Is MB cheating with blutec or not? Inquiring minds want to know!!!!

 

well we can bet every company who sells diesel vehicles (at least in the US) will be under intense scrutiny

 

Their silence is worrying in my view.

I have always thought diesels were horrible smelly smoky noisy things and never wanted one, and i hated getting behind one car, van or lorry. My first was an e class estate bought when i moved to france which has a long love affair with diesel (80% of cars sold are diesel) and where it is substantially cheaper per litre. I changed my view, in the car you could not hear the clatter and the torque the engine delivered (220 cdi) was a revelation i changed my view...especially as the c02 was much better. I am now on my third and it is the best yet and far cleaner and economical in litre per 100km.........but now i question is it as clean as i think?

Smoky diesels are now rare but nox emissions are an issue i was unaware of.......the french government has already said it needs to improve air quality and they are looking at trying to get people to move to petrol and hybrid but so far have made no major changes to the tax regimes we shall see what the future brings.

I think vw behaviour is despicable and i will never consider buying one of their products again to lie and cheat in the way they have totally destroys trust and if mercedes have done the same i will feel equally cheated. They too will loose my custom. I am watching developments with baited breath...

 

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/0...0RL0SY20150921


http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/...0RL0II20150922

 

Thanks qwerty I had not seen those reports. From other reports it seems it was comparison with a bmw x5 real world emissions v test results v vw real world and test results which showed up something was wrong. I also understand the engines involved are not bluetec with the same system as mercedes. Fingers crossed mercedes has not been telling outright lies and cheating like vw. I feel sorry for all the workers though to be let down by such bad management.....germanys reputation will now be severly tarnished.

 

I'm not sure Germany's reputation will be tarnished because one company got greedy, lied and made profit more important than anything else. I fully expect the Chairman of VW will be dismissed by Friday. And the future of VW in the US is certainly questionable. The Audi A3 is also involved in the deceit.

VW deserves to be severely fined and the public flogging they're getting and will continue to get is warranted.

My hope is Mercedes will not only say they are not involved (I don't think they are), but they will have their diesels tested by the EPA and post those results for all to see. If I were the Chairman of Daimler, that's exactly what I'd do.

 

The CEO resigned today.

Martin Winterkorn, the chief executive of Volkswagen, has resigned just days after it emerged that the company had cheated emissions tests in the US.



Winterkorn, who has run the company since 2007, said at a press conference following a day of board deliberations that the company needed a fresh start.

Winterkorn said:


I am clearing the way for a this fresh start with my resignation. I am shocked by events of the past few days. Above all, I am stunned that misconduct on such a scale was possible in Volkswagen Group.

 

I guess that's good, but he should have been fired.

 

Not that it matters much but he is claiming ignorance.

 

I find that hard to believe. Still, the captain of the ship should be well aware of what the crew is up to, no matter what. Yes, I get that the VW group is very large, but this issue had to have been planned to be implemented in over 11,000,000 vehicles. There had to be documentation on the programming required to pull off a hoax this large. I find it almost impossible to believe he knew nothing about this at all.

 

If he did not know then the systems in VW are in modern language not fit for purpose. Someone took the decision and who why and when needs to be answered. At the end of the day the buck does stop with the CEO and I am not sure he should be allowed to just walk away.

VW were working with mercedes benz on bluetec but left......so mercedes and vw are close i am still awaiting Dieter Zeitsche statement we do not have any such software in our cars....for me the silence is deafening.....

 

I think Mercedes will be ok. The reason is Mercedes has been using urea injection Since 2007. My guess is that this was VW's way of avoiding the cost of urea injection.

 

Exactly. VW tried to fool the world into thinking they'd created a clean diesel without the need for urea injection. Clearly they hadn't.

 

BMW's turn

 

Despite his denials his resignation shows complicity. If I were VW's CEO and had been kept out of the loop, finding out who was responsible and firing him would have been my finest hour.

 

OR......the board who met this week, told him to resign or be fired.

 

There had been some reports of board infighting a few mths ago so its entirely possible.

 

The captain of the ship is responsible for his crew, regardless. I'm quite sure the board felt they simply could not stand behind him regardless of what he knew or didn't.

 

From the Wall Street Journal (http://www.wsj.com/articles/former-v...off-1443103501)...

Former Volkswagen Chief Martin Winterkorn Could Receive €60m Payoff

... Clearly this whole mess is going to take a while to fully unfold...

 

I'll never understand how or why a company would have a contract with an executive to pay out that much money when they hit an iceberg and nearly sink the ship in the process. His severance would be enough for me to live the rest of my life quite nicely and then fund future generations of my family. Amazing.

 

If the board actually approves a payout like that, they should ALL be fired.

 

They likely don't have any choice. Chairman/CEO contracts are set up to offer huge payouts when the boss departs (regardless of reason).

 

But I suspect they're the ones that approved the contract.

If I was a VW shareholder, I'd react quite negatively if my board didn't protect against scandals like this one.

 

I'm just as stunned as you and I suspect millions of others that someone can be compensated so well for driving the business off a cliff. But these contracts are often iron-clad and tbh, $66million to VW is a drop in their bucket. Is it outrageous? You bet. Will he get it? He likely will.