaged road map for virtually everything. Data is gathered, sheds are biked ad nausuem.

this person was jailed because they were the last one holding the hot potatoe. There is no way (according to said associate) that upper management were not aware of what was going on. as any decision like that has to have approval.

It is/was a wide spread practice, well known in the industry. I know that ford used to routinely re-map the ECU after the warranty period, which boosted the miles per gallon at the expense of various pollutants.

The higher-up executives are also in hot water - Martin Winterkorn, then the CEO, is under indictment in both Germany and the US, and is likely to face prison time after his (more complicated, because his involvement worked through deniable cutouts) trial.

> re-map the ECU

Sorry, what does this mean in layman's terms?

Change the parameters used to calculate the fine details of how the internal combustion engine operates, e.g. how much fuel to inject into each cylinder, when to send a spark to trigger ignition, how much pressure should the turbocharger provide, etc.

I can only recommend watching this 2015 talk at German Chaos Communication Congress about the technical details of the scandal. It's in English and really worth watching if you're technically interested. They reverse engineered the ECU configurations and showed how the manipulation works.

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

> sheds are biked ad nausuem

What does this mean?

It's from an old parable, also called Parkinson's Law of Triviality. Basically, simple things get discussed more because everyone can understand them. It goes something like this:

"If a committee designs a bikeshed, they will spend five minutes discussing the structural requirements, half an hour on the size, and the rest of the available time arguing about what color to paint the shed."

Oh ok. I wonder why he didn't just say "bikeshedding."

Spot of literary flair

It wouldn't fit grammatically.

because I'm a flashy git, but you're right to question it.

because art

It is still quite likely he won't be repeating the mistake though. Prison is something else than just money.

I’m sure it’s awful for normal folk like us but in his case (and again this is uninformed speculation), where he’s essentially the fall guy for a scandal that was supporting one of the world’s largest economies (and a large component of several others), it’s not that hard to imagine his experience being just a bit different than what a normal inmate should expect.

He also likely knows a lot about how many of his superiors were in the loop on this, so I assume he was well compensated for his inconvenience.

He was in "Offener Vollzug" (~open prison). That means he sleeps in a normal prison cell (that usually looks like [1], so not all that bad) in a regular prison, gets breakfeast, leaves prison to go to work, then goes straight back to prison to participate in the prison's evening activities (sport, recreational, educational, etc). He might get vacation (from staying in prison), and can visit his family on weekends.

It's not that unusual in Germany, at any time about 16% of prisoners are in "offener Vollzug", and it is a great tool to reintegrate prisoners into society. It is limited to first offenders with no flight risk and no risk that they use their time out of prison to do crime.

Of course no matter how useful of a tool it is generally, it does make the prison sentences of some well known people look like a bit of a joke.

1: https://www.zdf.de/dokumentation/zdfinfo-doku/knast-in-deuts...

What are the 84% that aren't in open prison? Poor people who don't have a corporate apparatus to hide their crimes behind?

Volkswagen emissions killed people with smog. VW are homicidal.

Corruption is a real problem in Germany and auto makers have a lot of influence on politicians, so the corporate and the political apparatus are interested in hiding these crimes, because a large part of our economy depends on them.

Pretty disappointing that my comment above was a wild and utterly uninformed guess that was (from what you're saying here) bang on the money.

Turns out that it's almost universally true everywhere that enough wealth and power puts you above the law.

Meanwhile we hear how abusive and inhumane American prisons are. If we had these country clubs in America, what would happen? (Serious question)

I think that depends on what he thinks the mistake was. To him, was the mistake cheating, getting caught, or being in position to be made an example of? He may no make the mistake again, but I'm not sure that means he won't cheat again in a similar way, given the chance.

can I prosecute ex parte the rest of the taxpayers and citizens and asthmatics the administrators supposed to have been in charge of ensuring compliance with emissions standards for failing so incredibly to do their jobs?

or is there no responsibility held by whoever we place in office responsible for seeing our futures aren't squandered?

how is it possible to ignore that obligation and duty when we've only just started to admit that we have to act against such universal polluting?

or has the last encumbant of 2000 Pensylvania Av. just pulled off the brilliant trick of assuming all the blame for the failure of government future and past as well?

(brit with American family and too embarrassed to speak of our politicians presently)

I’m not sure if the downvotes here are because of your Trump allusions or not, but you do raise a pretty important point.

Where was the oversight? How was it that an open secret of this magnitude didn’t incur the wrath of environmental agencies in the countries affected? Is it possible that no-one outside of the industry knew about this and that everyone in the industry, even in competing firms, just kept this secret for years without anything leaking out?

It doesn’t seem plausible that this wasn’t known about and ignored by regulators in at least some regions.

I agree, the people enforcing these laws are just as negligent. Why did the let the manufactures anywhere near the testing process.

I would like to think that now, after the scandal, they are selecting and testing cars that have recently been sold. The cars that are actually being driven around.

Is the rest of the world as harsh as the U.S. in that a prison sentence is basically the end of your career? Would this guy have a shot at being an executive again?

Depends: given that one can easily google his name and find out about this, it's a bit unlikely he'll be appointed to such a prominent position again. But in general, a prison sentence would not be the end of your career here in the EU. Anecdotally, when I was hob-hunting last time, not one company (out of ~ a dozen) asked for a criminal record before making an offer, and only one company informed me that I'd be required to hand one in afterwards. Of course, the others might've asked for it at a later stage, but at least at the company I went with (as well as all my previous employers) hired me without knowing whether I had any priors. As far as I understand, this depends on the industry, though.

Is there evidence that white collar criminal convictions are career ending in the USA?

> I'm not sure I believe he's unlikely to commit a crime in the future.

I don't think many car companies hire ex-convicts in upper management.

As a non violent criminal, who will never get a job where he can even try to commit a similar crime, that sounds reasonable.

> The US has charged nine people, and Germany at least five, though they aren't moving quickly with the prosecutions.

Including the then CEO, who is under indictment in both countries.

and what about the ones at literally every other company that produces diesels?

My own admittedly uninformed understanding is that there was cheating all around, but VW was by far the most flagrant. BMW and Mercedes diesels required DEF (diesel exhaust fluid), whereas VW did not. Marketing and/or executive leadership (again, as per my understanding) pushed the notion that the additive would make diesels appear to be less attractive and who wants to add a second liquid beyond fuel every few hundred miles?

But weren't they all cheating? The diesels with DEF were still above the legal limits, albeit to a lesser degree than the VW's who didn't even bother with DEF because, I guess, if you're going to cheat anyway...

How incorrect is my understanding?

Our VW Sharan required DEV.

How about 'rolling coal'?

What about it? No vehicle will do it from the factory, so I don't see how it's relevant here. It's the result of running a diesel massively, massively over-rich (with aftermarket tuning), and it's absolute hell on the engine - that amount of diesel in the cylinder washes down the cylinder walls and wipes off the lubricating film, so the cylinder wear is insane from even fairly short periods of it.

Even in diesel truck circles, "the other 99.9%" of truck owners think it's just as stupid as everyone else does - in addition to being engine abuse, it tends to attract an awful lot of unwelcome attention, and there are people who won't distinguish between "You've modified your truck to belch a column of coal black smoke for attention" and "An older diesel puts out a bit of brown smoke if you get on it hard suddenly," which can lead to some nuisance emissions testing.

My truck (24 years and change) will smoke a bit if I stand on it and the fuel flow outruns boost coming up, but it's also entirely emissions compliant and passes the tests cleanly - it's just something older diesels do under certain conditions. I try my best to avoid it, but if I need to get a trailer up to speed (especially quickly, if someone is coming up hard behind me), it'll put out a bit of brown smoke until the turbo gets spinning.

None of that has anything to do with VW, though. They were burning clean, which any sort of modern high pressure injection system will typically do, they just had really high NOx emissions for their emissions tier.

I used to live next to a freeway and I know the true cost of dirty diesel engines. Get on any US freeway and you'll notice that while a majority of diesels are fine, there is a minority that is belching soot any time the driver steps on the gas. This is simply unacceptable - this tiny minority of diesels kills people over time - especially the poorer populations who live close to the freeways. I would prefer much more stringent enforcement where any truck belching smoke can be spot checked and impounded.

The emissions testing is not a "nuisance". It saves lives. A noisy motorcycle would be a better example of a nuisance.

I’m obsessive about using the air recirculation button when driving to isolate the cabin any time I’m in the wake of a diesel vehicle, for this reason.

While health issues from diesel particulate is documented on a wide statistical basis, there’s ample reason to believe single exposure events may lead to individual negative health outcomes i.e. getting a lungful one time might just kill you.

The pointless out of band emissions testing of an emissions compliant truck (that easily passes the tests) having to go in for a test because it smokes a bit under hard acceleration and someone called it in for "rolling coal" is very much a nuisance to the truck owner and a waste of time/resources for all parties involved.

An older diesel engine can smoke a decent bit under hard acceleration and still be entirely emissions legal - it's not until you get into the particulate filters in the... oh, 2010s or so (not sure, I don't have anything that new) that you can contain all the particulate matter.

If your stance is that diesels shouldn't be permitted, or that anything older than a certain age shouldn't be allowed to be registered, that's fine, but that's not what I'm referring to here.

My stance is that diesels should only be permitted if they satisfy the EPA 2008 diesel PM standards or better. No older engines should be permitted unless they are retrofitted to comply with the standard and pass regular state tests. We could have a "cash for clunkers" type program to incentivize them to be lawfully scrapped.

I appreciate that you are as annoyed as the rest of us at the coal rollers. I think we need much more aggressive fines and impounds for those, too.

Destroying nearly-new trucks for emissions reasons is a pretty questionable use of funding (and, yes, a 12 year old truck is still quite new) - and you're not going to be able to get away with a token few thousand dollars to encourage people to scrap them.

A decently maintained heavy road engine (tractor trailer) is a million+ mile motor, easily. A medium truck engine (think your typical toolbox work trucks, tow trucks, International boom trucks, etc) will do 300k-500k miles, and depending on how much the truck is used, that may be 20-30 years of operation. Same for the light diesels - they tend to have a practical service life of decades. My 24 year old truck is starting to be a little bit more rare on the roads out here, but I still see plenty...

If you know what to listen for, you can identify a lot of diesels by sound - and the International T444E (mid-90s design, the Ford 7.3 Powerstroke is that engine with a few tweaks) has a very distinctive snap at idle from the single shot injectors. There are still an awful lot of those on the road, and the youngest of them is almost 20 years old.

"Destroying 30-50% of the diesel fleet on the road" is not something I'd be particularly excited about - especially since new vehicle production isn't particularly environmentally friendly either. If you're specifically focused on the PM emissions, there may be ways to retrofit those older engines (at the cost of likely a substantial increase in fuel burn from the backpressure), but if you're going to hold them to the newer NOx standards, there's just no way to do it. They don't have the injection pressure and EGR systems in place to do it.

As of right now, they'd just be replaced with new diesels, because there are no electrics meaningfully on the market that solve the problems a large diesel engine solves right now. Plenty have been announced, very few are actually shipping, and of those announced, everyone is silent on their towing capabilities (I don't care if you can tow 15k lbs on a receiver mount, that kind of trailer weight should be on a gooseneck or 5th wheel hitch, and everyone is really, really silent on how their announced electric trucks fit either of those).

I also very much dislike "Cash for Clunkers" type programs in that they're one of the most nastily regressive programs one can possibly create. That program ruined the bottom end of the used car market for most of a decade, and permanently destroyed a lot of vehicles of a particularly easy to maintain and cheap to operate era (low pressure single point throttle body injection, not a ton of luxury features). It was a nice little handout to the next couple tiers up, but if you were operating in the "$100 car" realm (which were a thing at the time, I've owned 4 sub-$400 cars in the 2000-2010 era), it was absolutely devastating to your ability to find cheap cars. That sort of effective floor on vehicle prices for a while, followed by the hollowing out of anything below that price in the market... eh. Let's not do that again.

As far as coal rollers, though, the best thing that could happen is that everyone stops getting worked up about them and ignore them. They do it for the attention, and I'll suggest that it works really, really well. If you see one, get the plate, call it into your local emissions enforcement hotline if that's a thing, and move on with life. Everyone getting all wound up about them on the internet is exactly what I expect a lot of them enjoy about it anymore.

I seem to not have communicated my point very clearly.

Diesel particulate pollution kills very significant numbers of people, and it kills poor people (who have to live next to the freeway and on urban thoroughfares) disproportionately. I don't care about how easy it is to find a $100 car; I care about policies that we can enact today that can stop truck owners and manufacturers from externalizing their pollution costs onto everyone else. You make a good point about PM being easier to address than NOx - PM is more of an urgent concern given what we now know about its health effects. Whether by retrofitting or by retiring, the engines that emit more PM than the 2008 standards have to go.

New diesels are fine. I agree with you EV trucks are not here yet. The point is there are trucks out there that are 10,000x more harmful in PM emissions than the same exact capability new truck. They need to be removed.

Of course just scrapping diesels on the road isn't the best/most efficient idea. We have the technology to do EV conversions, we just need to make that more cost effective. Volkswagon has talked about shipping a mass produced "crate" system that could fit into older VW vehicles' engine blocks. Though if we are talking *trucks* the big player that should be building an EV conversion kit yesterday is Ford, who still seem to act like EV is a passing fad they can just dip their toes in and not get serious about.

Right, but the parent's point is that these things do not actually exist. VW "talking" about doing something or Ford "should" have done something does not describe things that are actually available on the market today, regardless of whether or not the technology is within our capabilities.

They do exist in small shops that are doing EV conversions every day (and have been for years).

The thing missing is mass production to drive costs down from it being an artisanal thing with used Tesla and pinball machine parts to being a reliable mini-industry. Those artisanal projects are on the market though, and have been for some time. They have a market price, it's just that that price isn't as cheap as we would all like it to be, hence the emphasis on mass production being a currently unfilled need and that it is on at least one manufacturer's stated roadmap and should have been on at least one other's. The flipside is already happening "while we wait". Some of those artisanal shops are standardizing their own tools and producing their own kits, and speeding up their processes and building on economies of scale to get those things cheaper, and if the manufacturers won't officially support it, the aftermarket will, as it often does.

> We have the technology to do EV conversions...

"We" do? If you know of any, please, share. I know a lot of people out here who own trucks who would absolutely love a reasonably priced ($20k or so?) conversion kit for a truck that would leave you with 100 miles or so of range with a 10k lb construction trailer (fully enclosed) or similar.

I'm aware of the old electric Rangers one can find on rare occasions (swap their lead for lithium and you have a truck, though not one that can either haul much or tow much). I know of a couple more or less DIY conversion kits for vehicles (EVWest has some nice ones, $5k-$10k before you add a battery, for light VWs), but a 200hp class motor alone for a retrofit is close to $10k, and that's before controllers, battery pack, anything.

But in general, I'm really not sure converting existing trucks is the right option, because how you build a truck for an ICE is probably not how you build a truck for electric drivetrains. If you just replace the input to the transmission with an electric motor, you end up with quite poor drivetrain efficiency - there's a lot of stuff spinning that you wouldn't use for a pure electric drivetrain, but if you're going to swap out pieces you don't need (transmission, maybe the transfer case - a motor hung on the front and rear differential, geared properly, makes a compelling argument), costs start going up again. And then there's the mass and weight of the battery pack. You could put a pack in the bed without too much trouble, but... whoops, you've just lost your access to a 5th wheel or gooseneck hitch, or you've got a lot of the bed not used for battery space. There's room under the hood, but it's weirdly shaped space, typically.

I would love an electric pickup that could handle around town work, but even if I start with a free truck body, I'm likely $40k away from a useful conversion, and that's with me doing the work myself. And I still wouldn't get that much use out of it, because I couldn't do any longer hauling with it (the bulk of my trips in trip count are about 40 mile round trips to the home improvement store, but the few longer trips I take, often with 5k-8k lb of trailer back there, make up a good fraction of the miles).

For that cost, I could buy a very nice used diesel truck, and still have a ton of money left over for other projects, carbon offsets, nice charity donations, a bunch of public EV charging stations, or whatever else I wanted to do.

The problem is that competent electric pickups have been "coming soon now" for most of a decade. Via Motors was announcing extended range electric pickups on Chevy gliders back in 2012 or so - and they've since pivoted a few times and not delivered any of those things (at least that I'm aware of, and certainly not in any meaningful numbers). A 50 mile range on battery with a good trailer, then a gas or diesel range extender, with a big split phase inverter built in, would sell like hotcakes to construction companies - you can haul your trailer to the jobsite, power the jobsite before the power company gets around to running lines without the small generators otherwise used for that, recharge at night, and pay a fraction the operating costs of a diesel you'd otherwise use for that. Think $0.05-$0.10/mi (depending on power costs) vs $0.25-$0.30/mi, plus generator costs. That adds up in a hurry.

But nobody sells one. I've no idea why. So diesel it is. Gassers are fine for infrequent towing, but their lifespan is an awful lot shorter if you use them for it regularly for towing.

I'm aware the Cybertruck is "coming soon now," and that it's rated for 14k lbs, but as I've stated elsewhere in this sidetrack, you have to be somewhat insane to hang 14k lbs on a receiver mount (I'm actually not even sure that's permitted everywhere). That much tongue weight (1000+ lbs, perhaps even 2000 lbs for high speed stability) really needs to be on or slightly forward of the rear axle for combo stability. There's a big difference between "It can move it on flat ground" and "It can safely tow it long distances in somewhat adverse conditions." A ~6000 lb truck, with 14k hanging on the receiver, is (IMO) an unsafe combination.

All of the above skips the legal problems with radically changing a vehicle (which an EV conversion is) and ensuring it's legal and certified for road operation. Hobby conversions and low volume conversions tend to fall between the cracks, but anything of a scale to matter would have to solve those problems, and they're far from trivial.

Anyway, if I'm missing something, please, let me know. But what you're arguing "should exist," as far as I know, "Doesn't exist, and won't exist."

Yeah, EVWest has been doing the work for a while now. You are correct that it currently isn't cheap, and is more complicated/DIY than anyone currently wants to call "easy", but that's the definition of "we have the technology". The next steps are productionizing it/industrializing it, which I also pointed out in my comment.

It exists as an "artisanal" option today. Per VW's roadmap they expect to have more "off the shelf" components in the near future. Ford doesn't have it on their radar at all it seems, but as I point out that's likely a blindspot on Ford's part that should be addressed (and if they don't do it, the aftermarket will, even if it starts "bottom up" from the "artisanal" shops).

> The problem is that competent electric pickups have been "coming soon now" for most of a decade

Beyond the ones you mentioned (Via Motors, Tesla Cybertruck):

Rivian have been taking preorders and are expected to deliver some of the first ones this year.

While Ford don't have EV conversions on their radar, they do have new purchased trucks. The electric version of the F-150 is supposed to be their second EV following this year's Mustang Mach-E. Rumors are that the official launch and some very early presales could start as soon as the end of this year (though most analysts are expecting Ford is likely more serious about a 2023 model year).

GM has been relatively cagey what they have planned for the big spectacle 2023 model year, but many indications are that among the "12 currently unannounced EV models" for 2023 at least three or four of them are going to be trucks across the Chevy and GMC brands, on the "Ultium" platform they beta-tested in the 2021 Hummer EV.

Lordstown Motors has seen some fraud concerns and stock shorting controversies, but is entirely focused on EV Trucks right now (similar to Rivian) and were expected to have deliveries of their first model (the Endurance) start last year, but are seemingly delayed to at least "late" this year/early next year.

(Fwiw, the "coming soon now" for the Tesla Cybertruck is also "late" this year/early next year, with delays noted due to pandemic reasons and usual Tesla timeline slippage.)

Shit I see that in town. Shiny new cars.

It's not just trucks - I was able to get my (pre-cheating-scandal) 2003 VW TDI to belch a cloud of smoke if I idled for a while (over five minutes) then worked it hard (e.g. a freeway onramp). I remember getting honked at by a Prius once...

IMO, these occasional particulate emissions were outweighed by the excellent fuel economy - rated at 46 MPG but regularly 43 MPG.

Of course, this technology has been largely obsoleted by electric drivetrains. No rolling coal from a Tesla!

I will not be at all surprised if there's an aftermarket kit to spew soot out of an otherwise electric vehicle.

> My truck (24 years and change) will smoke a bit if I stand on it and the fuel flow outruns boost coming up, but it's also entirely emissions compliant and passes the tests cleanly - it's just something older diesels do under certain conditions

I always thought that banning old diesels from centers of European cities was just silly (they passed their emissions after all so they can't be billowing smoke, right?), thanks for changing my opinion

No problem. If your concern is the particulate matter, then, yes, banning old diesels makes some sense. They don't have the particulate filters - those started showing up in the 2000-2010 era. However, I would rather see that implemented as tighter standards, and if you can meet them with a retrofit kit, you can continue driving the older ones. We saw this with noise kits for older jets (retrofit kits that reduce the noise to the new standards), and if the concern is specifically emissions, then if you can make an older vehicle meet the newer standards, there's no reason to keep them out. I'm not a fan of arbitrarily destroying old but operational equipment.

My truck is a '97, and I believe the smoke opacity limit for emissions testing is 40% (it's allowed to block/scatter 40% of the light going through the exhaust). I believe commercial trucks of the same age are held to roughly the same standards. That's a good bit of smoke in the exhaust. But until you get into the high pressure common rail stuff (up at 30k+ psi, multiple injections per cycle), you'll get some smoke under certain conditions.

Looking at emissions standards in Europe, a truck from 24 years ago in Europe, assuming its gross vehicle weight is between 1760 kg and 3500 kg, would be allowed to emit 0.25g of PM/km. The same limit for something built since 2013 is 0.0045g of PM/km. We're talking multiple orders of magnitude improvement here.

As a sidenote, HO+NOx has gone from 1.7g/km to 0.350g/km in 2013 (and onto 0.215g/km since then, in 2016), which is often as significant when it comes to desires to reduce air pollution.

Emissions standards change over time. You could get some really polluting cars in the old days, and you can't anymore. Why should we be breathing in the smoke from these old cars from an era where emissions and pollution weren't taken as seriously as now?

The proportion of old vehicles on the road is small. And the last thing most of the people who drive them need is additional expensive compliance hoops to drive through.

For every hipster yuppie driving "muh classic Hilux just like daddy owned in 1993" there a few dozen people living out of the back of a Caprice Classic wagon because they have no better option.

Never heard of this before, I looked it up, but I still don't get it -- you're not getting more power, you're not getting better fuel efficiency, you're not getting a smoother ride, what's the point - you're literally burning money for no reason?

> you're literally burning money for no reason?

Correct. And destroying your engine in the process. Beyond washing down the cylinder walls (cylinder/ring wear) and diluting the engine oil in the process (worse lubrication for the bearings), EGTs tend to go absolutely nuts during the process (you're on the oxygen limited side of mixture, not the fuel limited side a diesel is intended to operate in), which means you stand a good chance of doing damage to the hot side of the turbocharger (high EGTs tend to start melting the corner tips of the turbine blades first, which is an easy check for a used diesel - if the blade corners aren't right, the engine has probably been abused), and it's hard on the rest of the engine too.

It's quite literally as stupid as it sounds.

There are cases where you do want to run a diesel like that - some of the custom tractor pulling engines will smoke an awful lot while they're spooling up and pulling, but that's an engine that's making insane horsepower for a short period of time, and they don't have a particularly long service life (like any competition engine). I believe they run on the rich side to use the excess fuel to keep combustion temperatures down (a stoichiometric mixture is usually far, far too hot). But on a road engine, it's just pointless engine abuse for style points (among the few people who actually think it's cool).

I've only ever seen it once when I was in an EV Uber (it was a Model S) behind a pickup truck in Baltimore and the pickup kept blasting us with massive amounts of black soot (presumably because we were in an EV).

There's a political element of "Truck Driving Republican" vs. "EV Driving Liberal" that powers some of this. I think Elon has been at last partially trying to reduce this polarization with how he behaves online to widen Tesla's appeal (though maybe I'm attributing too much intentionality here).

On the west coast I was tailed super aggressively by a pickup in my model 3 on 280 which was a little scary (blinding me with headlights, switching lanes to stay 1 inch behind me). I watched cameras after to see if I cut him off or something, but I didn't. It has made me more wary of pick up trucks in general though.

That sucks. I wish it were an automatic open-and-shut case to prosecute dangerous driving / vehicular assault like this when a court is provided with dashcam evidence.

It's a popular way of making a political statement:

Own the libs!

cut off your nose to spite your face

Countries need to ties fees/fines to income level and assets.

It kills me when I read about these paltry fines most wealthy men probably laugh at.

A poor man get a $600 traffic ticket, it could affect rent.

A rich man get the same ticket, and it’s dinner conversation.

> Maybe less rich than if they hadn't gotten caught, but still richer than if they hadn't cheated in the first place.

Which is exactly the calculation that their lawyers and executives made, more or less.

You're right that it's a failure of society as a whole. A failure to make bad actors pay for negative externalities.

it's almost impossible to effectively regulate externalities in a global economy. Local regulators are not inclined to care about products sold overseas and all products compete with the lowest common regulatory framework.

All it takes for child labor to enter into the supply chain is one bad regulator and a couple levels of outsourcing. The final "complete" product becomes nearly impossible to audit.

> it's almost impossible to effectively regulate externalities in a global economy.

It really is not. Take the EU, for instance. They have the biggest internal market in the world. They can effectively dictate many things unilaterally that companies have to comply with under pain of being locked out of a multi-trillion dollar market (and indeed they do, with things such as health and safety standards, etc.). There's nothing stopping then from properly pricing externalities of pollution for instance, or of mandating that clothes companies pass a workplace standards audit irrespective of where their factories are located. This isn't done because of lack of will.

Even non-global economies end up diffusing the blame for poor labor practices. So many big-box stores end up in a wage-theft situation just because the upper-management sets benchmarks that are only achievable through wage-theft and then they are shocked[1] to find out that the individual store managers are committing wage theft.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjbPi00k_ME

Perfection in this, as in all things, may be impossible, but here's a good faith effort to audit supply chains:

https://www.verite.org/

Fair and I mostly agree, but there are exceptions. New Balance for example makes a lot of it's shoes in the US.

Yes. My last 5 sneakers were New Balance Made in USA. I believe New Balance is the last brand of USA made sneakers, so I support them whenever I can.

Not all of what New Balance makes is domestic but they do have the Made in USA line available. Would love to have more options but thankfully these are quite good.

Man I wish I could wear NB, but the toe-box tapers too quickly causing my big toe to rub on the side. Before I found shoes that actually fit, I wore various shoes (including NB) 1.5 sizes larger than my actual size.

we decouple too much, every company is trying to survive the market and will always cut corners even though in the end no one ever asked for children to make shoes.. it was just global fear, frustration and risk that made everybody put pressure in the wrong direction.

How do you mean "survive the market"? Survive as in answer to shareholders with higher profits or succumb to consumer demand for cheaper shoes?

In reality it's the former and the latter is stoked through other means.

I always found it odd that Americans have no problem with child labor at home, so long as it’s confined to movies and entertainment. We even have special laws just to make it legal when every other form of child labor is outlawed.

It’s absolutely not the same as a sweatshop, but hollywood has a long track record of ruining children’s lives for profit.

Why did textile factories hire children? Because they could pay less.

Why do movie studios hire children? Because the script calls for a child. Union regulations and price floors can be put in place to protect the child actor’s interests without completely defeating the purpose of hiring them in the first place.

Even though child actors tend to be considerably more expensive than adults, they still get cast. I don’t think that would’ve happened in sweatshops.

It might be an unusually American take, but I do think child labor is a bit easier to justify when the child is compensated with a tremendous amount of money. (When compared to the sweatshops you mentioned).

From my understanding, the "special laws" put hard caps on the amount of hours that a child can work in a week, and establishes a bunch of other protections like making sure they get adequate schooling, etc.

In a film with a child in a lead role, the entire movie production schedule often revolves around this hard hours limit.

Perhaps a larger tragedy is children working in family businesses. Poor, legal immigrant families often put their children to work at the family restaurant, and this is legal for any number of hours.

There are over three hundred million people the US. A sizable portion of them dislikes Hollywood.

Yet, as a whole they will spend over $2 billion in a single weekend at cinemas.

I heard old Nike Jordans are unwearable because the soles crumble with age. Is that the case?

Same boat here, I had a VW and sold it about a year and half ago. I will not be buying one again, they've lost me.

But also, I don't really appreciate what any of the car manufacturers have been doing (location tracking, internet connectivity, subscription services, etc). Since I sold the VW, I haven't bought a car, and am currently without a car. I don't plan on buying one anytime in the near future.

We sold our VW and bought a Model 3. We had a serious look at VW’s EV lineup for my wife’s next car though. All manufacturers with a genuine EV programme have my support.

the VW ID4 is a great family car, imo its worth the wait.

Europe here.

I have been driving an ID3 nearly every day since a month or so (don't own it) and I absolutely adore the car. It's both simple and full-fledged at the same time. Voice-control is hot garbage but other than that it's fine.

Disclaimer: I never drove a Tesla Model 3 before, but a few other EVs like the BMW i3. The VW ID3 feels like a genuine high quality car - as if the Golf simply reached a new era.

BMW's i3 always felt like a weird toy and the Renault Zoes I drove where just an electric replacement for Smarts which are now electric too. I can see myself sitting in an ID3 for a longer trip with a nice charging pause.

I would never even dare take a Zoe on the Autobahn or an i3 aside from a handful of kilometers. ID3? No issues here.

Same about the ID4. Its a great "normal" EV SUV. the ID3 is to the Golf what the ID4 is to the Tiguan. Plus I have no issues with the >400Kms range with such a vehicle.

> ID3? No issues here.

Can you actually use it on the Autobahn like a "normal" car, i.e. drive over 130 km/h with AC or heating, while still getting reasonable range?

One of my major gripes with EV was always that the range on paper is good, but only if you drive like a truck speed-wise and turn off every comfort - which is honestly not what I want to do when investing in an (usually) pretty expensive car. Would be pretty awesome if VW managed to get that right.

I can speak for the ID4, yes you can do this. Sure you will not get the 520km on paper and of course it depends how you driving it but you get around 400km with ok weather conditions, AC and seat/driving wheel heating. In Winter with negative temperatures I got high consumptions but I learned it might also have to do with the fact the batteries where not hot enough.

> the Renault Zoes I drove where just an electric replacement for Smarts which are now electric too

The Zoe has nothing to do with a Smart. It's the same size as a Golf.

Also, I have driven a Zoe on the motorway and it's perfectly fine. I don't understand your problem with that car. It's the most sold EV in many countries, for good reason.

Not particularly striking, however.

I'd say the interior looks like someone stuck the cheapest sale parts at a surplus store but I haven't seen the car live.

Having tested latest VW ICE cars when buying a new car a while ago I would be shocked if it's anything but cheap plastics all over the place inside.

I believe Mazda was the last without phone home functionality but I that's over as of 2020.

Mazda has also said they will be decreasing the importance of an infotainment screen and focusing on having quality switchgear. People who actually _enjoy driving_ like these kinds of touches; in general, in the segments Mazda competes in, they have some of the most fun offerings available.

For people who consider a car to be a status symbol that transports them from place to place, it's not the ideal choice, but I'm glad there's some variety. Otherwise, we'll all just be driving electric jellybeans with an iPad awkwardly bolted to the dashboard.

Me too, only owned a used old Toyota (pre ABS and OBDII) since and right now nothing. The VW I leased was a 2014 so I just managed to miss out on the era of rearview cameras though

You are aware that the old Toyota has higher emissions of greenhouse gases than VW which cheated on emission tests?

It might generate higher emissions, but whether using it for another year or two generated more emissions overall, I think it's a bit trickier to know if it was worse overall.

Enough VW's not sold mean VW's not built, and producing the car is a large amount of the car's expected lifetime CO2 footprint (I've seen from 1/5th to 1/3rd).

If they were just delaying a less polluting vehicle purchase, a delay is a net negative, but since now they are driving nothing, that means it's actually possible the older vehicle was the better choice, especially since pollution from cars if very front-loaded (if we assume a new car that was purchased would be unused or very lightly used, since they are able to go without a car now).

Plus if you trade in one functional old car for a newer model with better emmissions, that perfectly good car is not magically lifted into automobile heaven never to emit again. It will be bought on the used market by someone else can't afford a new car (much less a $70K Tesla) and continue to emit whatever it emits today.

Aftermarket rearview cameras are dirt cheap if you really want one. Tons of kits less than $100.

D00d, pre ABS and OBD II? My 13-years-old car feels state-of-the-art! :))

What's wrong with ABS and OBD2?

Nothing, I was (am) just poor.

When you are in an environment where all your other competitors are cheating, I used to think you had only two options - join in or quit. Now, it occurs to me that there is a third - blow the whistle. If VW, or any other manufacturer, had made a quick call to the authorities and told them exactly what to look for, they would have dealt a huge blow to their competitors and maybe even done a victory lap along the way.

... and make themselves the enemy of the entire industry.

That's the reason almost nobody ever blows the whistle: the prisoner's dilemma variant here is the iterated one, and there are more than two players. If you defect, you get blacklisted. It doesn't matter if you're an individual abused by an employer, or a big company that, for a brief moment, grew some conscience. The only time when blowing a whistle makes sense, from a self-preservation standpoint, is when you have a backup plan for what to do when the whistle gets ignored, but everyone knows who blew it.

The corollary to that is, to allow for whistleblowing to be an option, the defector needs to be protected, and this must be public knowledge. If people have any perception of personal risk here, most will stay silent.

You are letting them off too easy. It’s probably a game of stag hunting.

I don’t think this blacklisting applies either. You are ignoring the fact that whistleblowers can operate anonymously.

These companies chose to then a blind eye on themselves and each other.

I'm not saying they're doing the right thing - just that the game theory is what it is. I'm trying to give an explanation, not an excuse.

Anonymous only works in a small spectrum of possible whistle blowing - where the issue and the players are large enough to matter, but small enough that it won't be trivial to guess who the anonymous tip came from.

It's funny how game theory gets fouled up all the time in real life. A rainstorm or a faulty mechanism or a careless installer or 100 other human or non-human factors that aren't part of the game theory intervene to change everything.

If game theory is stacked against ethical behavior in a particular situation, I'll back ethical behavior. It's encouraging how often the game theory gets tripped up by factors outside the "rules".

At this point, game theory is mostly useful for predicting what people who try to act rationally will do.

But the trouble is, that as these things become more of the fabric of the culture, people's behaviour takes them into account, and then it doesn't work as well as it used to.

Even if it is game theory it is a game of stag and not prisoners dilemma.

> the prisoner's dilemma variant here is the iterated one, and there are more than two players.

The assumption there is that you're all guilty. I agree, when you're all cheating, it's hard to safely get to a point you're not cheating and can inform on others, but the solution to that is simple, don't cheat in the first place. An actual rational actor would realize that cheating opens you up to this situation where you've exposed yourself to a prisoners dilemma that you can't easily extract yourself from, and all for the chance to just have the same advantage as everyone else. Not cheating in the first place and making sure all the cheaters are punished seems a far better strategy.

That said, it's possible this was an emergent phenomenon, where none of them initially were sure the others were cheating, but felt they had to cheat themselves to compete, and by the time it's obvious they are all cheating, there's no chance for one of them to benefit by being clean and calling out all the others.

I do think that these things are all mostly emergent - a competitor sacrifices a principle a little bit to get ahead, everyone else follows suit, thus enshrining it as a new normal. Rinse, repeat

That said, I disagree with "the solution to that is simple, don't cheat in the first place", for the reasons I mentioned: if all your competitors suddenly start to cheat, telling on them only works if you can ensure they all get burned down to the ground as a result. If some survive, you'll now be competing with them as an actor nobody trusts, and nobody wants to deal with. If that's a realistic outcome, you may as well just quit.

> telling on them only works if you can ensure they all get burned down to the ground as a result.

Isn't that assuming you have to out yourself to identify others? That seems like something a company could coordinate well such that there was little or no indication of where it came from (a source identifying one or two bad actors and calling for industry wide testing would serve their interests without specifically outing them). And I'm not sure why they need to get burned down to the ground. It's about removing the advantages they've gained through cheating, and possibly applying a social penalty if it was bad enough, not ensuring they are destroyed.

> If some survive, you'll now be competing with them as an actor nobody trusts, and nobody wants to deal with.

Eh, even if it did come out that your company was responsible for outing others, this is business where past behavior has less sway, and knowing the other party will follow the rules is hardly a disqualifying factor as long as you don't do something with them that isn't following the rules. It's not like competitors are commonly giving ammunition to each other with the understanding it won't be used. And if they aren't working with you because they can't without exposing more cheating... well then that's a problem they should be trying to fix already, given the new realities.

I think in any well functioning market this all works out normally. The automotive market doesn't seem to be a well functioning one though.

I don't get it. If I'm competing with someone, and I tell on them for cheating while not cheating myself what do I lose if they don't get burned for it?

> they bore the brunt of media attention for something that nearly every auto manufacturer was later found to be doing

I find the same happens with performance enhancing drugs in sports. Everyone in the game knows that everyone is doing it. But someone gets caught, and people go full offense on them as though they're pure evil.

Ben Johnson and later Lance Armstrong come to mind.

But wasn't the cycling top 10 basically decimated by the PED scandal? I think only 1 (or a couple of) cyclist(s) remained unscathed in the top 10 rankings. I'm going on memory, but they really gave the appearance of cleaning house, to an outsider like me. Had regulators gone after 4 or 5 manufacturers, including home-team companies, it would have been much better, and would appear less like Americans piling onto out a German manufacturing bellwether.

Lance Armstrong deserved it though.

Why? Everyone else was doping.

Because Lance Armstrong threatened to ruin (and came close in a couple of cases) the lives of anyone who looked like they might expose him.

The doping is one thing. The effort to cover it up was something else again.

> but it does put them back on par with just about every other auto manufacturer in my mind

I'm not buying this.

Edit: I stand (mostly) corrected:

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

Exactly. Most other manufacturers were/are cheating as well.

I've owned a few recent VWs and have found they're fine vehicles. The current gen Tiguan was underpowered, but my MK7 GTI and MK7.5 Golf R are amazing cars. I have a feeling I'll be driving the R for a long time.

I had a MK6 GTI and I loved it. Once VW has worked the kinks out of their electric platform I'll definitely take a look at them again.

I'm confused. My understanding is that all cars showed discrepancies between in-lab and on-road tests, due to overoptimizing the ECU for lab conditions.

However, AFAIU, only VW had an "if in_lab: reduce_polution()" line in their ECU. It could be that the "final result" was the same, but the intentionality behind it was waaay stronger for VW.

Well, all of the companies using Bosch EDC 16 & 17 control systems were doing effectively the same thing. My understanding is that Bosch includes facilities for detecting dyno use "for testing purposes" and that manufactures were using these flags in production cars. VW was apparently a lot more brazen and aggressive in triggering it. While Mercedes and FCA were a big more judicious about it.

I don't think BMW's case has made it through the court system yet though.

I bought two VWs after the cheating scandal. My impression is that because of the cheating scandal, the carefulness and quality per dollar is very high. I did a bunch of research when purchasing, and quantitatively, features and comfort per dollar have also been higher with VW than other brands. It's been a "buy the dip" situation and I don't care about brand loyalty. In fact, the years of scrutiny VW has faced due to the cheating scandal increases my confidence in the brand relative to others. And, like you said, the other guys were cheating, too. Just not being as scrutinized.

We've owned three VW's including a diesel. I am not going to condemn an entire group of people (they employ over 600K people) for the acts of a few. Particularly when authorities have dealt with the situation.

This is no different from forming opinions about a population, social, ethnic or religious group based on the actions of a very small percentage of people belonging to said group. I think it's wrong in all cases.

Even if 100 people were involved (I think it was a LOT less than that), this would represent 0.02% of the "population" of VW. How is it, in any way, fair, to condemn them all for the sins of a group that has already met their deserved legal consequences? Let's say the entire world stops buying VW because of this and over 600K people lose their jobs. How is that a morally and ethically supportable position?

Of course, everyone is free to reach their own conclusions. I would rather buy an electric vehicle from any company other than Tesla and, VW will certainly be a candidate. No, I don't hate Tesla, I want to support electrification of our transportation system. That can only happen if other companies earn our business. As more competition surfaces we'll have better and better options. Tesla might still win my business. I just want to see what the top ten auto manufacturers have to offer first.

>...they bore the brunt of media attention for something that nearly every auto manufacturer was later found to be doing...

Car manufacturers any company really tries to get away with whatever they can until until caught.

Here in Canada the latest news is Honda vehicles without any heat. People are driving in -20C or lower with no heater.

It's the terribly outdated laws we have in Canada some laws haven't been updated for 60 years. Car makers know this and here in Canada car buyers are often ignored or strung along for months.

Hyundai implemented a warning light to let you know if your engine lost all its oil and was about to erupt in flames. In other countries Hyundai had to replace the engine free of charge. Here in Canada we get "Hey your engine's gonna blow. Sorry"

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/honda-crv-civic-heater-1.59...

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/marketplace-car-recall-inve...

> Here in Canada we get "Hey your engine's gonna blow. Sorry"

It seems that there isn't even the 'sorry' part. I wonder what the design is like: generic light? icon? a "do not check engine" light?

It's a blinking check engine light. Ours came on steady shortly after we got the firmware update applied when the recall went out and I hadn't been told what to watch for, so I pulled over immediately and called the dealer. Then they told me...

The light should be a big dollar sign: $

Well, there is a crucial, legal, difference between using illegal devices (VW) and using edge cases and loop holes (everybody else). The first one is illegal cheating, the other smart playing the rules. Both are not ok, so. But only one clearly illegal.

I also bought a VW Golf GTD and ended up having to sell it right as the scandal was heating up.

Apart from the ~$10k I lost and the betrayal by VW executives, I was also upset that the car I bought to try and be a little bit eco-friendly was decidedly not.

I received a paltry payout from the class-action lawsuit, which helped. However I will never buy a VW-group car again. It has also forever jaded me about the lack of punishments for corporate malfeasance.

Are you also going to move your money from all major banks? Same pieces of thieving shits, same lack of accountability and punishments.

USA only went after VW to put political pressure on Germany for their export surplus. It's literally the only reason why suddenly one of the hundreds of large corporations in the West needs to be held accountable for something while dozens of others - European and American - continue rampaging around.

Well, this was in Australia. The settlement payouts were orders of magnitude larger in the USA!

I keep no money in major banks, not just because they are largely morally bankrupt though. :)

Other manufacturers were exposing monkeys to diesel emissions? Gassing primates is a pretty bad look for any company, especially VW.

Doesn't every car manufacturer (except maybe Tesla) expose primates (humans) to vehicle emissions?

Even Tesla if you include particulate emissions from tires.

One of the sub-aspects of it also seemed to be tradeoffs between kinds of emissions (where driving down one drove up the other).

Weren't the cheating VWs extremely fuel efficient (and thus less CO2 emitting), at the cost of emitting something else nasty?

I found it to be a bit of a Snowden moment. Of course they were doing it, why all the surprise? Balancing good performance in emissions tests with the power and brunt that consumers enjoy in the real world had already made turbochargers and variable valve timings widespread instead of simply increasing displacement. In fact there were multiple other scandals in the decades before where loopholes in emissions regulations were treated the same way as in accounting or racing. I believe regulators were complicit by using ineffectual metrics like NEDC - no car buyer really expects to reach the quoted performance.

my second favorite car was my TDI Beetle Convertible (2013) and I would be more than willing to line up to buy a BEV version of the same. The closest it appears I will get is an Audi TT which may be the first mass production convertible to be available; the Tesla Roadster of past doesn't count.

Their current BEV platform is a good first shot, I am disappointed in the lack of front trunk but I expect they will eventually go that way. The real issue this platform suffers from but should be a software fix is that they don't support auto negotiation with charging stations. Even Ford is able to do so with Electrify America yet VW who backed it cannot.

As for the name change, its fitting provided they quickly move to an all electric fleet. There are some nice variations of the ID.* platform coming and the .Buzz is the neatest of them all in my book. By quickly I mean get there five years before everyone else.

I always owned Toyotas and Nissans but when I got together with my SO, I sold my last Toyota (for a spectacular price even though it had quite a lot km) and we kept her VW. Afterwards we bought another one.

The sheer amount of issues those cars had was astonishing. From bad electronics to just terrible manufacturing (water running down somewhere along the doors and causing mold inside for example) really cured me from VW and German cars altogether. We sold the VW when that emission thing came up and it looked like we might not be able to drive in our city with it anymore (Germany). Now we own a Hyundai Ioniq and it's great. I can even flash the firmware or update maps myself. The amount of electronic stuff that came inclusive is something you can only dream of with German manufacturers.

I'm never going back from Japanese/Korean cars again.

> they bore the brunt of media attention for something that nearly every auto manufacturer was later found to be doing

Maybe a better answer would be holding ALL of the automakers to task like we felt needed to be done with VW, instead of giving all of the parasitic capitalists a free pass to do it all over again.

How has that not been done?

And it was basically founded by Hitler. Wrong

Regardless of what you think they did was right or wrong, it was pretty clever.

What's clever about it? They cheated, got caught, got fined $20 billion dollars, and spend some time in prison. It sounds pretty dumb to me.

Nah, they very just too cheap to install large enough AdBlue tanks and too greedy to allow people fill the small tanks up themselves. Or they were unable to come up with engines meeting emission standards.

Are you aware of the fact that most companies cheated with emissions? Volkswagen was just a scapegoat

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_emissions_scandal#/medi...

> I later learned that the more accurate story is that they bore the brunt of media attention for something that nearly every auto manufacturer was later found to be doing

Even worse is now that every diesel car and truck comes with extremely unreliable and expensive to keep operational DPFs in place of the defeat devices.

Now people who live in areas that do emissions testing are forced to use less efficient vehicles, and people who don't are just removing the DPFs (rather than paying thousands of dollars every few months in repairs) and putting out more emissions than defeat device era vehicles.

A lot of ignorance surrounds this subject, and blind environmentalism has directly lead to a worse outcome than the previous status quo.

> What they did was absolutely reprehensible, but I later learned that the more accurate story is that they bore the brunt of media attention for something that nearly every auto manufacturer was later found to be doing -

> That doesn't make it any less wrong, but it does put them back on par with just about every other auto manufacturer in my mind. And it does seem (as others have cited) like there was some genuine change that followed.

Thanks for bringing that to our attention, but I think there’s a slight chance they might be aware already.

They were the first discovered by ICCT, and the media latched onto that. They should've waited to release their findings because their subsequent test results went widely unnoticed.

Actively cheating on test environment vs not good at real usage is very different. In latter case, possibly test and regulation should be improved to fit real usage.

>What they did was absolutely reprehensible,

Okay, this is a bit much. I know you came to realize all the car companies were doing it, so relatively speaking, it evens out when it comes to image. But this concept of hating a company over false marketing, it's a "and cows moo" moment. All big companies lie about their performances and benefits. Every. Single. One. Who would have guessed people would lie to make money... what a revelation. It's extremely naïve to feel hurt by a company trying to gain the edge over another by lying. That's some weird identity tying consumerism right there.

It was already an old joke when George Carlin did his stand up bit on marketing terms bs and that was some 20 years ago. It's time to grow up. No company is immune from this attitude either. Tech is fraught with it too. WeWork, Theranos are the nice examples. But remember, before it became publicly okay to rag on them, there were folks pointing out the bullshit. Folks who weren't believed because they were so negative about "wanting to change the world". Any time a company tries to play the, "We're making the world a better place" card, whether environmental, social, whatever, it's safe to assume bullshit is afoot. Plays out all the time.

How about we stop accepting this status quo? People will lie to make money, but we don't have to make it a socially acceptable practice.

In fact, to make money, people just do whatever makes money. If they lie to make money, it means lying is making them money. If we could raise the costs of lying, for example by being much more eager to punish deceptive advertising with high fines, people would lie less.

Humans have been lying for personal gain for only a short amount of time. I guess yea, we should all just decide that lying is bad. That's a novel idea.

Humans have been lying for as long as they've been human, but they've also shunned this behavior for just as long. It's destructive to both individuals and communities.

The system of private profit is what gave them the motivation to lie. It is not a natural law. Transportation could be nationalized. What we regard as corruption in the public sphere is literally the stated goal of the private sphere.

We all know it happens all the time and that bullshit is everywhere and unsurprising, but are you adding that it's also okay?