VW Emission Scam….
I call it a scam because they tricked environmental regulators, customers at their dealerships and hell.. they even tricked their dealers into selling a dirty diesel as a “green diesel” through miss representation and manipulation of data and mis-information.
Recently VW released the following commercial to the Canadian public to apologize for their “mistake”
Now it would be great if the commercial was truly the companies sentiment and they were wholeheartedly trying to right their wrong…. But by citing German privacy laws, Volkswagen has refused to provide emails or other communications among its top executives to authorities in the United States. Theses actions limit the courts ability to identify which employees knew about or sanctioned the deceptions.
This goes 100% against the spirit of the above commercial & I have to agree with Connecticut’s Attorney General, George Jepsen when he stated:
“I find it frustrating that, despite public statements professing cooperation and an expressed desire to resolve the various investigations that it faces following its calculated deception, Volkswagen is, in fact, resisting cooperation by citing German law,”
“We will seek to use any means available to us to conduct a thorough investigation.”
Jepsen is not the only Attorney General who has expressed his dissatisfaction with VW. New York’s Attorney General, Eric T. Schneiderman said in response to inquiries from The New York Times:
“Our patience with Volkswagen is wearing thin,”
“Volkswagen’s cooperation with the states’ investigation has been spotty — and frankly, more of the kind one expects from a company in denial than one seeking to leave behind a culture of admitted deception.”
Finding the people responsible for cheat device is fundamental to the pending lawsuits and I feel identifying the individuals responsible is needed to help prevent an event like this from happening again. If they just issue a company fine and don’t even bother to slap a few wrists, what is to say that another company wont do exactly what VW has done!?
Penalties would hold much greater meaning if those who are pursuing Volkswagen in court could also hold the individuals who were directly involved be it top executives, or engineers knew of or directed the activity. Punish those who are directly responsible, don’t just fine the company as a whole, because we all know who is going to bear the brunt of the burden, VW’s ground level workforce; who most likely had no connection to this deception what so ever.
VW’s marketing department and legal team need to give their heads a shake. By saying one thing but doing the other shows me that they have not learned their lesson and are trying to deceive us again.
I used to lust over the Amarok, a mid sized diesel pickup that’s is available in so many different continents around the globe other than North America, but now I only have one thing left to say:
You can keep your damn Amarok off North American soil, nobody wants your dirty diesel, lies and corruption polluting our back county and trails anyway!
Expedition Report 