Olaf Lies!?
You couldn't make it up.
Lies from VW: 'Our staff acted criminally but board didn't know'
Olaf Lies, a Volkswagen board member and the economy minister of Lower Saxony, has stated that some staff acted criminally in installing software which allowed cars to cheat on pollution tests. Lies told BBC Newsnight that those at VW who oversaw the installation of the defeat device, as well as those who installed it, acted …
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Wednesday 30th September 2015 15:19 GMT GitMeMyShootinIrons
Re: German pronounciation
"Sadly, I don't use a handy German to read my articles to me. I have to make do with reading them to myself, in my head."
You don't? I always keep one around. I sometimes get Jeeves to harass him with a fake moustache and a swagger stick. Most inappropriate, but terribly funny after a few G and T's....
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Wednesday 30th September 2015 21:20 GMT Chika
Re: German pronounciation
It probably does.
Mind you, one of my ancestors came from Germany (back before Germany was unified and no, I don't mean when they knocked that wall down!) so that makes me a little German too!
Imagine what it's like to have a little German inside you at a time like this!
er... put another way...
(I forget how many years it has been since I last used that catchphrase!)
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Wednesday 30th September 2015 12:55 GMT Anonymous Coward
We only found out about the problems in the last board meeting
Right. And the warnings from 2011 from one of their own engineers, and from Bosch in 2007, as recently reported by El Reg, never reached any of the board members?
Time that C-level execs are held accountable. Resigning with a severance package doesn't count.
I hope the prosecutors make it stick and lower level managers are protected from being abused as scapegoats as we see so often.
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Wednesday 30th September 2015 15:46 GMT Ken Hagan
Re: We only found out about the problems in the last board meeting
Possibly better would if the shareholders decided that "Well, if you aren't paying attention and aren't taking responsibility for what's happening, you can wave bye-bye to your stupidly over-inflated compensation package.".
Time and again we hear that these board-level salaries are justified because you need the very best at the top level, and then as soon as it transpires that we haven't actually *got* the very best at top level, they swear blind that they have no idea what their minions are doing. W.T.F.??
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Wednesday 30th September 2015 17:35 GMT Doctor Syntax
Re: We only found out about the problems in the last board meeting
"we haven't actually *got* the very best at top level"
Of course we have. It's just that they're the best at climbing corporate ladders. That's the sole requirement for getting to the top of any organisation other than one that one founds oneself. Anything other talent is an optional extra.
Cynical? Moi?
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Wednesday 30th September 2015 17:42 GMT LucreLout
Re: We only found out about the problems in the last board meeting
@Ken Hagan
"Well, if you aren't paying attention and aren't taking responsibility for what's happening, you can wave bye-bye to your stupidly over-inflated compensation package.".
That, and the severance package too!
It's high time some of these major companies simply fired these clowns, declined to pay out their severance, and let them sue if they wish. For C-Suite jobbers, its time that failure meant "not one penny more from the trough".
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Wednesday 30th September 2015 17:46 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: We only found out about the problems in the last board meeting
I find this believable. The guys at the top are paper pushers and strategists. The implementation is done lower down. I would guess that the strategy was 'produce a fuel efficient car that meets the tests at the lowest cost', and some engineer thought of a way to do it. This was approved at middle manager level who was then able to say to his bosses 'yes we can do it'. When the proverbial hit the rotating object the local bosses tried to manage it without passing it upstairs.
In an ideal world the board of a big company should be made aware of any irregularity, but bad news tends not to travel upstairs because of the tendency to run a blame culture.
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Wednesday 30th September 2015 18:31 GMT Triggerfish
Re: We only found out about the problems in the last board meeting
It's high time some of these major companies simply fired these clowns, declined to pay out their severance, and let them sue if they wish
I always find it weird that when you get past a certain level, things on your CV that would righlty not get me even an interview are seen as a good thing.
"Oh you fucked a companies share price up, closed half of it down and sacked a lot of the staff! That makes you highly employable at board level"
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Thursday 1st October 2015 10:41 GMT Andrew Moore
Re: We only found out about the problems in the last board meeting
"Oh you fucked a companies share price up, closed half of it down and sacked a lot of the staff! That makes you highly employable at board level."
As long as you are still sending out huge dividends to the major shareholders, they don't really care what you did to the company. The ability to syphon out cash to the wealthy is all that matters to them.
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Wednesday 30th September 2015 12:57 GMT Prst. V.Jeltz
no honour in the top knobs club
The old adage "A captain goes down with his ship" really dosent apply in the old boys club of CEOs , CTOs , Chairmans etc does it?
Instead of
"Save the women and children first , then the men , then maybe the crew!"
its:
"Hell no , I'm out of here first with a million dollar golden parachute and a fat pension before anyone realises how serious this is , and hopefully into the next million dollar per year industry captain job. Or maybe theyll just re hire me on an oxymorinic never ending temp contract at double the ludicrous rate i was on before"
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Wednesday 30th September 2015 13:36 GMT TeeCee
Re: no honour in the top knobs club
Apparently VW have contractual rules that prevent any senior exec getting payoff / pension / bonuses / etc if they have been involved in anything damaging to the company.
Hence the mass exodus of execs who are all allegedly utterly clueless. It's easier to fake being as thick as pigshit when you're being paid millions to do so.
As I've pointed out before, if I were a major shareholder I'd be taking the attitude that their utter incompetence in not knowing what was going on on their watch was, er, damaging to the company......
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Wednesday 30th September 2015 14:57 GMT Anonymous Custard
Re: no honour in the top knobs club
@TeeCee - I strongly hope what you say about contractual rules is right, although the WSJ reported that he could be on for a 60m Euro pay-off. Presumably this is why he's been playing so dumb about it all, although given how closely that software is normally held in-house and how important it is to the business it's almost unfeasible that he did have no knowledge.
Will have to keep an eye on that one, along with the investigation into him that the Germans are doing as mentioned at the end of the article.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/former-volkswagen-chief-martin-winterkorn-could-receive-60m-payoff-1443103501
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Wednesday 30th September 2015 20:29 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Implications
Depends on the size; as far as has been released this only applies to the 2.0 TDI engines and not the earlier 1.9 or the V6 3.0 litre diesels.
I guess this is one major reason why we were seeing VW 2.0 TDI engines with 140 and 170 ps (103 & 125 Kw) whereas Peugeot for example had 2.0 litre TDI's with only 100 Kw. BMW's diesels had similar or even greater punch than the VAG engines, but they did use a Urea injection system to mitigate NOx emissions.
I guess this also probably squelches VW's new 176 Kw 2.0 litre biTurbo engine that was to replace the VR6 petrol at the top of the tree; I'd bet that the biTurbo has exactly the same pollution issue if not more so.
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Wednesday 30th September 2015 17:47 GMT LucreLout
Re: Implications
So logically VW should pay the difference.
Logically the CEO of VW UK should be facing charges for tax evasion and fraud, for that is what this is - The buck stops where the bonus stops. Its time we barred more of these guys from running further companies, as there is already legislation to permit this.
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Wednesday 30th September 2015 15:11 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: Implications
Dan 55,
The tax is CO2 based, so probably not. Unless the fix raises CO2 emissions?
I believe the reason for the cheating on the NOx tests was that running the engine in that non-polluting mode cost at least 5% extra in fuel consumption. Hence the reason for doing it in the first place. They can run the engine cleaner, but that's a one-off test everyone must pass so nobody cared about. Whereas people do buy based on fuel consumption figures.
The weird thing is that this is a pretty big risk to take for only 5% fuel consumption. I've not seen any proper figures, only "about 5%" somewhere, so I imagine the difference is actually higher.
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Wednesday 30th September 2015 16:03 GMT Yet Another Anonymous coward
Re: Implications
More likely - running the smaller engines in test mode allowed them to pass the tests without needing the urea system (adblue on mercs) they have on their bigger engines.
Not needing to fit the injection system saves money but drivers not needing to buy the fluid and refill the tank is a big selling point if you are trying to push diesels in the market (a former 2stroke 125cc owner)
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Wednesday 30th September 2015 21:04 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Implications
"The "econometer" tells me I'm doing 66mpg"
But are you looking at instantaneous or average MPG?
My car normally reports between 42 and 48 mpg depending on time of year and usage patterns. The average over the last year based on mileage and petrol is around 44mpg. That suggests the trip computer is pretty accurate.
It is also the same mpg as the smaller Diesel car my wife had back in the early 2000s, which considering that Diesel fuel contains about 10% more available energy per litre, is impressive.
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Thursday 1st October 2015 22:16 GMT John Brown (no body)
Re: Implications
"The "econometer" tells me I'm doing 66mpg.....
Welcome to the "sometimes nearly accurate" world....."
For various reasons, I keep a record of the odometer at each fill-up, always top-off the tank and note down the quantity and price of the fuel. This gives me a per tank mpg number which, surprisingly, matches the average mpg on the car computer +/- 1-2 mpg. I fine tuned the fuel consumption rates over a period of time on the SatNav which generally agrees with the mpg figure, but with a slightly larger margin of error since I didn't opt for the outrageously expensive cable to plug it in to the cars data port. Because I tend to drive "sensibly", ie I'm rarely in a hurry (70mph+), I actually do get the stated 60mpg quite comfortably, even if there is a couple of 100 miles at 70mph down the motorway. 65mpg is more typical on a per tank basis.
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Wednesday 30th September 2015 14:23 GMT SImon Hobson
Re: Implications
> Will VW also have to pay UK government the difference in road tax based on emissions?
No, because what is paid is determined exclusively by performance in the laid down tests. In the tests determined by the authorities, the cars produced what they did.
It's arguable that no criminal act was performed. If the rules is that "the vehicle must produce less than <some measure or other> when tested in accordance with <some specification>", then it's arguable that the car passed that test. That the test is not representative of real driving conditions, and is easily "cheated", is a problem with the definition of the test.
It's been "well known" for some time that all cars are "tuned" to meet the standard tests. OK, this revelation is rather extreme "tuning", but it's really not much different. It will be interesting to find out just how much the other manufacturers have been "cheating" - because if "tuning to meet the test parameters" is cheating then I think you find that every manufacturer "cheats" with every model.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
