German court parks four Volkswagen execs in jail over Dieselgate scandal Germany’s Braunschweig Regional Court has reportedly sentenced four Volkswagen executives to jail over “Dieselgate” – the 2015 scandal in which the automaker was found to have fudged software used to test its vehicles’ pollution emissions. The matter concerned nitrogen oxide emissions, which software installed by Volkswagen …
The sentences of between 15 and 54 months seems to me to be a bit of a range, considering how much damage was done to the environment for years. I may be a bit biased as I am asthmatic, but air pollution levels due to traffic emissions have killed people. OK so it is probably not possible to prove VW is directly responsible, but I cannot help feeling that this should have been taken into account.
A big reason for the problems was the totally artificial 'standard' test cycle for fuel consumption and hence emissions. Manufacturers like VW (and I'm sure there were many more) calibrated their engines to give the best results on that cycle (which was illegal cheating, of course), even though the result was that real world driving behaviour was worse. If they had been able to simply optimise their engines properly for real world driving we would have had lower consumption and emissions overall. Doesn't excuse the illegal behaviour, of course, but is a classic example of government interference leading to unexpected consequences.
Real World Tests are what should be used, but it is slow and a drawn out process and you can guarantee that if certain test routes are used someone will complain as that company used this route, that company used that route.
Need to define it far better - but all of them are at it - even now on the adverts where they say WTLP may differ from real usage and tout WTLP figures - which are clearly incorrect
Why does anyone need standardized tests? Government loves them because they can base taxes on them, but do buyers actually care? In the past we used the figures from magazine road tests, today there are lots of websites with those figures, which are much more trustworthy and realistic than WLTP figures because they represent the way people actually use the vehicle.
It wasn't just calibrating the engine. The company installed software, commonly referred to as a "defeat device", in their diesel vehicles that could detect when the car was undergoing laboratory emissions testing. When a test was detected, the software activated emissions controls to ensure the car met regulatory standards. However, during regular driving, the software reduced the effectiveness of these controls, resulting in nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions up to 40 times higher than legal limits.
According to The Guardian, there are 16000 deaths attributable to 'Dieselgate':
"The excess pollution emitted as a result of the Dieselgate scandal has killed about 16,000 people in the UK and caused 30,000 cases of asthma in children, according to a new analysis. A further 6,000 premature deaths will occur in coming years without action, the researchers said.
The Dieselgate scandal erupted in 2015 when diesel cars were found to be emitting far more toxic air pollution on the roads than when they passed regulatory tests, due to the use of illegal “defeat devices”."
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/may/28/dieselgate-pollution-killed-16000-people-in-uk-study-estimates
I stand by my previous post regarding sentences.
That report seems to assume that the excessive NOx levels under the conditions of the test cycle can be extrapolated to all circumstances, which is unlikely. High levels of NOx are usually caused by the very high combustion temperature associated with extremely lean mixtures. Such mixtures often result from attempts to burn as little fuel as possible to reduce CO2 levels, as required by the test regime.
Even if the result was excessive NOx at certain points of the test, it seems unlikely that levels were excessive over the whole driving cycle, so the Grauniad report exaggerates the consequences.
Doesn't really matter whether you call it calibration or programming, the essential behaviour is the same. Setting up the engine for good real-world performance caused it to fail under the artificial test cycle, but setting it up to pass the test cycle caused poor performance and fuel consumption under real conditions, so they arranged it to (illegally) detect when it was being tested, and fake the results.
If they'd been allowed to simply program it for best real-world fuel usage it would have been less polluting in general, even if it gave bad figures for the spot cases of the artificial test cycle.
I'm not defending VW, they broke the rules and were punished for it, but those nonsensical rules were the main problem. The fact that the test cycle has been changed from NEDC to WLTP is a tacit admission the the older test cycle was flawed.
None of them have even been charged...
Unfortunately, scandals in the UK seem to follow the same pattern. A massively long public enquiry which lasts for years and costs the taxpayer a fortune and during which the lawyers present get extremely rich. The final report is massive but the key summary is "everyone is very sorry, mistakes were made and lessons have been learned". Meantime many of the victims have passed away and those guilty of misconduct and subsequent cover-up have moved onto bigger and better things, or disappeared completely.
Too many publicly funded institutions are permitted to be a law unto themselves whilst protesting to be transparent and accountable.
"A rare case of execs actually being held to account"
And almost at the same time, a judge threatens an Apple exec, and Apple suddenly comes to a settlement with Epic after how many years and how many billions. Now Fortnite is back on IOS. It's almost as if holding execs to account makes companies act differently. How refreshing.
https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/19/judge-pressures-apple-to-approve-fortnite-or-return-to-court/
>Another case, against Martin Winterkorn, the former CEO of Volkswagen AG, remains stalled due to his age and ill health.
So if you get away with it long enough to become old, or ill, you effectively get off without appropriate punishment?
Or perhaps a case of if you are rich enough to have a private doctor supply a sick-note, you never have to face justice.
Modern Nissans = Japanese Stellantis: trash transmissions and cheap interiors. You'd think that Ghosn trained at Chrysler!
What it truly shows is when beancounters get control of anything involving required engineering moxie (Nissan, Stellantis, Boeing, BMW, Mercedes-Benz) trash output results.
To be honest, owning a US car in the UK I believe has always been troublesome in comparison to owning something else. More difficult to get parts as well as technicians willing to work on them, left hand drive-only on some models, designed for much wider US roads, etc.
Of course, Cheeto Jesus hasn't made anything better...
I mean, I mostly wouldn't buy them because they're turning out bad cars now. VW used to make a pretty decent machine, but their massive cost cutting (partly due to overinvestment in China, where the local carmakers have taken back a large part of the market) has resulted in some pretty poor models of late. Add to that the baffling decision a few years back to make every control in the car touch sensitive that they're only slowly rolling back now due to horrendous feedback from owners. I was in an Audi Q4 a few months ago, and the assembly quality and materials were shocking for what's supposedly a premium model. My Mazda is nicer.
Dieselgate ranks second in my reasons for avoiding them, because as others have said nearly everyone was gaming that system. Just not quite so nakedly cheating as VW was.
Given that the recall to fix this was voluntary, and many VW group cars haven't had it (evidenced by the horrible smell out the back of lots of them), can we just get these cars off the road?
Sending people to prison and fining VW doesn't actually reduce the air pollution they cause or fix the deaths caused (see guardian article today), or make it pleasant to be behind one of these driving, or worse, cycling.
Its time. If you have one its time to scrap it. If you know someone with one, do some hinting.
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