Check out Peking for comparison.
Working on automotive programs back in the early days of electronic engine control, people often joked that it might be cheaper to just rig the software to pass the CAFE testing. Guess not...
If a car that has been tweaked passes the government mandated test, then what is the issue?
It is their equipment, their test and they even put the little sticker on your windshield that proves that you pass.
FUEPA.
“VW could face fines in theory exceeding $90 billion - or as much as $37,500 per vehicle per violation of the law, based on the complaint. In September, government regulators initially said VW could face fines in excess of $18 billion.”
If I were VW, I’d just declare bankruptcy and let the various governments fight over the table scraps...but not before I took out a series of TV, print and internet ads, naming names and blaming overbearing regulations (foisted on the public by a bunch of nanny-staters) for the problems, including unemployment.
So a private corporation willingly violates established rules and is punished to the point of endangering its abilit to survive.
The government in the form of the irs does exactly the same thing and not only is no one held accountable but those involved are rewarded
Yeah. Government
Someday in the future people will try to figure out the history of the United States of America (or Western civilization in general) in the twentieth and twenty first centuries and think that there must have been something wrong with the drinking water as to make people so stupid as to destroy their civilization over the most mundane issues of the time (i.e. Climate “Change”). IMHO
Just got back from a trip down to Massachusetts in my “1971 International Harvester 1210” what are these “cafe” standards you speak of?.....50 dollars a year to renew registration....13 dollars a month as an add on to the current insurance policy....paid 2600.00 dollars 3 years ago...put in electronic ignition and rebuilt the carb’...hauls anything ....all basic systems and not ONE computer....cheaper / safer and the admiration from people who have never seen this American made truck is priceless....as far as the green money sucking just-us department they can go fornicate themselves. I think it’s fantastic that VW said screw these idiotic rules and then simply typed some code to thwart the scam of emissions ....the federal government IS the enemy! Ask yourself a question ....where would/will the billions go if they ever get collected?...some other “green” project to save ourselves from our own selves?
Senator Bob Corker forced VW on us here in SE TN..
We could have had an American company but he didn’t want them...he wanted the foreign company...
The plant is near Chattanooga..
Tennessee had to shell out millions of dollars to VW to get them to come here...
Now this...
For all the SS only 2,000 local people got jobs...we had to also pay for the German management and their families to relocate here ands the kids are in our schools...
now the local employees will be he first to be laid off...
Thanks Bob...
At what point does a regulatory agency like the EPA decide that the “problem” is solved, and no more progress is necessary, or that going further has become so expensive and destructive to the health of the nation that there is no justification for proceeding?
The answer is “never”.
To admit that the job is done is suicide for a governmental agency. It means reduced funding and reductions in personnel levels.
No, what happens is that the regulations are gradually but constantly and eternally tightened forcing the affected companies and consumers to endure ever increasing costs.
This is all justified by a propaganda barrage aimed at Congress directly and through the media intended to convince people that disaster is just around the corner if the latest round of regulations are not enacted. They always seem to have “studies” in hand that show the numbers of deaths and the dollar costs of medical care that they claim are the direct result of not enacting those regulations.
It’s the same mindset that created the “Kash For Klunkers” fiasco, which destroyed vast numbers of perfectly good vehicles that would have been bought and used by lower income people.
In the government, it is all about empire building. The more funding you can extract from Congress, by hook or by crook, the more people you can hire, the more facilities you can build, and the more pressure you can then apply on Congress to maintain and increase that funding, in an endless vicious loop that benefits only the overpaid government bureaucrats and ultimately chokes industries to death.
The US regulations that VW has run afoul of are considerably stricter that those in Europe.
Why is there no one regulating the regulators?
Volkswagen, please pick up the white courtesy telephone. You have a call from Carl Sagan. He wants to have a word with you about the amount due.