Volkswagen CEO Resigns in Wake of Diesel Emissions Scandal | Edmunds.com

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Volkswagen CEO Resigns in Wake of Diesel Emissions Scandal | Edmunds.com

Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn resigned on Wednesday in the wake of a diesel-emissions cheating scandal involving 11 million Volkswagen vehicles worldwide, saying

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natschamp

Way, way overblown. How many deaths? GM 's recent ignition key interlock ended over 100 lives. Ford killed their share with exploding gas tanks ( vehicles involved in rear end collisions). They paid serious fines, but lives cannot be replaced.
But the multi-billion dollar fines spoken about against VW ? Sounds like war reparations.
Don't currently own a VW, but I'm thinking of popping for one now. Great deals ahead, no doubt.

carboy21

Agreed, people were not killed. But smog kills

allthingshonda

Not overblown. When you promote and market a product as a clean diesel and at the same time knowingly and purposely program your product to turn off emission controls is horrible. There are probably quite a few people who bought the diesel version because of the fuel economy and clean technology. Now they have a car that emits more pollution than the law allows and the fix may cause the fuel economy to drop. Many other car makers have had problems that they have covered up. But the lie was about covering up a problem after it was discovered. Also very bad but different at the same time. The Ford and GM problems would be similar if VW discovered later that a defect caused the emission system to fail but never recalled the cars or notified the EPA and lied to keep it a secret. But purposely programming the car to turn off emission systems is whole different kinda crazy.

metalmania

Thankfully this isn't as tragic as a fatal defect, but those were defects. This is intentional deception designed into the cars. Bad. We pay a lot of money for cars nowadays, even for plain "boring" ones. We deserve not to be lied to.

agentorange

I don't see why Winterkorn resigned unless he was head of the software department while the offending 0s and 1s were being programmed. Chances are many managers at his level would not recognize an ECU if it fell on them.

kyfdx

agentorange said:

I don't see why Winterkorn resigned unless he was head of the software department while the offending 0s and 1s were being programmed. Chances are many managers at his level would not recognize an ECU if it fell on them.

For the same reason that a head coach gets fired when his team goes 3-13, even though he doesn't block, pass or tackle. He is accountable for the team's success or failure.