The particular significance is not that car manufacturers are willing to defraud regulators for profit, all corporations are willing to do that. It is in their untold charter, so to say.
The particular significance is rather that regulators and car manufacturers went hand in hand for years in that scandal. And car buyers were ready to believe that their monstrous SUV was running on a drop of fuel and a song and not polluting the least bit, yet saw it guzzle at the pump. That is what really happened: everybody knew.
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Based on long experience with @anon55609254, I disagree. They’re not, in my ample experience, given to disingenuous questions. But perhaps it was a mutual misunderstanding.
On this I agree. While ultimately we need to transition away from fossil fuels completely, diesel can be an amazing technology. One aspect of my irritation with VW is the extent to which they’ve besmirched a technology that can help on our way there.
I understand what you’re saying, but a better way of saying it might be that it’s a relatively small percentage of NOx attributed deaths which make it tough to pin down statistically, so readers don’t get hung up the 5,000 dead people is a small number. I realize that’s not what you’re saying, but that’s the initial impression.
Well, yes, but not equally so. And the place to hit a publicly traded company such as VW is in the bottom line. As with banksters and other transnationals, they’ll only obey regulations when it either makes sound fiscal sense to do so, or the executives making the decisions to ignore regulations face jail time.
I’m a physicist. And while it’s been quite a long time since my dalliance with O-chem, I have a good idea of the crap spewed out by IC engines. It’s one reason I favor two wheels whenever sufficient.
Cory is a polemicist, not a journalist, and I quite understand the frustration with his hyperbole, but I don’t think the article or his blogging about it presents an either/or censure of VW vs the their competitors. In fact, in the past he’s blogged about the fact that emission test rigging is an open secret in the industry. But most of the public is still unaware, so I don’t see lambasting the most visible perpetrators either as a bad thing or exclusionary of other offenders.
I rather figured, since your statements lead me to think you likely reside somewhere in Europe where automobiles are less essential. Regardless, I think fossil fuels are a problem which has to be solved at a systemic level, so I’d never shame someone for using a car.
Unless they’re punished severely enough to make it unprofitable. It’s not just corporations. The universal truth is that to fight crime, it’s necessary to make the penalties high enough that it doesn’t pay.
That’s a separate but related problem. It does not, IMO, in any way obviate the significance of VW’s own crime.
I disagree on this. The average person is scientifically illiterate. I don’t mean that as opprobrium, just observation.
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is there one of those clever German compound words that means ütterly fücked?
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I’d like you to put in in that context please, the one you mention. I see your explanation, that’s not how I read it. I think you may be effectively double-discounting. I could be incorrect, I think you could be though. I haven’t spent a weekend preparing for this discussion.
Your audience includes at least one toxicologist.
Claims require evidence, thank you.
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Strategic umlauts. 
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I’m not sure that there are any of the latter.
This is rather OT so feel free to ignore but I don’t think the evidence bears that out. Even the most draconian penalties don’t seem to prevent crime. The main thing that seems to influence crime levels is the perceived likelihood of being caught.
While I don’t dispute your statement about scientific literacy, I think AndreStmaur’s point is valid. Even allowing that most people didn’t (and don’t) have a clue about the exact details, lots of people know a lot about their cars - especially in Germany.
It’s certainly accurate to say that anyone who was even mildly interested knew that actual road performance was significantly worse than official test results and that the ‘official tests’ were carefully designed with the full knowledge of regulators to enable vehicles to pass rather than err on the side of failing them.
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Nah. 
It’s more like comparing the undesirable consequences of a problematic technology (which most societies have chosen to accept as a reasonable tradeoff) to a conspiracy of plutocratic mass-murder driven entirely by callous greed.
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Which one was which?
I see the argument you’re suggesting, but I’m not sure I buy it.
The basic idea is that the internal combustion engine has been a greed-based murderous plot against humanity since…when? Is that it?
Could you expand? Perhaps with some explanation of why VW’s recent conspiracy to deliberately increase the kill rate did not represent a case of abnormally excessive criminality?
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No, that wasn’t what I was going for.
I think the unfortunate reality is that the additional deaths caused by VW are simply part of the “undesirable consequences of a problematic technology which most societies have chosen to accept as a reasonable tradeoff”.
In this particular instance VW got caught out in one of the many ways car manufacturers figleaf the real extent of the ‘undesirable consequences’.
Society clearly accepts the figleafing (as @AndreStmaur pointed out most Europeans certainly knew perfectly well that emissions tests were being fiddled in various ways if not this exact one).
What VW is in trouble for is allowing the figleaf to fall and forcing us to confront the fact that we like to drive vehicles that kill us.
I agree that VW’s behaviour was and should be criminal. I don’t like the narrative that what VW did was especially heinous because it is the same narrative that gets trotted out whenever (for example) a police officer is overzealous in the application of force.
“It’s not systemic. This person (or corporation) was especially bad. Just one bad apple which we’ve removed. Nothing to see here…”
Pursue VW, yes. Let’s not ignore the rest of the industry in doing so.
Or lets admit that yes, as a society we are fine with x number of deaths a year (we clearly are) and increase the allowable emissions levels to a realistic figure (which will then also be cheated, but hey at least the manufacturers won’t have the argument that it’s simply not possible to achieve the required levels).
Personally I would prefer actually forcing manufacturers to comply with sensible levels even if it means that people can’t drive as fast as they’d like or in as big a car as they’d like.
Instead of continuing to allow them to manipulate the tests in certain ways but not others which is what we are doing.
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I agree the perception of getting caught is key, but there must also be the perception that there will be penalties sufficient to dissuade from taking the risk or at least make it so costly that it doesn’t make sense to do it. If VW ultimately profits from it’s fraud in spite of it’s fines, then the law really is just a tax on fraud and other companies will budget accordingly.
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Thank you for phrasing it much better than I did!
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Applies to you too!
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