Anybody following VW's fuck up?

[Alfred_E._Neuman]

What a crock of shit. There's a solid argument for obliterating the entire company and spinning off the remnants to the highest bidders just to prove a point that blatant cheating of emissions regulations won't be tolerated. At the very least they should face the maximum fine x the number of vehicles sold AND have to buy back the cars at full retail if the customer doesn't want issue patched on their car.

For those that don't know, the gist is VW coded their diesel engines to run under full NOx emissions reductions when they sensed they were being tested, then revert to basically no NOx reductions after it passed the test and went back to normal driving. Some 11 million vehicles.

According to EU estimates on the level of NOx emissions the engines were pumping out, the VW diesels in Europe alone equaled the total yearly allowable emissions from all sources.

[DikTracy6000]

Great investment opportunity.

[Alfred_E._Neuman]

Great investment opportunity.

Maybe. I saw it was down nearly 40% over the last two days. I think the time to buy would be after the fines are announced and everyone shits their brains about how large the figure is. If it's over $10b, you can bet the stock absolutely tanks.

There's talk of FIAT taking advantage of the opportunity to get a merger going. A FIAT/Chrysler + VAG merger would make for an enormously bloated company with a metric ton of product overlap and tens of thousands of job cuts to follow.

[DrDonkeyLove]

I am rejoicing

I had a 2005 Passat that went through at least a half dozen oil pumps, sometimes stranding me hundreds of miles from home. It cost me thousands of dollars. VW knew there was a problem and never lifted a finger to fix it for me or many others.

I hope several fuckheads in management go to the shittiest federal prison available. Perhaps super gluing their lips to a Jetta diesel tailpipe would be in order.

I guess I'm still a little upset.

[j-cubed]

Yeah, it's a serious fuck up. Especially since they have touted "clean diesels" in their marketing.
They will be hammered, and many politicians will get many blowjobs compliments of VW

[Grandpa's Spells]

Great investment opportunity.

No. Not a stock analyst, but I work in the industry on the compliance side and have no idea where the floor is here. Shit could get real bad.

I had a 2005 Passat that went through at least a half dozen oil pumps, sometimes stranding me hundreds of miles from home.

The software in question affects 2009+ models. Are you talking about another issue?

I have a gas VW and it's a safe bet the value just took a hit. Dealers are getting screwed hard.

[seeahill]

C'mon, they said they were sorry.

That they got caught.

And the company makes Audis, right? And Bentleys. And Lamborginis.

Nothing wrong with Audis. I guess.

[DrDonkeyLove]

I had a 2005 Passat that went through at least a half dozen oil pumps, sometimes stranding me hundreds of miles from home.

The software in question affects 2009+ models. Are you talking about another issue?

I have a gas VW and it's a safe bet the value just took a hit. Dealers are getting screwed hard.

Yes, another issue that was eventually "resolved" but fucked many Passat owners. I bring it up because it's another relatively recent example of their lack of character. And...because I try to never miss an opportunity to discourage people from purchasing VW's.

I was in a mega dealership about a year ago and talked to one of the brand managers. He used to be in their VW store but wanted out because he didn't like their quality.

If your VW is perfectly fine, as you said you're probably getting fucked on resale value. Let's see if they offer current gas engine owners a penny to compensate for resale losses. They're a bad company.

Of course GM killed 124 people by ignoring their ignition problems so VW isn't alone on the shit list.

[Kenny X]

C'mon, they said they were sorry.

That they got caught.

And the company makes Audis, right? And Bentleys. And Lamborginis.

Nothing wrong with Audis. I guess.

I'd drive an Audi like I stole it. Not gonna lie.

[dead man walking]

vw is being screwed because there's too many govt regulations. we wouldn't have any of this nonsense if we had a free market.

caveat emptor

[Mickey O'neil]

VWs and Audis are expensive as fuck to maintain and repair. Parts are ridiculous. I like them, but would never own one. Parts are, like, 4x as much than the same part as, say, a Honda.

[Blaidd Drwg]

That little diesel is a great motor for rock crawling critters like this Samurai.



I hope they become more plentiful now.

[Turdacious]

So VW did with emissions what US automakers did with their pension plans and got the same results?

[ccrow]

Very very interesting stuff. VW has been tried and convicted in the media so they're fucked no matter what. Maybe I'm cynical but I pretty much expect this kind of thing. For decades car makers have gamed the mileage tests in a less blatant way. Cars are designed / tuned for good mileage on the EPA tests, which are the only mileage stats you can put in an ad, often at the expense of real world mileage. In reality nobody drives 55 mph like the test, so real mileage doesn't match up with EPA mileage.

I hope someone takes the time to do more extensive tests on other models and see if VW is the only one doing it, or the only one that the got caught accidentally so far. Does anyone know how dirty the VW diesels are, just a little dirtier than average in normal driving, or all out smog disaster?

No doubt the lawyers and the fines will assrape VW but I wonder if the recall for this is really as costly as people are saying. Maybe it's just a matter of replacing / reflashing the chip with fair, non-gamed emissions-compliant code. If it can pass the test with a software adaptation, maybe it can run clean in normal use with new software. Of course that would be a lower performance program. I wonder how many people will miss their emissions cheating chip. The dealers will probably have to destroy once the ruling is out. I am going to go to a junkyard and buy all the illegal chips right now, make a fortune in outlaw VW chips.

Finally - is VW too big to fail?

[DikTracy6000]

Great investment opportunity.

No. Not a stock analyst, but I work in the industry on the compliance side and have no idea where the floor is here. Shit could get real bad.

I had a 2005 Passat that went through at least a half dozen oil pumps, sometimes stranding me hundreds of miles from home.

The software in question affects 2009+ models. Are you talking about another issue?

I have a gas VW and it's a safe bet the value just took a hit. Dealers are getting screwed hard.

Stephen, I respectfully disagree. I've been waiting for the next big company that gets shits loads of bad press knocking their price down in the cellar. Some of my biggest homeruns have been with Phillip Morris, with pending billions of penalties in lawsuits, British Petrol. for fucking up the sea and killing people, Exxon for killing sea life and fucking up the oceans, drug companies when the Clinton and Bush regimes made them into villains. VW is screaming at me to buy, which I will in the coming weeks or months. The tobacco industry stocks pretty much tripled and paid out 5-8% dividends after getting assraped. Same for Merck, plus a 5% dividend in the early 2000's. I hope VW fires many more exec's, gets heavy fines, makes financial restitution and most importantly has every stupid financial show chastising them for a month. Cover story on financial mag's is a plus. Please feel free to tell me in a year I'm full of shit. Let's hope all the bloggers are piling on the hate wide and deep. This is such a minor violation compared to the tobacco industry killing people, gm, Ford, Toyota, Exxon, and BP killing people. p.s. I've had my share of bad experiences with getting my VW and my daughter's Jetta serviced over the years and will prob. never own another VW.
p.p.s. The dead cat bounce has already bounced from the low of 24.41 to 27.16. Not that I had that.

Edit: 10/01. B100VW @ 23.55 today-UPDATE
edit: 10/02 B100 shr @ 22.75
edit: 10/12 Sold 200 shrs VW @ 30.03 for $1376 profit. I will go back to this in coming weeks & months.
I'm tracking my dipping into VW on my training journal, and will revisit this until I think it's done. So I only netted 1376 bucks during the first six days of the scandal. If I'd had any real balls I'd have bought 2000 share instead of only 200, but will keep going back to this opportunity.

Last edited by DikTracy6000 on Mon Oct 12, 2015 4:52 pm, edited 3 times in total.

[Alfred_E._Neuman]

I work at a high end Mercedes service, so this has been the talk of the shop since the news broke. One thing that's scary about this sort of thing is that automakers are trying to hide behind the Digital Millennial Copyright Act as a way to make it illegal to even look at their code. They premise is of course safety - if a tuner goes in and hacks a chip on a car to get more power, but the engine management system also talks to the traction control and ABS systems, you can seriously fuck up critical safety components.

The truth is that the automakers want it so you can't work on your car without having access to their computer systems, which cost $20K to buy and another grand a month to subscribe to their service. On Mercedes I can't change a transmission or trans. control module without sending out for a program to marry that trans. to that chassis. Take it out and put it in another car and it bricks itself. Imagine every electronically controlled part of a car that can be coded so it bricks itself if you try to talk to it or change it out without the dealer software.

So now they use the DMCA to bitch that they can't let anyone see the source code for their ECU. So the EPA has no way to ferret out cheats like this. A good hacker with access to the source code would have found this cheat in 5 minutes. The EPA just has to take a company's word that their ECU is running on the up and up. I'm not sure VW's computer was even telling the truth about itself when it was in normal driving mode, because there have been a TON of times I've hooked up a laptop to a car and driven it to get a look at mixture numbers, O2 sensor oscillations, etc. during actual driving. I can't imagine VW techs haven't done the same thing.

[Alfred_E._Neuman]

Does anyone know how dirty the VW diesels are, just a little dirtier than average in normal driving, or all out smog disaster?

Finally - is VW too big to fail?

What I've heard is that they run 40 times above the EPA limit for NOx emissions. So it's like driving 40 barely passable diesels in a Jetta TDi.

And VW is nowhere near to big to fail. At least I hope not. I think they should be nuked for this. My secret wish as a Porsche fanboy is to see Porsche somehow go back to a small-ish family company and make little lightweight sports cars like the 911 was back in the day. Not these technocrat supercars they make now.

[Blaidd Drwg]

My secret wish as a Porsche fanboy is to see Porsche somehow go back to a small-ish family company and make little lightweight sports cars like the 911 was back in the day. Not these technocrat supercars they make now.

Here Here!!
Magnus Walker and Singer are doing more to preserve the Porsche legacy than the VW monolith ever did.

[DARTH]

OK so the issue is they fudged their chips so you can pass emissions inspection? is that what this is? Am I reading this right?

If that's all it is good for VW owners! Dinks and Dotheads pushing more shit into the sky anyways un abated while you have to cross your fingers your car makes inspection so you don't end up chasing the problem with your $$$$.

in my part of Va. our shitbox Chevy just would not pass and I am not into spending money I barely have on an old car, to make the greenies happy.

Fortunately the county my lady's grandparents live in requires no emissions, so the car is now registered there as her business is headquarterd there and our car is a company car now.

[dead man walking]

OK so the issue is they fudged their chips so you can pass emissions inspection? is that what this is? Am I reading this right?

If that's all it is good for VW owners!

so break the laws you don't like? thus an afghan can fuck a boy.

[Grandpa's Spells]

For decades car makers have gamed the mileage tests in a less blatant way. Cars are designed / tuned for good mileage on the EPA tests, which are the only mileage stats you can put in an ad, often at the expense of real world mileage. In reality nobody drives 55 mph like the test, so real mileage doesn't match up with EPA mileage.

This hasn't been the case for a while. Hyundai was 1 or 2 MPG generous on their assessment, the EPA said it didn't match up with real-world driving, and Hyundai paid a fine and had to repay owners the difference in the amount they spent on gas.

[TerryB]

Do people really care about this?

VW should've pulled a Trump and came out swinging about how stupid and costly EPA regulations are and how no Alaskan cave mollusks were injured by a few VWs driving around with slightly higher emissions than bureaucrats prefer.

[Turdacious]

For decades car makers have gamed the mileage tests in a less blatant way. Cars are designed / tuned for good mileage on the EPA tests, which are the only mileage stats you can put in an ad, often at the expense of real world mileage. In reality nobody drives 55 mph like the test, so real mileage doesn't match up with EPA mileage.

This hasn't been the case for a while. Hyundai was 1 or 2 MPG generous on their assessment, the EPA said it didn't match up with real-world driving, and Hyundai paid a fine and had to repay owners the difference in the amount they spent on gas.

How many plants has Hyundai built in districts with senior Congressmen and Senators? VW and Hyundai aren't playing the same game.

[Blaidd Drwg]

Regardless of disbelief in global carbon being an issue, the specific problem with VW was higher than allowed NOX emissions which have well understood, very serious impacts in terms smog and particulates. Diesel particulates play a big role in fucking over local surface water quality and the delicious fishes that live in it. So if you live near a body of water you want to swim or eat stuff out of, it's an issue for you.

[TerryB]

I don't.