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It wasn’t just VW. It was like a dozen of the major brands all doing it in some way or another.
E.g BMW was involved as well.
Dont know much about anything but it would not surprise me if it was some Bosch engineers who originaally hinted all those engineers of what could be done with their systems if they just listen some states of other car systems. Afterall, it’s their injection systems etc. almost every diesel manuf used/uses.
You are genuinely the first other person I’ve ever seen online who seems aware that this was an industry-wide thing, not a VW thing.
You barely saw it in the news compared to VW as well. Even if an article would bring it up, it’d usually be headlines with VW in some way or another.
It’s a shame so many of our choices for cars out there are run by bad people at the top 😞
What “ethical” car brand do you buy then?
I long for the day that ANYTHING close to this happens in the USA
Why aim low, why not public flogging, and pillories?
How about we don’t bring back corporal punishment. I get the sentiment, but i’d rather our justice system didn’t turn into a torture system.
why do you hate success?
Success = falsifying emissions tests.
that’s how real people get ahead in life while the peasants work
lol which group do you identify as?
the temporarily embarrassed billionaires, obviously
any day now! I will ascendant 🤡
I know! Let’s elect a demented rapist who has no idea how anything works or even how to finish a thought! We’ll be rich immediately!
Poe’s law applies here. Remember to use you sarcasm HTML tag!
<s> Why do you hate success? </s>
Seems like it also doesn’t happen in Germany, as the post title doesn’t match the article.
The two people sent to jail are middle managers (Head of XY), not executives.
When you don’t read the article ^
Nah, I get what you’re saying, but we’re used to engineers and regular workers getting arrested here. We’ve got one of the most… comprehensive?.. prison systems in the world. It’s just so rare to find executives and anyone making over $300k suffer any real consequences.
While I see your point, it’s important to note that the people jailed in the US were called “engineers”, not “executives”.
You can be both. Schmidt was general manager of VW’s U.S. Environment and Engineering Office.
As much as I like to see consequences, I would rather have just seen a very large fine put toward environmental purposes than prison time. Save prison for people who pose a direct danger to the public.
<coughs out a bunch of diesel emissions> “hear hear!”
I would agree, but with one significant condition:
the fine would have to be large enough to be an effective punishment, and serve as a deterrent. A company as valuable as VW would have to pay an enormous fine.
For funsies the justice department fined Meta fifty million dollars. Meta made that back by the time your eyes got to the end of this sentence.
Would VW have many overseas “executives”?
I don’t know if they’d have many, but I’d expect them to have at least a few. North America is a major market.
Their subsidiary companies do, but VW is a German company, the “executives” are ALL gonna be there dude… and those US execs would be doing what THEIR oversea “executives” want them to, so there’s still people above those who may be overseas. So calling them “executives” would be wrong since there is people above them still.
The point is, your “note” doesn’t matter mate.
Even if it’s not VW executives it would be nice to see any executives actually face jail here in the US.
Every multinational corp has execs for each region.
President and VP of insert region operation is a common title given to EXECS of foreign corps.
Yes, what do you think subsidiary means…?
These engineers clearly held executive roles, they just weren’t with the Volkswagen (germany) so they would have had to clarify their subsidiary. For journalism this was the correct wording. If they wanted to call them execs, it would have had to go into detail about Volkswagen (Us particular division and reasons)
If you’re talking about Fritolays, you don’t just go and say execs when talking about “lays” or “Doritos” subsidiaries, you would use “engineers” or whatever other work they held to simplify it.
It’s an unnecessary distinction for non mutually exclusive exclusive terms, to use “executives” would lead to more confusion and that would be shit journalism….
Oh. You’re only counting GERMAN execs as executives. Okay.
Yes… the article is about the German company dude…… not the “Volkswagen group” and not “Volkswagen international” or whatever includes their multinational groups. To assume otherwise is just weird, they never mentioned anything but their German company.
Terms aren’t mutually exclusive… you don’t think those engineers held executive roles? They just weren’t executives of Volkswagen.
They would have had to say executives of Volkswagen (insert whatever specifics of the subsidiary), for it to be the correct term. Engineers is simpler and easier and is the proper way to express the situation.
Your “point” muddies the water and needs to bring on multiple additional pieces of information, which would also need to be described. Most people would know these engineers held executives roles, with some part farther down the “executive” chain.
You can be an engineer for Volkswagen, while also being the executive for Volkswagen US NW division, but it’s irrelevant to the article and requires more completely unnecessary information, so in the effort of good journalism and brevity….
I long for the day that ANYTHING close to this happens in the USA
I guess you’ve good news, then.
Across the Atlantic, two former VW engineers — Oliver Schmidt and James Robert Liang — are already serving prison sentences in the U.S. Schmidt, who once led VW’s environmental office in the U.S., was sentenced to seven years after initially denying guilt but later reaching a plea deal. Liang received 40 months after cooperating with prosecutors.
two former VW engineers
Yeah, unless they are Chief Engineers, these two are just people who got caught in the churn.
Wake me up when the President of US Operations gets sentenced to prison. Hell, I’ll even be okay with club Fed.
They are like the one guy who went to jail for the 08 financial crisis
two former VW engineers
Not CEOs
Neither were the people in Germany.
The court sent the former head of diesel engine development behind bars for four years and six months, and the former head of powertrain electronics to two years and seven months. Two others — Volkswagen’s former development director and a former department head — received suspended sentences, according to Der Spiegel and Deutsche Welle reports from the Braunschweig courtroom.
The (now ex-) CEO of VW, Winterkorn, is a fugitive from justice in US – the reason he isn’t in prison in the US is because he’s hiding in Germany, and Germany doesn’t extradite its nationals. IIRC from memory back during the incident, he’s facing a total of over two hundred years in potential sentence from the charges, though some of that would probably run in parallel, were he convicted, and I assume that in practice, there’d be some sort of plea deal.
EDIT: Maybe it was over one hundred, not two hundred. I distinctly remember trying to figure out whether the sentences could run in parallel when reading an article about it at the time. In practice, he’d probably plea bargain it down, but there also is no parole for federal sentences in the US, so he wouldn’t be getting out early, either.
EDIT2: Also, because he’s a fugitive and it’s a federal crime:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/3290
18 U.S. Code § 3290 - Fugitives from justice
No statute of limitations shall extend to any person fleeing from justice.
So I expect that he’s probably going to stay in Germany for the rest of his life, unless he can find some other location that wouldn’t extradite him (Russia?)
According to Wikipedia, he should have a criminal trial in Germany starting this year, so it’s possible he will still get sentenced there as well.
To salvage the argument, it’s quite possible this would have been different if they were from GM rather than VW.
It most likely would‘ve. Just look how quickly US courts started to turn Monsanto into shreds the very second Bayer bought it. They‘re after that so called stupid German money. Wouldn‘t work if it was American money.
I am surprised VW clowns got the prison tbh but i am sure there is a reason why it actually happened here.
System fucked up lol
I dunno, VW is about as American as GM.
This is the most unbelievable part: a us court held management responsible for criminal behavior? Did that not pay their fines? Did no one have a spare jet to offer?
Good
This is the way.
No, this is the way. But the above article is a good start.
I would love to see counterarguments to this instead of just downvotes
I mean my own counterargument to it as that no state should have the power to execute people, and if it should it shouldn’t use it on criminals, and if it should it shouldn’t use it on financial crimes. Yeah $12bil is a lot, and I am absolutely in favor of hard time as a punishment for financial crimes, but I don’t think seriously think anyone should die over it.
no state should have the power to execute people
I would present a counterargument to that, as all states in the world ultimately have this power, only the circumstances differ. I mean, grab a gun and try to shoot at armed police anywhere in the world. You will be killed, and nobody can sue the state or the police who shot you for unjustly executing you. Killing you is always fair to protect other people from being killed.
From there, we are arguing whether states should be able to kill in cold blood, which is a different conversation, and my opinion is that we should keep making penalties for “financial crimes”, which usually kill more people than any mass shooter or serial killer could, harsher and harsher until there is a clearly visible deterrent effect.
The case of the lady in Vietnam is not even a direct “cold blood” case by the way, as the state agreed to spare her if she puts at least most of the money back, which means that lives lost because of the absence of that money might be spared. In my view, this is analogous to shooting at an active shooter, and an okay thing to do. Lives are being saved by doing this.
Death penalties should never be used since you can never be 100% sure of a crime. Otherwise you will get innocents executed.
Even CEOs can be scapegoats.
I’m used to executives being above the law. I had to read the article to be sure the title wasn’t clickbait.
They are, the post title is false. The people going to jail are middle managers
It is very puzzling, isn’t it? Why VW execs are put in jail and banking execs that created a global recession get off scot free?
oh that’s easy. the VW execs were under the jurisdiction of a country that gives a fuck and knows what the consecuences of unchecked greed are. the bankers were under the jurisdiction of a country that thinks maybe a little bit of fascism wouldn’t be so bad, all things considered
Except, as noted above, they were jailed in US too.
Because that act didn’t hurt an American company
BMW and VW are the same beasts they were when they were backers of NSDAP in Germany.
Between the VW emissions cheating and BMW’s subscription car features, it seems their attitude towards commerce has not changed a jot.
I am sure some of their owners are of that same mind set but come on here… this is bread and butter white collar crime, Nazi Germany era war crimes. No need to conflate the two. Both can be true independently of each other.
Let’s go Germany!! Shouldn’t be the election to the rule
:)))))
This sounds like actual impactful consequences and accountability for the rich exploitative asshole executives actually responsible? Did I forget to wake up in the morning?
The fallout forced CEO Martin Winterkorn to resign, although he denied wrongdoing. U.S. authorities issued an arrest warrant for Winterkorn in 2018, but Germany does not extradite its nationals. His trial in Germany was paused in 2021 due to health issues, but he remains a key figure under investigation.
Sounds like execs are familiar with milking the legal process regardless of nationality or prosecuting nation.
It’s almost like execs are an international . . . cabal . . . of extremely rich white men who make decisions that only serve them.
But of course that’s just a conspiracy theory.
It’s almost like execs are an international . . . cabal . . . of extremely rich white men who make decisions that only serve them.
But of course that’s just
a conspiracy theory.the dark ages reality we’ve been living the last ~200+ years
That’s all Folks! [Looney Toons music plays]
One insanity in the following years was how they thought people still wanted their next generation diesel.
I’ve been working for them in the 2010s with the department to organise the staff car fleet. We ordered many electric vehicles years ahead from production and planned it all around electric vehicles: Charging stations, operating distance, some hybrids for long distance, software to calculate trips etc.
Then a few months before we needed them, they said: We overproduced on the latest diesel generation and can’t keep up with the demand for electric vehicles, so we have to sell the ones you ordered. You can either go with a Tesla (for official Volkswagen business trips!) or have the diesel for free.
It felt like there was a hysteria: Decision makers got it in their heads that the “hype” for electric vehicles was ideology-driven and not something people with buying power actually wanted today or in the near future. Bit like the republican administration thinking that “woke” is our main problem. Meanwhile, huge research and development departments did come up with the electric vehicles they sell today (and fully working hydrogen prototypes you won’t see in a store, just to be safe) and must have been quite frustrated that so few were produced.
oh no, my VW stocks 🥲
It took 10 years? Well even longer because they figured something was wrong before it came public.
The court sent the former head of diesel engine development behind bars for four years and six months, and the former head of powertrain electronics to two years and seven months.
It took 10 years?
This was my first thought as well.
Not so fast! The judgment isn’t final yet. Plus some trials are still pending. Also the CEO seems to be too sick for trial.
To be fair. There are trials. It is not great but it could be worse. Imagine people could be deported and sent to prison for alleged crimes. Or so…
Before anyone becomes to happy: the post’s title is inaccurate, the two people sent to jail are only middle managers:
deleted my happy post bc of this
What’s Volkswagen’s org structure like? I wouldn’t normally expect a department head to be middle management.
Think of them more like division heads. Not quite a regular middle manager, but not C-suite.
I mean the diesel engine department would probably be quite big for a company like Volkswagen. Each engine type has a team of engineers and a manager.
I… I thought a middle manager is any manager who’s not the very lowest manager, and not the CEO? As in, any manager who has managers above and below them?
I thought middle management was the guy in between the crew and upper management?
Absolute shit stressful job, btw. Never doing that shit again. If you have a heart, that job will kill it.
Good question - I also don’t know how clear those definitions are. In my head all managers that are under department heads would be middle, and department heads + C-suite would be upper/senior management. And the subset of upper management that is C-level is, well, C-level.
