This article sums up the real trouble that VW is in for what it did. It closely matches my thesis which is that the real sin wasn't the cheating so much as the shaming of VW fan cult. The liberals who fall into this kind of category fear and hate nothing more than loss of face. Avoiding that is the main driving reason behind everything they do. The herd in general doesn't care much about winning but it damned sure doesn't want to lose.
Anyone who bought a VW, Turbo Diesel Injection (TDI) or otherwise is literally embarrassed to be seen in their car right now. As they are driving along if they see someone laughing in the care driving beside them they will think that they are the reason for the laughter.
This is bad, bad, existentially bad and V Dub knows it. That's why they are now having emergency meetings. The horse has already left the barn and management wants to figure out how to close the barn door now.
The level of the prior 4th could be interpreted to be in the $12-13 range so that is what I am counting as the bottom. Of course wave count trumps all else.
I never got this perception of VW as hip, which apparently goes back to decades. In Brazil, VW is the equivalent of GM: a carmaker that once dominated the market, but whose products could not stand up to fresh competition when the import tariffs were decimated and normal, other than luxury, cars from abroad became affordable.
ReplyDeleteBut this will go beyond VW. Italy, Spain, the UK, Korea have already started probing all diesel carmakers. And it cannot be a coincidence that neither France nor Germany, the largest car exporters in the world, are not probing the industry yet. After all, VW is the 3rd largest corporation in Germany, whose car industry exports 77%of what it makes.
Again, why now, when environmentalists have been pointing out that the real world emissions has been demonstrated to be much higher than in the emissions cycle? I read an Italian car magazine which tested the emissions of all cars that it tested and would rate them after the agreement or not between the stated and the tested emissions. Why is VW, a foreign company, being threatened with crippling fines while GM, for willful negligence which resulted in almost 200 deaths, gets a slap in the wrist with no criminal prosecution? Why? Because of a sour social mood which, in the Anglo Saxon culture, never fails to descend to xenophobia.
I don't think that the current owners, who vote, will be deprived of their cars, but the damage to their resale value is done.
So, grab the popcorn and watch the domino tiles fall around the world. They may have stated to fall here and now, but they may as well end here.