[HN Gopher] Voltswagen of America
___________________________________________________________________
Voltswagen of America
Author : throwaway4good
Score : 536 points
Date : 2021-03-30 14:17 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (media.vw.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (media.vw.com)
| xmdx wrote:
| Weird, they posted this by accident a few days ago and now it's
| back.
|
| Got to be a joke, there's no way..
| iSnow wrote:
| April's fools is tomorrow, guess it's real.
| rmoriz wrote:
| E-Dub would have been better
| [deleted]
| natch wrote:
| Not bad! I mean yes it's bad, but in a so-bad-it's-good kind of
| way. I'd like to see this at least as a model name.
| ajarmst wrote:
| Driven away by nausea at "future-forward investment in
| e-mobility" in the second 'graph.
| vmception wrote:
| Ah right, those 72 hours where I don't give any mental energy to
| things on the internet.
|
| Did we even do April Fools last year?
| jl6 wrote:
| Fast forward a decade or two to when electric is no longer a
| novelty, and this brand will not have aged well.
|
| They will first do a soft revert to "Voltswagen, by Volkswagen"
| and then a full revert.
| outside1234 wrote:
| Does this mean they have shifted their focus to cheating on
| battery capacity?
| Thaxll wrote:
| You get cheated every day by big corps and don't complain do
| you?
| outside1234 wrote:
| I think I'm complaining in my own way right now :)
| cptskippy wrote:
| That doesn't really fit their mo. They'll probably cheat on
| efficiency.
| jonp888 wrote:
| Do you have any genuine insight into VW company culture, or
| are you just extrapolating from one scandal?
| alariccole wrote:
| Just one little old scandal, huh.
| gaoshan wrote:
| From what I have seen VW had a sort of genuine reckoning with
| the whole diesel issue. They have reinvented themselves, shed
| cruft, cut all fuel vehicle development and completely devoted
| themselves to an electric future (vehicles, batteries,
| chargers). They have turned things around wholesale and are now
| producing amazing, relatively affordable electric vehicles
| (their new id.4 SUV will debut in the US for just a little more
| than a tricked out Honda CR-V, once you factor in the federal
| tax credit).
|
| I was excited by Tesla but they remained expensive. Now feel
| like VW will have a chance to bring electric vehicles to a much
| larger group of people... a group I fit into and I can't wait.
| milkytron wrote:
| It's going to take a lot more than going completely EV for me
| to for me to believe they have changed. Of course they went
| to EVs, it's the market. Of course they changed course, they
| were dealing with one of their worst scandals of all time. Of
| course they say they've changed, but how can we really trust
| them anymore?
| gaoshan wrote:
| Given where they are today would they need to do to cause
| you to believe they have changed?
| milkytron wrote:
| If they ran a campaign of donating to environmental
| protection charities, carbon capture, or some other means
| of protecting the planet, with a value equal to that of
| the money of the revenue of their diesel cheating
| vehicles sales, I would say they have changed.
|
| Until then, I still think they are doing what they do for
| the sake of profit.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| They are always doing what they do for the sake of
| profit, it's just that being profitable is harder when
| the planet is fucking on fire.[1][2]
|
| [1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/triple-bottom-
| line.asp
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFgBFYkBZ6E
| nebolo wrote:
| If they did what you suggest, wouldn't you also conclude
| that they are doing it for the sake of (future) profit?
| milkytron wrote:
| I would, but also, if they can rectify the damage they
| have done, then it becomes easier to forgive. I
| understand all companies seek profit and need to. I'm not
| against that, but I am against doing it illegally while
| harming our health and environment.
| Igelau wrote:
| A full blown social media crucifixion and cancellation to
| appease the frothing masses. Then [user] can reap the
| feel good vibes of knowing that even though they missed
| out on the Summer of Love, they were _there_ when VW got
| served.
|
| Good grief, no one believes in contrition anymore. No one
| even believes in the past or the future. They were always
| this way, they're this way now, and they always will be!
| There are no mistakes, only lapses that expose your
| "true" eternal character.
| bufordtwain wrote:
| Despite all the focus on Tesla, companies that makes a
| minimal, good and inexpensive electric car/truck will win big
| as far as I'm concerned. Bonus points for an iconic look.
| gameswithgo wrote:
| Both of those are hard. A big powerful sedan is the best
| case for electric. You get the big power for free, and you
| don't end up that heavier or more expensive than a powerful
| gasoline drivetrain.
|
| Small low power cars and trucks that need to be able to tow
| are the worst case. Giving up the big power doesn't really
| save you any mass or cost, and trucks need a bigger gas
| "tank". But perhaps if the tabless and structural battery
| thing works out, it will get us to both of those cases.
| gaoshan wrote:
| Base model ID.4 SUV for approximately $33,000 (price taking
| US government tax break into account. $39,995-$7,500) is
| getting very close to that. A mid-20's priced EV would be
| amazing but low 30's is starting to get within range of a
| lot of people (and it ends up being nearly $10,000 less
| than nearest competitor Tesla's Model Y... best price I
| could find was $41,290... which sadly no longer qualifies
| for the same tax break. If it did I would probably say the
| Tesla is a better deal).
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| So can I now go into a VW / Audi dealer in North America and
| buy an EV off a lot?
|
| Because every time I look (and I've looked constantly since I
| traded my Jetta TDI for cash in dieselgate) I still can't.
| And they are issuing a new press release every few months
| promising mass production EVs next year.
|
| Back in 2017/2018 when this all went down they actually
| removed all electrified cars from their lineup. Stopped
| making new Audi A3 e-Trons, removed the hybrid Jetta from
| their lineup, and only made about 500 outdated (several year
| old design) eGolfs with a small battery for all of the
| Canadian market with a year and a half waiting list to get in
| one. All the while trumpeting how committed they were to
| electrification and how this was the future. So, I bought a
| GM EV instead.
|
| And, yep, I just went to the local VW dealer's website and
| they have only one car with an electric motor in it, the 2019
| eGolf with a 35kWh battery. That's it and I know exactly how
| it would go down if I were to call the dealer and ask to test
| drive one.
|
| And last I looked the id.3 isn't coming to North America and
| the id.4 is a "maybe next year" kind of deal and the electric
| van they've been promising since about 2015 is now projected
| for 2023 when I recall in previous press releases talk about
| it coming out several years ago.
|
| I'm sorry, they're greenwashing, they're desperate, and
| they're trying to milk as much out of the ICE while they can
| while playing a PR game. People trash GM's EV efforts as
| "compliance cars" but at least I can actually _buy_ a Bolt.
| lmedinas wrote:
| > And last I looked the id.3 isn't coming to North America
| and the id.4 is a "maybe next year" kind of deal and the
| electric van they've been promising since about 2015 is now
| projected for 2023 when I recall in previous press releases
| talk about it coming out several years ago.
|
| This is false, the ID4 is already being sold in US. ID3 is
| in fact not going to US.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| What I've read is: very limited quantities for 2021. At
| least for us here in Canadia. I've seen this enough with
| VW to know that that means a few hundred almost all sent
| to Quebec (which has California-like EV quotas while
| other provinces don't).
| fossuser wrote:
| This is basically my take too - dealers suck and will make
| this an uphill battle _even if_ VW is being honest about
| their EV intentions.
|
| GM has improved now, but when I looked at Volts it was
| similar (dealers knowing nothing, actively hostile to me
| trying to buy a car from them).
|
| I have a Model 3 now and think its features are really not
| available in the competition at _any_ price point, but
| especially sub 40k.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| My Audi dealer has the e-tron.
| odiroot wrote:
| Or just conveniently try to escape their shady origins.
| [deleted]
| jandrese wrote:
| To do that all they have to do is advertise the Euro WLT
| ratings.
| Laarlf wrote:
| NEFZ was unrealistic so we better introduce WLTP, which is
| even more unrealistic. Cool.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| According to Wikipedia ratings under WLTP are much lower
| than under NEDC so your comment doesn't seem to make a ton
| of sense to me.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldwide_Harmonised_Light_Ve
| h...
| Laarlf wrote:
| Remember how i said "unrealistic" and not "lower"? WLTP
| is a rather unrealistic way to determine fuel consumption
| or energy usage on cars. If you look at sites which
| collect fuel usage for cars you often times see fuel
| usages considerably higher than what WLTP defines.
| Especially if it's a PHEV since WLTP expects a full
| battery all the time. Under 2L/100km for a 2 ton SUV is
| not realistic by any stretch of the imagination. The
| numbers on https://www.spritmonitor.de/ for example seem
| to allign more with EPA in my experience.
| gsnedders wrote:
| > Especially if it's a PHEV since WLTP expects a full
| battery all the time. Under 2L/100km for a 2 ton SUV is
| not realistic by any stretch of the imagination. The
| numbers on https://www.spritmonitor.de/ for example seem
| to allign more with EPA in my experience.
|
| There's a question as to what you're trying to model; if
| you're looking at daily usage then relatively short
| distances from fully charged are probably relatively
| representative of a lot of usage (the mean and median
| distances driven on a daily basis are relatively short
| distances!).
|
| https://www.spritmonitor.de/en/overview/0-All_manufacture
| s/0... shows that data is somewhat all over the place v.
| manufacturer data, with some being close and others very
| far away from it.
|
| In reality, I suspect what would be useful is to have a
| further cycle based on a 100km journey largely on a
| motorway, as a long-distance extra-urban cycle?
| Laarlf wrote:
| Very good question: WLTP has just a number for you.
|
| PHEVs may not be a good idea depending on your driving
| style. There should be more discussion about what type of
| engine is the correct one for you before buying. Do you
| drive enough motorway regularly that a diesel would make
| sense? Do you drive shorter distances but you cannot
| charge? Can you charge but you sometimes need more range?
| Maybe even a PHEV diesel would make sense, but that is a
| type of vehicle that was rare and is now even rarer.
|
| Technology was improved a lot over the last decades. If
| you'd record the WLTP tests you could maybe build a
| system which would accurately calculate your fuel usage
| for your type of driving and define if a PHEV or a diesel
| would make any sense for you.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| So your criticism is actually in the context of ICE and
| PHEVs - I assumed you meant pure EVs since that what this
| thread seemed to be about, and for those autonomy numbers
| seem to be strictly lower, hence my confusion why WLTP
| would be more doctored in this regard than NECD.
| Laarlf wrote:
| I have looked at the Model 3 and Hyundai Ioniq and even
| there the energy usage seems to be rather off. 15
| kWh/100km WLTP vs 19 kWh/100km according to spritmonitor
| on the Model 3. 11 vs 14 with the Ioniq.
|
| So yeah, it seems like WLTP is not really accurate for
| EVs either.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Right, but then that number would have been even more off
| with NEDC, since that would give them higher range /
| lower consumption figures.
| Laarlf wrote:
| That seems to be true with Teslas. But at the end of the
| day it does not matter, since the number that you get
| with WLTP is useless.
| mrlinx wrote:
| WLTP?
| DudeInBasement wrote:
| Only Clean Diesel's will get this joke
| Laarlf wrote:
| Well to be honest the cheating was pretty much only done so the
| cars wouldn't be unbearably slow. And every other european car
| manufacturer basically did the same. Once the targets become
| impossible to reach for everyone, you start cheating.
| briffle wrote:
| That isn't true. It was done so they didn't have to install
| NOx cleaning technologies. Modern US based diesels have SCR,
| and EGR systems that help remove NOx and particulates from
| the exhaust (or prevent it from forming). However, they add
| thousands to the cost and complexity.
| Laarlf wrote:
| SCR systems are very expensive in modern VWs as well.
| Especially to repair. With the additional pressure on the
| engine because of restrictive exhausts engines also don't
| last as long. EGR systems on diesels are known to gunk up.
| VW used SCR systems since 2009 if you didn't know.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Yep, you have bureaucrats at the EPA pulling numbers out of
| their asses that become impossible to meet and still have a
| car that people would want or can afford. So they find a way
| to meet the "letter of the law" and pass the tests. Sort of
| like what CPAs do when they prepare your tax return.
| josefx wrote:
| Isn't that Teslas turf? Seems to be the only company that
| includes reserve / zero range remaining in its official EPA
| numbers.
| degoodm wrote:
| Perhaps VW should focus on taking slave labor out of their supply
| chain. One could argue that their decision to work with Nazis was
| compelled b/c VW is a German company. What's their excuse for
| using slaves from a second genocide?
|
| https://www.dw.com/en/volkswagens-uighur-problem/av-55579947
| https://newlinesinstitute.org/uyghurs/the-uyghur-genocide-an...
| https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/.premium-from-jews-to-uig...
| ricardobayes wrote:
| An out of season April 1 joke?
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| New Coke?
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| Volkswagen Wintage to stem the outrage.
| Igelau wrote:
| The first model in the Voltswagen line should be called the
| Eggcorn.
| jeromenerf wrote:
| Pronunciation is no longer "folks wagen" but "faults wagen". The
| classic German ironic sense of humor.
| zwieback wrote:
| "V" can be randomly soft or hard, "Volk" is pronounced like
| "Folk" but "Volt" like "Wolt". THere's no real equivalent sound
| in English, I think.
|
| But, yeah, I've owned several VWs and electrical wiring is
| usually faulty so I'll go with Faultswagen as well.
| beckingz wrote:
| woltswagon?
|
| Is that the correction pronunciation now?
| dpkonofa wrote:
| No. Since this is for the US division, the pronunciation
| would be "Voltswagen".
| zwieback wrote:
| Yeah, that's very close. The German pronunciation would be
| halfway between the English F and W sound.
| dunefox wrote:
| > but "Volt" like "Wolt".
|
| Not really, it would be pronounced like the v in Vincent, not
| Wincent.
| zwieback wrote:
| Yes, that's it
| saberdancer wrote:
| Volt uses "W" sound instead of F, because Volt comes from the
| name of Italian physicist Allessandro Volta. Italian sound
| for V is W or english V.
|
| Are there proper German words that don't read V as F? I've
| been lead to believe German is strict with phonem/letter
| combination.
| bot1 wrote:
| Vagina
| zwieback wrote:
| Excellent question, running through a few options in my
| mind "Version and Variation" come to mind. I'm not sure
| those qualify as a proper German words, probably not.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| Is my understanding correct that loan words are usually
| pronounced according to the donor language? (e.g. "das
| Handy") I seem to remember V is special somehow too, for
| historical reasons.
|
| If I am reading Duden right, Version is directly a French
| loanword:
|
| https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/Version
|
| while Variation is "influenced" by French:
|
| https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/Variation
| lmedinas wrote:
| I always thought the NA pronunciation was "Walks Wegon". xD.
| pinguin7 wrote:
| Not really. Volt is pronounced like a soft w, not like an F.
|
| But they must have known that people won't know that, so you
| still have a valid point.
| makerofspoons wrote:
| This feels like an IHOB/IHOP-style publicity stunt.
| jlelse wrote:
| VW is really pushing EVs. In my neighborhood in Germany there are
| already many, many ID.3 and ID.4. It's a city near Wolfsburg (VW
| HQ), that might influence that as well.
| firmnoodle wrote:
| Why didn't they wait until April 1st to make this announcement?
| Clearly they haven't learned enough about the internet culture
| from Elon.
| itronitron wrote:
| I see what they did there.
| xnx wrote:
| Echoes of when IHOP "changed" its name to IHOB.
| https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2018/07/09/ihop-changes...
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| IHOb, right?
|
| Maybe the P had a coronary heart-attack from all the grilled
| food at Big Brunch?
| kalleboo wrote:
| And Pizza Hut rebranding to Pasta Hut in the UK
| https://www.marketingweek.com/pizza-hut-rebrands-to-pasta-hu...
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| It's gluten-free this year.
| ralmidani wrote:
| Got a Subaru Outback 10 days ago. After I saw this, I told my
| wife that will probably be the last vehicle we buy that is not
| _at least_ a plug-in hybrid.
|
| We had also test-driven a Toyota Avalon Hybrid, but the Subaru
| was a much better value and had more vertical trunk space, AWD,
| and every safety/convenience feature we could imagine getting
| (and some we weren't even aware of) without buying a $70k+
| Lexus/BMW/Mercedes.
|
| I really wish Subaru made plug-in hybrids, hopefully they will by
| the time our minivan is 8-9 years old.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I wish Subaru didn't go all-in on touch for critical controls
| like climate and radio. It may be the #1 reason I don't look to
| them for my next vehicle.
| ralmidani wrote:
| I used to say I would never buy a phone without a physical
| keyboard. My last phone with a physical keyboard was the
| original Moto Droid, which I lost in 2012.
| matsemann wrote:
| A touch interface in a car is nice for reaching all kinds
| of weird settings and hopefully make good ux for maps and
| stuff. But for direct control it sucks. The car I'm driving
| now I have no way to adjust the AC without multiple screen
| touches (switch to AC screen, wait, click the small -
| button multiple times to decrease temperature, click +
| button multiple times to increase fan speed).
|
| I'm all for nice touch screens, just keep some knobs as
| well.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Understood, but I think the ability to adjust things
| tactile is more important in a driving scenario. Also, The
| UI lag on some of these infotainment systems feels like a
| 2010 iphone running iOS 13.
|
| If only one could update the processor in their
| infotainment the way one does a phone, instead of having to
| buy a new car.
| ralmidani wrote:
| You raise a valid concern. At least in the Outback, a lot
| of things can be done with voice commands. It's not
| lightning-fast, but when driving, that's safer than both
| a touch-screen _and_ physical buttons /switches.
| perardi wrote:
| _I really wish Subaru made plug-in hybrids_
|
| I assume the lack of hybrids and pure electrics is because
| Subaru is tiny, as far as auto manufacturers go.
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/249375/us-market-share-o...
|
| It's a lot of R&D to make a hybrid, and the non-Prius sales
| have been...less than stellar. Now, Subaru has an environmental
| outdoorsy image, so they could probably market better than
| most, but it's probably awfully expensive for them. And in the
| short term, they are selling everything they can make, and they
| might not want to mess with the production lines that much.
| rige wrote:
| Subaru already has a Crosstrek plug-in hybrid, but it's not
| available very widely. I would have been interested if I'd
| known they existed before buying my current car, but they're
| only available in certain states with seemingly low stock.
| dalbasal wrote:
| If this isn't a joke, it actually does make sense. Easier to
| pronounce in english. Means electric car... the growth category.
| Why not?
|
| "Volkswagen" is big enough that the name just means the
| company/product. But, it isn't really good brand name for an
| anglo market. You either can't pronounce it, or the literal
| connotation makes you a little uncomfortable.
| jlelse wrote:
| I guess that's because they didn't change the name in Germany
| as well. "Volkswagen" is really easy to pronounce in German,
| but "Voltswagen" is just weird.
| chrisshroba wrote:
| What is the literal connotation?
| pkulak wrote:
| People's Car
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen#1932%E2%80%931938:_.
| ..
| Germanika wrote:
| > or the literal connotation makes you a little uncomfortable.
|
| How so? "The people's car" seems rather innocuous to me. My
| only guess would be that it could make some American anti-
| socialists uncomfortable?
| pySSK wrote:
| I guess Tesla and Faraday were already taken. This is
| ridiculous. I hope this is a case of an April fools joke
| delivered according to German punctuality.
| dalbasal wrote:
| Personally I'm a fan of fluidity. I have no problem with
| voltswagen as an aka. Why not. Brand names change, evolve.
|
| If it is a deadpan joke, I kind of like it too. Overall, I
| can see no reason for outrage of any kind.
| dwaltrip wrote:
| It's funny to me how some people find this "ridiculous".
| Vrondi wrote:
| I mean, the "launched by Hitler" part doesn't seem to bother
| people, so why would the name?
| sremani wrote:
| VoltsWagen will make sense if its similar to Ionic (Hyundi
| branding their EV, PHEV lineup). Anything else is Carnival
| barking.
| hinkley wrote:
| Good opportunity for Hyundai to announce Alanis Morissette as
| the spokesperson for Ionic tomorrow...
| cwwc wrote:
| April fools!
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| Wow. There are actually people at the company that believe this
| is not a silly name.
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| There is a new big boss(tm) somewhere laughing that their
| sarcasm was taken seriously.
|
| Poe's Law: Corporate Intranet Edition
| arendtio wrote:
| Sounds like the US brand is so burned, that they decided to try
| something bold.
| heshiebee wrote:
| That's nice. The original name represented the then German
| government and Nazi Party Leader Adolf Hitler to create a car for
| the perfect Nazi family as presented in his vision.
| erikrothoff wrote:
| The price to acquire voltswagen.com just shot through the roof.
| jankassens wrote:
| Seems odd they didn't acquire voltswagen.de and voltswagen.com
| though a subsidiary company.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| This is the dumbest shit I've read all week. I had to read it
| twice and slap myself to believe it.
| ibejoeb wrote:
| PR the week of April 1 isn't adding to the credibility either.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| perardi wrote:
| As a clarification: they are only using this for EVs.
|
| https://www.thedrive.com/news/39984/vw-says-its-officially-d...
|
| Which is still...a choice.
| dharmab wrote:
| The Voltswagen text badge will be on EVs only, but the gas cars
| will still be sold through the Voltswagen US branding. The gas
| cars will keep the classic VW logo.
| Corrado wrote:
| Correct. The main VW EN website (www.vw.com) looks like it's
| changed over completely to using the new name.
| efitz wrote:
| This is a dumb name.
|
| Two theories:
|
| 1. Some young VP convinced the company to do it; that person will
| only last a couple years before they move on. The company will
| change its name back shortly.
|
| 2. It's an April fools joke that accidentally got published too
| early.
| manigandham wrote:
| Confirmed fake: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/30/volkswagens-name-
| change-of-u...
|
| _" Media outlets ... reported it as news after it was confirmed
| by unnamed sources within the company, who apparently lied to
| several reporters."_
| dawnerd wrote:
| But... they literally put it as a press release on their site
| with a date of today. Then again, VW knows a thing or two about
| faking reports
| ldbooth wrote:
| If it's not a joke, it's a corporate branding error. If it is a
| joke, it's great PR.
| hbbio wrote:
| Mann sagt:
|
| Der Fahrer eines Voltswagen
|
| aber nicht:
|
| Der Fuhrer von Volkswagen
| noisy_boy wrote:
| Chevy Volt marketing guys must be pouncing on ideas to make fun
| of this.
| antattack wrote:
| GM will sue, for sure.
| dgellow wrote:
| That's an april fool joke, right?
| [deleted]
| noxer wrote:
| Le me go full zoomer and just call this cringe. Also its a PR
| gimmick.
| JoshTko wrote:
| Aside from the odd naming change, the main purpose of a move like
| this is to signal to employees the extent that the organization
| is making a shift. It may especially be necessary for such a long
| standing organization such as VW.
| silentsea90 wrote:
| +1 The cynics here are a bit blind to how deep rooted the
| intent to change must be, down to changing the name of the
| company. Win or lose, this is strictly better for humanity than
| the gas fueled past
| jcims wrote:
| The funny thing is that this is how a lot of people pronounce it
| anyway.
| adolph wrote:
| Nothing for "Voltswagen" in the United States Patent and
| Trademark Office Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS) yet.
|
| https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=login&p_lang=engli...
|
| Don't see anything in Germany either:
|
| https://register.dpma.de/DPMAregister/marke/basis.kopf.form
| mminer237 wrote:
| Not that surprising. If they were planning on doing a surprise
| name change at the end of April, registering the trademark a
| month early would have spoiled the surprise. Plus it wouldn't
| give any advantage. Voltswagen would be protected by their
| Volkswagen trademark, and trademarks don't even offer
| protection until you submit proof of you already using them in
| commerce. And you don't have to register trademarks to have
| common law protections in the US, and they aren't planning to
| use it in Germany.
| otterley wrote:
| This is the best evidence yet that this is indeed an April
| Fool's prank.
| rdsubhas wrote:
| If it was, it's gotta be one of the good ones. Bordering on
| truth _(still people are trying to work out whether it 's
| real or prank)_, good media coverage, and even if called out
| - will only end up having a positive association with their
| electrification efforts.
| josalhor wrote:
| Taking a look at the website the ID.4 is branded as
| "Voltswagen ID.4". Looks pretty serious to me.
|
| https://www.vw.com/en/models/id-4.html
| adolph wrote:
| I'm not certain but if they were serious there would be legal
| filings of some sort. I'm not an expert in trademarks and I
| understand that sometimes trademarks can be filed but held in
| confidence until a company is ready--Apple does this if I
| recall correctly.
|
| Whois is also less than certain. Domain redirects to a
| generic parking site.
|
| https://www.whois.com/whois/voltswagen.com
| otterley wrote:
| (IAAL but this is not legal advice, and I could be
| incorrect in certain aspects. Consult a licensed attorney
| for legal advice.)
|
| With respect to the USPTO, I believe only patent
| applications can be filed confidentially. FCC applications
| can also be filed confidentially. But I believe trademark
| applications are published immediately upon filing, because
| the essence of a trademark is use in commerce. You don't
| need to file a trademark application with the USPTO to be
| protected by trademark law, but it is an important element
| of notice, which is relevant when determining certain
| aspects of infringement claims.
| foolinaround wrote:
| just a thought, maybe a premature release, actually planned for
| April fools day?
| nicholassmith wrote:
| This is what happens in a meeting when someone says "there are no
| bad ideas". This is the sort of three beer spitballing that
| normally you come up with as a gag and yet they're committing to
| it, and whilst it's US only the likelihood is they'll do some
| aggressive product placement and get some global recognition
| around it.
| josho wrote:
| I felt this way when Apple removed 'Computer' from their name.
| Years later we see that it wasn't just a name change but
| alignment to their company strategy.
|
| I'm cautiously optimistic that Volkswagen is signaling a
| similar change in their mission and leadership's intent to
| change.
| thekyle wrote:
| What's wrong with the name Voltswagen? I like it.
| lmedinas wrote:
| Most likely this is even an April fools and a good one (idea)
| because it hit all the big media ;)
| gnulinux wrote:
| > This is what happens in a meeting when someone says "there
| are no bad ideas".
|
| No, I think this is what happens as the date approaches April
| 1st.
| ThePhysicist wrote:
| Reminds me of the "Siemens Healthineers" madness. German
| companies are really good ruining perfectly fine brands (look
| e.g. at the new BMW logo), so I wouldn't be suprised if this was
| real. If they really want to change the name why not just use
| "Volta", which at least is short.
| s_dev wrote:
| >really want to change the name why not just use "Volta"
|
| Because that would be undoing the entire VW brand they've been
| building for decades at the cost of billions.
|
| Voltswagen is a natural increment to Volkswagen while still
| maintaining that legacy branding.
| MauranKilom wrote:
| Volta is already taken.
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| I wonder how much internal resistance there was to this shocking
| name change.
| interestica wrote:
| > I wonder how much internal resistance there was to this
| shocking name change.
|
| "Ohm-y!" And who was charged with leading this change?
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| The current marketing team has a great capacity for inductive
| thinking.
| webmaven wrote:
| Don't sell them short.
| flaque wrote:
| Is this an early april fools joke?
| LeonM wrote:
| 403 ERROR The request could not be satisfied.
| The Amazon CloudFront distribution is configured to block access
| from your country. We can't connect to the server for this app or
| website at this time. There might be too much traffic or a
| configuration error. Try again later, or contact the app or
| website owner. If you provide content to customers through
| CloudFront, you can find steps to troubleshoot and help prevent
| this error by reviewing the CloudFront documentation.
|
| So, did they take it down, or is VW really blocking European
| countries?
|
| EDIT: it's back up now. Site was probably just hugged to death.
| jedberg wrote:
| > site was probably just hugged to death.
|
| That's highly unlikely, given that it is on CloudFront. Also
| that error is not a "too much traffic" error, it's a specific
| config change.
|
| More likely is that someone accidentally pushed a bad config
| blocking your country for a little bit.
| iSnow wrote:
| I can see it from Europe.
| LeonM wrote:
| It's back up now. Site was probably just hugged to death
| flohofwoe wrote:
| Seems to work fine from Germany, but here's the archive.org
| link:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210330121521/https://media.vw....
| mey wrote:
| Can confirm it is still up and working for me. I am located in
| the continental US with an IP that nominally appears to be US
| based. Maybe they have configured CloudFront in an
| "interesting" way.
| moklick wrote:
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/30/22357166/volkswagen-name-...
| tumblewit wrote:
| google apparently has trouble when you search for 'voltswagen'
| boatsie wrote:
| They should have gotten rid of the "wagen" part too since this is
| the US. VoltSUV might work better.
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| "Farfrompuken" now has be known as "fartfrompuken" due to
| concerns over weight-shaming.
| simoneau wrote:
| "expresso"
| grayprog wrote:
| Voltswagen - Resistance is futile
| rhplus wrote:
| Someone has been playing the long game of domain speculation:
| https://who.is/whois/voltswagen.com Registered On:
| 2003-04-18 Expires On: 2021-04-18
| oblio wrote:
| This is funny, yet ridiculous :-))
|
| Their brand is so tainted in the US that they're renaming it.
|
| I imagine it's going to be the only place they'll do it.
| usrusr wrote:
| How much can you really taint a brand that just went
| successfully through 75 years of being the odd Nazi propaganda
| set piece that somehow nobody bothered to stop?
|
| My bet is that it's an April's Fool with the twist that it's
| technically true. The name of the subsidiary that handles
| importing and the local factories just doesn't matter that
| much. They could rename that org to Ford Prefect and still go
| on selling cars under Volkswagen brand. It's a stunt to remind
| the public that they have BEV now and releasing slightly ahead
| of the date increases press coverage.
| bluedevil2k wrote:
| Their brand isn't tainted in the US at all. You'll see the
| Atlas everywhere - 160,000 sold in the last 2 years. That's
| about half of Ford Explorer sales and about the same as Chevy
| Tahoe.
| foolfoolz wrote:
| if you want a 3 row suv, the atlas is like 8-10k cheaper for
| the same amount of car than the others. and it doesn't look
| bad. they needed something bigger than the toureg and it
| works
| fokinsean wrote:
| Can confirm, I bought a Tiguan 1 year ago, love it.
| timme wrote:
| It's not tainted in Europe either. Sales are healthy and you
| see cars from the full range (Skoda, Seat, VW, Audi) aplenty.
| The overlap between car buyers and outrage bubble subscribers
| might be limited.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| So tainted they sold more cars in 2019 than they did pre-
| scandal.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Their brand is so tainted in the US that they 're renaming
| it._
|
| I don't think most Americans know about or remember the
| emissions scandal.
|
| That said, there's plenty of precedent for a product being so
| tainted that it got renamed.
|
| Comcast becoming Xfinity comes to mind.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Very few Americans would even consider a diesel passenger
| car. They just are not popular here ouside of a tiny niche.
| That's the irony of the emissions scandal -- there aren't
| enough passenger diesel cars on the road in the USA that it
| made any real difference anyway.
|
| Americans don't care about diesel cars, and they for the most
| part didn't care about the emissions scandal.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Hard to believe that most Americans care much about the
| Dieselgate. If they did, how do you explain the massive amount
| of SUVs and pickups carrying a single lonely driver that you
| can see everyday on America's streets and highways? Other than
| a highly educated and modernized young urban minority, I would
| bet that most Americans are not that worried about emissions.
| kube-system wrote:
| I feel like most here in the US saw it as an example of lying
| and cheating, rather than an example of emissions.
| [deleted]
| arethuza wrote:
| Seems to be US only:
|
| https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/vw-being-rebrand...
| polote wrote:
| > Their brand is so tainted in the US that they're renaming it.
|
| If they changed the name because of how people perceive them,
| they would have pick a name which is different than the current
| name, not the same name changing only one letter :)
|
| They do it, because they want to get the valuation of a
| electric car company
| toast0 wrote:
| I had a VW diesel. It was mostly a good car and got great
| mileage and then they paid me a great price to take it back.
| Probably my best car experience.
|
| I'd consider a VW again, but I'm also kind of not interested in
| the models they have anytime soon; I replaced their wagon with
| a minivan and I'm not going back; the eBus is cute, but doesn't
| seem as useful. VW hasn't sold a pickup in a long time, and I
| don't expect to replace the low cost off-lease plugin hybrid
| with carpool stickers (VW had models with stickers, but nothing
| off-lease when I was shopping)
| rhino369 wrote:
| Is their brand really that tainted in the USA.
| cocoa19 wrote:
| Americans swear by Asian brand names for small to medium size
| cars (Toyota, Honda and to a lesser extent Kia, Hyundai,
| Subaru).
|
| German cars have a bad rap in the US for being unreliable and
| expensive to fix.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| > German cars have a bad rap in the US for being unreliable
| and expensive to fix.
|
| Which is totally accurate...
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| How isn't their brand tarnished around the world? Besides the
| emissions scandal, their vehicles are just expensive and
| difficult to maintain.
|
| I've got a diesel VW Jetta. It has been nothing but a money
| pit. I'm in the US for reference.
| joeberon wrote:
| Here in the UKs, VWs are considered reliable and among the
| easiest to find parts for
| judex wrote:
| Agreed, also compare the failure statistics with e.g. Ford
| and you will see VW outperforms for example Ford in
| reliability. Not sure about other cars.
| 2rsf wrote:
| Same in Sweden and many other places
| jcims wrote:
| Going to second and extend TheAdamAndChe's assessment in
| the US to include the Audi division as well. It seems
| electrical/electronics are the main quality area.
|
| I had an S5 with dash lighting issues, console control
| issues, premature clutch failure (to be fair the previous
| owner could have roasted it), a nearly new SQ5 with a
| failed cabin blower fan and more console issues. My sister-
| in-law had a Jetta with aggregate months in the shop for
| variety of engine management and other electronics issues.
| My nephew had a CC that broke a seal and the resulting oil
| leak wasn't detected by the oil pressure sensor and he
| seized the engine (also had a fuel pump failure). These are
| the only VWs in the extended family.
|
| Now I have an F150 with _way_ too many electronics in it
| for a pickup truck...fingers crossed.
| input_sh wrote:
| A running joke in the Balkans is that you can find parts
| for older Golfs in the nearest ditch.
| Vrondi wrote:
| In the USA, this is Chevrolet/GMC. VW parts you may have
| to hunt for/pay more for.
| ajarmst wrote:
| I'm not sure it remains possible to 'tarnish' a brand when
| the general public have the attention span of a weasel on
| crack.
| moooo99 wrote:
| Here in Germany VW is also considered pretty reliable and
| obviously has a huge network of service stations. But I'm
| pretty sure that's a pretty biased perspective.
| lokedhs wrote:
| Here in Singapore VW has as good reputation as it's always
| had.
|
| I think the reputation problem is limited to the US.
| captainmuon wrote:
| A friend in Germany said he trusts VW even more after the
| scandal, because it showed their engineering cleverness. And
| also because they cared for their customers and gave them
| even better performance than the government allowed.
|
| In general, VW has a good, somewhat inflated reputation in
| Germany + parts of EU. In my experience, the cars _are_ quite
| solid and reliable, albeit considered a bit boring. But you
| can also buy a Seat or Skoda which is basically the same car
| with a different exterior but cheaper...
|
| Maybe the issue is that they are different cars in the US. VW
| didn't have a Jetta in Germany for years. I owned a Golf MK3
| convertible in the US, and I felt it was of lesser quality
| than similar VWs for the European market.
| yunohn wrote:
| >> better performance than the government allowed
|
| My understanding was that this performance came at the
| expense of more pollution, which is what the gov is
| regulating?
| Vrondi wrote:
| Right, and many customers would prefer the performance,
| thank you very much.
| kube-system wrote:
| Yeah, but most of us -- even enthusiasts -- aren't
| cutting off their cats to do so.
| toast0 wrote:
| Different pollution, not necessarily more. Tuning the
| engine for more fuel efficiency generates more nitrogen
| oxides (above the legal limit in this case) and less
| carbon dioxide.
| yunohn wrote:
| That's a fair nitpick, but my reply to the parent comment
| still stands - that the regulation was about pollution,
| and not engine performance.
| YinglingLight wrote:
| Your flaw is the assumption that all, or even most,
| customers prefer the non-tangible idea of "reducing
| pollution" to the tangible experience of greater
| performance.
| yunohn wrote:
| >> non-tangible idea of "reducing pollution"
|
| That's exactly the problem with the public's
| understanding of pollution [1]. If they can't see people
| dying in front of their eyes, they won't believe it...
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/09/f
| ossil-f...
| globular-toast wrote:
| Name a German brand that isn't expensive and difficult to
| maintain. German car manufacturers have the strongest
| marketing departments in the world and people will swear
| blind that their vehicle is reliable and costs nothing to
| maintain. It's incredibly difficult to get car owners to be
| honest about how much it really costs them and how reliable
| their vehicle really is.
|
| Another problem is people don't know any better. It's not
| like the average person has owned cars from all the major
| brands for enough time for things to go wrong with them. Most
| people own only a few cars over their entire life. I think
| this is particularly true with brands like VW. People just
| don't know any better and think it's normal for a car to be a
| money pit.
|
| Cars are a strange thing. Very quickly after getting a car it
| becomes an essential part of life. When the bill comes
| through to repair whatever has gone wrong, there's no choice
| but to pay it. You can't just choose to not pay because it's
| too expensive. People take their car to the garage where it's
| essentially held captive until they pay the ransom.
|
| I own a VW myself but I'll never own one (or any other German
| car) ever again. I will be going back to Japanese cars next
| time. Honda or Toyota.
| leetcrew wrote:
| you also have to ask "reliable compared to what?". my first
| car was a golf tdi. the only maintenance cost was the
| annual service. it never got close to 100k miles though
| because vw had to buy it back from me in the dieselgate
| settlement. statistically, I'm sure a toyota corolla is a
| much more reliable car, and I would have replaced it with
| one if that's all I cared about. but I've driven a few of
| those, and golfs are much more pleasant to spend time in,
| both behind the wheel and in the passenger seat.
|
| there's an inherent tradeoff between performance,
| reliability, comfort, and price. once people find their
| preferred set of tradeoffs, they inevitably start making
| comments on the internet about how they don't understand
| why everyone doesn't buy their favorite brand.
| nethunters wrote:
| Which Corolla did you drive as the new ones are pretty
| performant? I've got the 2 litre hybrid with 200nm torque
| from each engine and a combined bhp of 186 (could be
| ~305bhp and 400nm of torque if remapped as it has a 2
| litre 200bhp petrol engine with 200nm of torque and a
| 105bhp electric engine with 195nm of torque but you'll
| lose linear acceleration and the fuel efficiency that
| Toyota equipped it with) with good mpg, MacPherson
| suspension at the front, and multi linked individual
| suspension at the back, lower centre of gravity and
| 52.5:47.5 weight distribution for better cornering (and
| cornering assist). All in all a nice car that is pretty
| performant and has good features.
| leetcrew wrote:
| last time I drove a corolla was several years ago,
| probably a 2017 model. it wasn't an awful car, but to me,
| it felt like a step down in driving dynamics over the tdi
| I was forced to get rid of. I believe that model made
| about the same peak power as my old tdi, but obviously at
| a much higher rpm. the steering felt vague, etc. I was
| also cross-shopping a gti (whose price was very depressed
| at the time), so it wasn't entirely a fair comparison.
| nethunters wrote:
| 2019 was the release of their first performance model.
| With the hybrid option there's no turbo lag (that gti's
| are notorious for) and the steering is very sharp in
| sports mode (can also create custom profiles to adapt
| steering, suspension and dampners to your own likings).
| The hybrid model is better compared against the gte which
| has very similar specs to the gti.
|
| The gte when I tested seemed heavy and the brakes were
| spongy compared to the gti (regenerative brakes but the
| corollas aren't spongy like that) and it was evident when
| the electric motor switched off.
| leetcrew wrote:
| I didn't realize they now had a performance model, thanks
| for sharing. tbh I'm probably going rwd on my next car
| (very interested in the new brz/86), but I'll keep it in
| mind.
| krisdol wrote:
| > Another problem is people don't know any better. It's not
| like the average person has owned cars from all the major
| brands for enough time for things to go wrong with them.
| Most people own only a few cars over their entire life. I
| think this is particularly true with brands like VW. People
| just don't know any better and think it's normal for a car
| to be a money pit.
|
| This is odd coming from a person who is making a sweeping
| judgment based on owning one car. My family and I have
| owned mk4, mk5, and mk6 VWs. Never had to bring any of them
| in for anything other than standard maintenance. I have a
| newish BMW now and my folks have a lightly used Mercedes.
| So far everyone's happy there too.
|
| VWs also have a pretty corporate, standard chassis of parts
| that's reused across almost all of VW's and much of Audi's
| cars. There should always be cheap parts available from
| third parties given the number of models interchanging the
| same parts under the hood. BMWs (and probably Mercedes too)
| definitely are more expensive to repair and maintain. IMO
| they tend to over-engineer, and that comes with both good
| and bad consequences.
| TheCapn wrote:
| I think a lot of people's opinions on cars continue to be
| based on anecdotal experiences.
|
| I owned 2 VWs in my life, my first, a 1999 Golf was an
| amazing car. It felt solid and was super reliable right up
| until I T-boned someone who made an illegal turn and it got
| written off. I drove an Acura Integra for years after that
| and had just tonnes of quality issues where it was needing
| constant maintenance. As soon as I was able to, I bought
| another VW, a 2003 GTI which I drove with only 1 major
| repair (AC Compressor) in the 200,000kms I put to it (sold
| it to a friend at 330,000kms, it still hasn't needed
| repairs).
|
| I went to a Mazda most recently, but I can't say anything
| about its reliability since I just bought it in December
| and only have 5,000kms on it so far.
|
| But my experience, and those among my friends (I was part
| of a local VW enthusiast club) is that the cars are fine.
| But the kicker is you need to stay on top of your
| maintenance. If you skimp on the regular work, you end up
| paying for it in the end. I had to do various work on the
| car merely due to its age, but ultimately I loved the VW
| GTI. It was solid and reliable for me.
| steverb wrote:
| "But my experience, and those among my friends (I was
| part of a local VW enthusiast club) is that the cars are
| fine. But the kicker is you need to stay on top of your
| maintenance. If you skimp on the regular work, you end up
| paying for it in the end. "
|
| This is the absolute truth about most modern cars. The
| main thing I look for now in a used car is parts
| availability and how well the car has been maintained.
| vagrantJin wrote:
| In south Africa, VW is still held in high regard. Especially
| the Golf GTI. However, most dudes in a relationship have
| nightmares about it.
| tootie wrote:
| It's also going to look really silly in 20 years when every
| auto manufacturer is doing electric vehicles. It'll be like
| Ford boasting that they run on unleaded gasoline.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| Wouldn't that be the same for Tesla?
| tomphoolery wrote:
| this is the "IHOB" of cars
| kbos87 wrote:
| I previously owned a VW, but swore on my life that I'd never buy
| another one after the emissions cheating scandal. There are
| plenty of reasons why a VW likely wont be my next choice, but I'm
| softening my stance a bit.
|
| What they did was absolutely reprehensible, but I later learned
| that the more accurate story is that they bore the brunt of media
| attention for something that nearly every auto manufacturer was
| later found to be doing -
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterlyon/2018/07/09/nissan-adm...
|
| That doesn't make it any less wrong, but it does put them back on
| par with just about every other auto manufacturer in my mind. And
| it does seem (as others have cited) like there was some genuine
| change that followed.
| shrimpx wrote:
| I bought two VWs after the cheating scandal. My impression is
| that because of the cheating scandal, the carefulness and
| quality per dollar is very high. I did a bunch of research when
| purchasing, and quantitatively, features and comfort per dollar
| have also been higher with VW than other brands. It's been a
| "buy the dip" situation and I don't care about brand loyalty.
| In fact, the years of scrutiny VW has faced due to the cheating
| scandal increases my confidence in the brand relative to
| others. And, like you said, the other guys were cheating, too.
| Just not being as scrutinized.
| Fern_Blossom wrote:
| >What they did was absolutely reprehensible,
|
| Okay, this is a bit much. I know you came to realize all the
| car companies were doing it, so relatively speaking, it evens
| out when it comes to image. But this concept of hating a
| company over false marketing, it's a "and cows moo" moment. All
| big companies lie about their performances and benefits. Every.
| Single. One. Who would have guessed people would lie to make
| money... what a revelation. It's extremely naive to feel hurt
| by a company trying to gain the edge over another by lying.
| That's some weird identity tying consumerism right there.
|
| It was already an old joke when George Carlin did his stand up
| bit on marketing terms bs and that was some 20 years ago. It's
| time to grow up. No company is immune from this attitude
| either. Tech is fraught with it too. WeWork, Theranos are the
| nice examples. But remember, before it became publicly okay to
| rag on them, there were folks pointing out the bullshit. Folks
| who weren't believed because they were so negative about
| "wanting to change the world". Any time a company tries to play
| the, "We're making the world a better place" card, whether
| environmental, social, whatever, it's safe to assume bullshit
| is afoot. Plays out all the time.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| We all know it happens all the time and that bullshit is
| everywhere and unsurprising, but are you adding that it's
| also okay?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| How about we stop accepting this status quo? People will lie
| to make money, but we don't have to make it a socially
| acceptable practice.
|
| In fact, to make money, people just do whatever makes money.
| If they lie to make money, it means lying is making them
| money. If we could raise the costs of lying, for example by
| being much more eager to punish deceptive advertising with
| high fines, people would lie less.
| Fern_Blossom wrote:
| Humans have been lying for personal gain for only a short
| amount of time. I guess yea, we should all just decide that
| lying is bad. That's a novel idea.
| tehjoker wrote:
| The system of private profit is what gave them the
| motivation to lie. It is not a natural law.
| Transportation could be nationalized. What we regard as
| corruption in the public sphere is literally the stated
| goal of the private sphere.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Humans have been lying for as long as they've been human,
| but they've also shunned this behavior for just as long.
| It's destructive to both individuals and communities.
| robomartin wrote:
| We've owned three VW's including a diesel. I am not going to
| condemn an entire group of people (they employ over 600K
| people) for the acts of a few. Particularly when authorities
| have dealt with the situation.
|
| This is no different from forming opinions about a population,
| social, ethnic or religious group based on the actions of a
| very small percentage of people belonging to said group. I
| think it's wrong in all cases.
|
| Even if 100 people were involved (I think it was a LOT less
| than that), this would represent 0.02% of the "population" of
| VW. How is it, in any way, fair, to condemn them all for the
| sins of a group that has already met their deserved legal
| consequences? Let's say the entire world stops buying VW
| because of this and over 600K people lose their jobs. How is
| that a morally and ethically supportable position?
|
| Of course, everyone is free to reach their own conclusions. I
| would rather buy an electric vehicle from any company other
| than Tesla and, VW will certainly be a candidate. No, I don't
| hate Tesla, I want to support electrification of our
| transportation system. That can only happen if other companies
| earn our business. As more competition surfaces we'll have
| better and better options. Tesla might still win my business. I
| just want to see what the top ten auto manufacturers have to
| offer first.
| snemvalts wrote:
| Are you aware of the fact that most companies cheated with
| emissions? Volkswagen was just a scapegoat
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_emissions_scandal#/medi...
| jtreminio wrote:
| > I later learned that the more accurate story is that they
| bore the brunt of media attention for something that nearly
| every auto manufacturer was later found to be doing
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| News reporters are like parrots. They don't really know
| anything but mimic whatever they hear.
| knz_ wrote:
| Even worse is now that every diesel car and truck comes with
| extremely unreliable and expensive to keep operational DPFs
| in place of the defeat devices.
|
| Now people who live in areas that do emissions testing are
| forced to use less efficient vehicles, and people who don't
| are just removing the DPFs (rather than paying thousands of
| dollars every few months in repairs) and putting out more
| emissions than defeat device era vehicles.
|
| A lot of ignorance surrounds this subject, and blind
| environmentalism has directly lead to a worse outcome than
| the previous status quo.
| [deleted]
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| They were the first discovered by ICCT, and the media latched
| onto that. They should've waited to release their findings
| because their subsequent test results went widely unnoticed.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| > What they did was absolutely reprehensible, but I later
| learned that the more accurate story is that they bore the
| brunt of media attention for something that nearly every auto
| manufacturer was later found to be doing -
|
| > That doesn't make it any less wrong, but it does put them
| back on par with just about every other auto manufacturer in
| my mind. And it does seem (as others have cited) like there
| was some genuine change that followed.
|
| Thanks for bringing that to our attention, but I think
| there's a slight chance they might be aware already.
| josefresco wrote:
| > but it does put them back on par with just about every other
| auto manufacturer in my mind
|
| I'm not buying this.
|
| Edit: I stand (mostly) corrected:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_emissions_scandal
| tejohnso wrote:
| > they bore the brunt of media attention for something that
| nearly every auto manufacturer was later found to be doing
|
| I find the same happens with performance enhancing drugs in
| sports. Everyone in the game knows that everyone is doing it.
| But someone gets caught, and people go full offense on them as
| though they're pure evil.
|
| Ben Johnson and later Lance Armstrong come to mind.
| soperj wrote:
| Lance Armstrong deserved it though.
| fastball wrote:
| Why? Everyone else was doping.
| jdeibele wrote:
| Because Lance Armstrong threatened to ruin (and came
| close in a couple of cases) the lives of anyone who
| looked like they might expose him.
|
| The doping is one thing. The effort to cover it up was
| something else again.
| sangnoir wrote:
| But wasn't the cycling top 10 basically decimated by the PED
| scandal? I think only 1 (or a couple of) cyclist(s) remained
| unscathed in the top 10 rankings. I'm going on memory, but
| they really gave the appearance of cleaning house, to an
| outsider like me. Had regulators gone after 4 or 5
| manufacturers, including home-team companies, it would have
| been much better, and would appear less like Americans piling
| onto out a German manufacturing bellwether.
| nrki wrote:
| I also bought a VW Golf GTD and ended up having to sell it
| right as the scandal was heating up.
|
| Apart from the ~$10k I lost and the betrayal by VW executives,
| I was also upset that the car I bought to try and be a little
| bit eco-friendly was decidedly not.
|
| I received a paltry payout from the class-action lawsuit, which
| helped. However I will never buy a VW-group car again. It has
| also forever jaded me about the lack of punishments for
| corporate malfeasance.
| neuronic wrote:
| Are you also going to move your money from all major banks?
| Same pieces of thieving shits, same lack of accountability
| and punishments.
|
| USA only went after VW to put political pressure on Germany
| for their export surplus. It's literally the only reason why
| suddenly one of the hundreds of large corporations in the
| West needs to be held accountable for something while dozens
| of others - European and American - continue rampaging
| around.
| nrki wrote:
| Well, this was in Australia. The settlement payouts were
| orders of magnitude larger in the USA!
|
| I keep no money in major banks, not just because they are
| largely morally bankrupt though. :)
| anticristi wrote:
| I'm confused. My understanding is that all cars showed
| discrepancies between in-lab and on-road tests, due to
| overoptimizing the ECU for lab conditions.
|
| However, AFAIU, only VW had an "if in_lab: reduce_polution()"
| line in their ECU. It could be that the "final result" was the
| same, but the intentionality behind it was waaay stronger for
| VW.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Well, all of the companies using Bosch EDC 16 & 17 control
| systems were doing effectively the same thing. My
| understanding is that Bosch includes facilities for detecting
| dyno use "for testing purposes" and that manufactures were
| using these flags in production cars. VW was apparently a lot
| more brazen and aggressive in triggering it. While Mercedes
| and FCA were a big more judicious about it.
|
| I don't think BMW's case has made it through the court system
| yet though.
| takinola wrote:
| When you are in an environment where all your other competitors
| are cheating, I used to think you had only two options - join
| in or quit. Now, it occurs to me that there is a third - blow
| the whistle. If VW, or any other manufacturer, had made a quick
| call to the authorities and told them exactly what to look for,
| they would have dealt a huge blow to their competitors and
| maybe even done a victory lap along the way.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| ... and make themselves the enemy of the entire industry.
|
| That's the reason almost nobody ever blows the whistle: the
| prisoner's dilemma variant here is the iterated one, and
| there are more than two players. If you defect, you get
| blacklisted. It doesn't matter if you're an individual abused
| by an employer, or a big company that, for a brief moment,
| grew some conscience. The only time when blowing a whistle
| makes sense, from a self-preservation standpoint, is when you
| have a backup plan for what to do when the whistle gets
| ignored, but everyone knows who blew it.
|
| The corollary to that is, to allow for whistleblowing to be
| an option, the defector needs to be protected, and this
| _must_ be public knowledge. If people have any perception of
| personal risk here, most will stay silent.
| DSingularity wrote:
| You are letting them off too easy. It's probably a game of
| stag hunting.
|
| I don't think this blacklisting applies either. You are
| ignoring the fact that whistleblowers can operate
| anonymously.
|
| These companies chose to then a blind eye on themselves and
| each other.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I'm not saying they're doing the right thing - just that
| the game theory is what it is. I'm trying to give an
| explanation, not an excuse.
|
| Anonymous only works in a small spectrum of possible
| whistle blowing - where the issue and the players are
| large enough to matter, but small enough that it won't be
| trivial to guess who the anonymous tip came from.
| DSingularity wrote:
| Even if it is game theory it is a game of stag and not
| prisoners dilemma.
| freeopinion wrote:
| It's funny how game theory gets fouled up all the time in
| real life. A rainstorm or a faulty mechanism or a
| careless installer or 100 other human or non-human
| factors that aren't part of the game theory intervene to
| change everything.
|
| If game theory is stacked against ethical behavior in a
| particular situation, I'll back ethical behavior. It's
| encouraging how often the game theory gets tripped up by
| factors outside the "rules".
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| At this point, game theory is mostly useful for
| predicting what people who try to act rationally will do.
|
| But the trouble is, that as these things become more of
| the fabric of the culture, people's behaviour takes them
| into account, and then it doesn't work as well as it used
| to.
| kbenson wrote:
| > the prisoner's dilemma variant here is the iterated one,
| and there are more than two players.
|
| The assumption there is that you're all guilty. I agree,
| when you're all cheating, it's hard to safely get to a
| point you're not cheating and can inform on others, but the
| solution to that is simple, don't cheat in the first place.
| An actual rational actor would realize that cheating opens
| you up to this situation where you've exposed yourself to a
| prisoners dilemma that you can't easily extract yourself
| from, and all for the chance to just have the same
| advantage as everyone else. Not cheating in the first place
| and making sure all the cheaters are punished seems a far
| better strategy.
|
| That said, it's possible this was an emergent phenomenon,
| where none of them initially were _sure_ the others were
| cheating, but felt they had to cheat themselves to compete,
| and by the time it 's obvious they are all cheating,
| there's no chance for one of them to benefit by being clean
| and calling out all the others.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I do think that these things are all mostly emergent - a
| competitor sacrifices a principle a little bit to get
| ahead, everyone else follows suit, thus enshrining it as
| a new normal. Rinse, repeat
|
| That said, I disagree with "the solution to that is
| simple, don't cheat in the first place", for the reasons
| I mentioned: if all your competitors suddenly start to
| cheat, telling on them only works if you can ensure they
| _all_ get burned down to the ground as a result. If some
| survive, you 'll now be competing with them as an actor
| nobody trusts, and nobody wants to deal with. If that's a
| realistic outcome, you may as well just quit.
| kbenson wrote:
| > telling on them only works if you can ensure they all
| get burned down to the ground as a result.
|
| Isn't that assuming you have to out yourself to identify
| others? That seems like something a company could
| coordinate well such that there was little or no
| indication of where it came from (a source identifying
| one or two bad actors and calling for industry wide
| testing would serve their interests without specifically
| outing them). And I'm not sure why they need to get
| burned down to the ground. It's about removing the
| advantages they've gained through cheating, and possibly
| applying a social penalty if it was bad enough, not
| ensuring they are destroyed.
|
| > If some survive, you'll now be competing with them as
| an actor nobody trusts, and nobody wants to deal with.
|
| Eh, even if it did come out that your company was
| responsible for outing others, this is business where
| past behavior has less sway, and knowing the other party
| will follow the rules is hardly a disqualifying factor as
| long as you don't do something with them that isn't
| following the rules. It's not like competitors are
| commonly giving ammunition to each other with the
| understanding it won't be used. And if they aren't
| working with you because they can't without exposing more
| cheating... well then that's a problem they should be
| trying to fix already, given the new realities.
|
| I think in any well functioning market this all works out
| normally. The automotive market doesn't seem to be a well
| functioning one though.
| bluGill wrote:
| I don't get it. If I'm competing with someone, and I tell
| on them for cheating while not cheating myself what do I
| lose if they don't get burned for it?
| aidenn0 wrote:
| My dad used to joke that if you wanted sneakers that were not
| made by child labor, your best bet was whichever manufacturer
| last got into trouble for it because of all the extra scrutiny.
|
| That this level of fatalism about immoral acts exists is a
| failure of society as a whole. I suspect that all of those who
| got rich either knowingly or being willfully ignorant about
| emissions cheating walked away completely unpunished. Maybe
| less rich than if they hadn't gotten caught, but still richer
| than if they hadn't cheated in the first place.
| swills wrote:
| Fair and I mostly agree, but there are exceptions. New
| Balance for example makes a lot of it's shoes in the US.
| reid wrote:
| Yes. My last 5 sneakers were New Balance Made in USA. I
| believe New Balance is the last brand of USA made sneakers,
| so I support them whenever I can.
|
| Not all of what New Balance makes is domestic but they do
| have the Made in USA line available. Would love to have
| more options but thankfully these are quite good.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Man I wish I could wear NB, but the toe-box tapers too
| quickly causing my big toe to rub on the side. Before I
| found shoes that actually fit, I wore various shoes
| (including NB) 1.5 sizes larger than my actual size.
| greeneggs wrote:
| Instead of posting uninformed speculation, you can just
| Google it...
|
| > In 2017, the U.S.-based VW executive Oliver Schmidt, who
| oversaw emissions issues, was sentenced to seven years in
| prison and fined $400,000, the maximum possible under a plea
| deal the German national made with prosecutors after
| admitting to charges of conspiring to mislead U.S regulators
| and violate clean-air laws.
|
| The US has charged nine people, and Germany at least five,
| though they aren't moving quickly with the prosecutions.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-
| emissions/u-s-...
| kbenson wrote:
| More recently, he has been released on parole after roughly
| half his term served.[1] Interestingly, the article says:
|
| _In Germany, inmates can be released after serving two
| thirds of their term. Parole after only half of the time is
| rare, but can be granted to first time offenders who
| demonstrated good behavior and are deemed unlikely to
| commit crimes in the future._
|
| I don't doubt he exhibited good behavior. I'm not sure I
| believe he's unlikely to commit a crime in the future. I
| wonder if he thinks he was singled out for something
| everyone in the industry was doing, and thus it wasn't his
| fault. He wouldn't be wrong about the first thing, but he
| would about the second. It's admittedly speculation on my
| part though.
|
| 1: https://www.autonews.com/executives/ex-vw-manager-
| schmidt-ge...
| BurningFrog wrote:
| As a non violent criminal, who will never get a job where
| he can even try to commit a similar crime, that sounds
| reasonable.
| sn_master wrote:
| > I'm not sure I believe he's unlikely to commit a crime
| in the future.
|
| I don't think many car companies hire ex-convicts in
| upper management.
| amenod wrote:
| It is still quite likely he won't be repeating the
| mistake though. Prison is something else than just money.
| headmelted wrote:
| I'm sure it's awful for normal folk like us but in his
| case (and again this is uninformed speculation), where
| he's essentially the fall guy for a scandal that was
| supporting one of the world's largest economies (and a
| large component of several others), it's not that hard to
| imagine his experience being just a bit different than
| what a normal inmate should expect.
|
| He also likely knows a _lot_ about how many of his
| superiors were in the loop on this, so I assume he was
| well compensated for his inconvenience.
| wongarsu wrote:
| He was in "Offener Vollzug" (~open prison). That means he
| sleeps in a normal prison cell (that usually looks like
| [1], so not all that bad) in a regular prison, gets
| breakfeast, leaves prison to go to work, then goes
| straight back to prison to participate in the prison's
| evening activities (sport, recreational, educational,
| etc). He might get vacation (from staying in prison), and
| can visit his family on weekends.
|
| It's not that unusual in Germany, at any time about 16%
| of prisoners are in "offener Vollzug", and it is a great
| tool to reintegrate prisoners into society. It is limited
| to first offenders with no flight risk and no risk that
| they use their time out of prison to do crime.
|
| Of course no matter how useful of a tool it is generally,
| it does make the prison sentences of some well known
| people look like a bit of a joke.
|
| 1: https://www.zdf.de/dokumentation/zdfinfo-doku/knast-
| in-deuts...
| lupire wrote:
| What are the 84% that aren't in open prison? Poor people
| who don't have a corporate apparatus to hide their crimes
| behind?
|
| Volkswt emissions _killed people_ with smog. VW are
| homicidal.
| kbenson wrote:
| I think that depends on what he thinks the mistake was.
| To him, was the mistake cheating, getting caught, or
| being in position to be made an example of? He may no
| make the mistake again, but I'm not sure that means he
| won't cheat again in a similar way, given the chance.
| Cullinet wrote:
| can I prosecute ex parte the rest of the taxpayers and
| citizens and asthmatics the administrators supposed to
| have been in charge of ensuring compliance with emissions
| standards for failing so incredibly to do their jobs?
|
| or is there no responsibility held by whoever we place in
| office responsible for seeing our futures aren't
| squandered?
|
| how is it possible to ignore that obligation and duty
| when we've only just started to admit that we have to act
| against such universal polluting?
|
| or has the last encumbant of 2000 Pensylvania Av. just
| pulled off the brilliant trick of assuming all the blame
| for the failure of government future and past as well?
|
| (brit with American family and too embarrassed to speak
| of our politicians presently)
| headmelted wrote:
| I'm not sure if the downvotes here are because of your
| Trump allusions or not, but you do raise a pretty
| important point.
|
| Where was the oversight? How was it that an open secret
| of this magnitude didn't incur the wrath of environmental
| agencies in the countries affected? Is it possible that
| _no-one_ outside of the industry knew about this _and_
| that everyone in the industry, even in competing firms,
| just kept this secret for years without anything leaking
| out?
|
| It doesn't seem plausible that this wasn't known about
| and ignored by regulators in at least some regions.
| methodin wrote:
| Is the rest of the world as harsh as the U.S. in that a
| prison sentence is basically the end of your career?
| Would this guy have a shot at being an executive again?
| kevbin wrote:
| Is there evidence that white collar criminal convictions
| are career ending in the USA?
| querez wrote:
| Depends: given that one can easily google his name and
| find out about this, it's a bit unlikely he'll be
| appointed to such a prominent position again. But in
| general, a prison sentence would not be the end of your
| career here in the EU. Anecdotally, when I was hob-
| hunting last time, not one company (out of ~ a dozen)
| asked for a criminal record before making an offer, and
| only one company informed me that I'd be required to hand
| one in afterwards. Of course, the others might've asked
| for it at a later stage, but at least at the company I
| went with (as well as all my previous employers) hired me
| without knowing whether I had any priors. As far as I
| understand, this depends on the industry, though.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| A close associate is an engine designer at a VW group
| company.
|
| VW is not some bottoms up startup. It has a clear
| micromanaged road map for virtually everything. Data is
| gathered, sheds are biked ad nausuem.
|
| this person was jailed because they were the last one
| holding the hot potatoe. There is no way (according to
| said associate) that upper management were not aware of
| what was going on. as any decision like that has to have
| approval.
|
| It is/was a wide spread practice, well known in the
| industry. I know that ford used to routinely re-map the
| ECU after the warranty period, which boosted the miles
| per gallon at the expense of various pollutants.
| azernik wrote:
| The higher-up executives are also in hot water - Martin
| Winterkorn, then the CEO, is under indictment in both
| Germany and the US, and is likely to face prison time
| after his (more complicated, because his involvement
| worked through deniable cutouts) trial.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| > _re-map the ECU_
|
| Sorry, what does this mean in layman's terms?
| smilekzs wrote:
| Change the parameters used to calculate the fine details
| of how the internal combustion engine operates, e.g. how
| much fuel to inject into each cylinder, when to send a
| spark to trigger ignition, how much pressure should the
| turbocharger provide, etc.
| azernik wrote:
| > The US has charged nine people, and Germany at least
| five, though they aren't moving quickly with the
| prosecutions.
|
| Including the then _CEO_ , who is under indictment in both
| countries.
| soperj wrote:
| and what about the ones at literally every other company
| that produces diesels?
| MrApathy wrote:
| My own admittedly uninformed understanding is that there
| was cheating all around, but VW was by far the most
| flagrant. BMW and Mercedes diesels required DEF (diesel
| exhaust fluid), whereas VW did not. Marketing and/or
| executive leadership (again, as per my understanding)
| pushed the notion that the additive would make diesels
| appear to be less attractive and who wants to add a
| second liquid beyond fuel every few hundred miles?
|
| But weren't they all cheating? The diesels with DEF were
| still above the legal limits, albeit to a lesser degree
| than the VW's who didn't even bother with DEF because, I
| guess, if you're going to cheat anyway...
|
| How incorrect is my understanding?
| davedx wrote:
| Our VW Sharan required DEV.
| hinkley wrote:
| How about 'rolling coal'?
| Syonyk wrote:
| What about it? No vehicle will do it from the factory, so
| I don't see how it's relevant here. It's the result of
| running a diesel massively, massively over-rich (with
| aftermarket tuning), and it's absolute hell on the engine
| - that amount of diesel in the cylinder washes down the
| cylinder walls and wipes off the lubricating film, so the
| cylinder wear is insane from even fairly short periods of
| it.
|
| Even in diesel truck circles, "the other 99.9%" of truck
| owners think it's just as stupid as everyone else does -
| in addition to being engine abuse, it tends to attract an
| awful lot of unwelcome attention, and there are people
| who won't distinguish between "You've modified your truck
| to belch a column of coal black smoke for attention" and
| "An older diesel puts out a bit of brown smoke if you get
| on it hard suddenly," which can lead to some nuisance
| emissions testing.
|
| My truck (24 years and change) will smoke a bit if I
| stand on it and the fuel flow outruns boost coming up,
| but it's also entirely emissions compliant and passes the
| tests cleanly - it's just something older diesels do
| under certain conditions. I try my best to avoid it, but
| if I need to get a trailer up to speed (especially
| quickly, if someone is coming up hard behind me), it'll
| put out a bit of brown smoke until the turbo gets
| spinning.
|
| None of that has anything to do with VW, though. They
| were burning clean, which any sort of modern high
| pressure injection system will typically do, they just
| had really high NOx emissions for their emissions tier.
| ak217 wrote:
| I used to live next to a freeway and I know the true cost
| of dirty diesel engines. Get on any US freeway and you'll
| notice that while a majority of diesels are fine, there
| is a minority that is belching soot any time the driver
| steps on the gas. This is simply unacceptable - this tiny
| minority of diesels kills people over time - especially
| the poorer populations who live close to the freeways. I
| would prefer much more stringent enforcement where any
| truck belching smoke can be spot checked and impounded.
|
| The emissions testing is not a "nuisance". It saves
| lives. A noisy motorcycle would be a better example of a
| nuisance.
| FooHentai wrote:
| I'm obsessive about using the air recirculation button
| when driving to isolate the cabin any time I'm in the
| wake of a diesel vehicle, for this reason.
|
| While health issues from diesel particulate is documented
| on a wide statistical basis, there's ample reason to
| believe single exposure events may lead to individual
| negative health outcomes i.e. getting a lungful one time
| might just kill you.
| hinkley wrote:
| Shit I see that _in town_. Shiny new cars.
| Syonyk wrote:
| The pointless out of band emissions testing of an
| emissions compliant truck (that easily passes the tests)
| having to go in for a test because it smokes a bit under
| hard acceleration and someone called it in for "rolling
| coal" is very much a nuisance to the truck owner and a
| waste of time/resources for all parties involved.
|
| An older diesel engine can smoke a decent bit under hard
| acceleration and still be entirely emissions legal - it's
| not until you get into the particulate filters in the...
| oh, 2010s or so (not sure, I don't have anything that
| new) that you can contain all the particulate matter.
|
| If your stance is that diesels shouldn't be permitted, or
| that anything older than a certain age shouldn't be
| allowed to be registered, that's fine, but that's not
| what I'm referring to here.
| ak217 wrote:
| My stance is that diesels should only be permitted if
| they satisfy the EPA 2008 diesel PM standards or better.
| No older engines should be permitted unless they are
| retrofitted to comply with the standard and pass regular
| state tests. We could have a "cash for clunkers" type
| program to incentivize them to be lawfully scrapped.
|
| I appreciate that you are as annoyed as the rest of us at
| the coal rollers. I think we need much more aggressive
| fines and impounds for those, too.
| Syonyk wrote:
| Destroying nearly-new trucks for emissions reasons is a
| pretty questionable use of funding (and, yes, a 12 year
| old truck is still quite new) - and you're not going to
| be able to get away with a token few thousand dollars to
| encourage people to scrap them.
|
| A decently maintained heavy road engine (tractor trailer)
| is a million+ mile motor, easily. A medium truck engine
| (think your typical toolbox work trucks, tow trucks,
| International boom trucks, etc) will do 300k-500k miles,
| and depending on how much the truck is used, that may be
| 20-30 years of operation. Same for the light diesels -
| they tend to have a practical service life of decades. My
| 24 year old truck is starting to be a little bit more
| rare on the roads out here, but I still see plenty...
|
| If you know what to listen for, you can identify a lot of
| diesels by sound - and the International T444E (mid-90s
| design, the Ford 7.3 Powerstroke is that engine with a
| few tweaks) has a very distinctive snap at idle from the
| single shot injectors. There are still an awful lot of
| those on the road, and the youngest of them is almost 20
| years old.
|
| "Destroying 30-50% of the diesel fleet on the road" is
| not something I'd be particularly excited about -
| especially since new vehicle production isn't
| particularly environmentally friendly either. If you're
| specifically focused on the PM emissions, there may be
| ways to retrofit those older engines (at the cost of
| likely a substantial increase in fuel burn from the
| backpressure), but if you're going to hold them to the
| newer NOx standards, there's just no way to do it. They
| don't have the injection pressure and EGR systems in
| place to do it.
|
| As of right now, they'd just be replaced with new
| diesels, because there are no electrics meaningfully on
| the market that solve the problems a large diesel engine
| solves right now. Plenty have been announced, very few
| are actually shipping, and of those announced, everyone
| is silent on their towing capabilities (I don't care if
| you can tow 15k lbs on a receiver mount, that kind of
| trailer weight should be on a gooseneck or 5th wheel
| hitch, and everyone is really, really silent on how their
| announced electric trucks fit either of those).
|
| I also very much dislike "Cash for Clunkers" type
| programs in that they're one of the most nastily
| regressive programs one can possibly create. That program
| ruined the bottom end of the used car market for most of
| a decade, and permanently destroyed a lot of vehicles of
| a particularly easy to maintain and cheap to operate era
| (low pressure single point throttle body injection, not a
| ton of luxury features). It was a nice little handout to
| the next couple tiers up, but if you were operating in
| the "$100 car" realm (which were a thing at the time,
| I've owned 4 sub-$400 cars in the 2000-2010 era), it was
| absolutely devastating to your ability to find cheap
| cars. That sort of effective floor on vehicle prices for
| a while, followed by the hollowing out of anything below
| that price in the market... eh. Let's not do that again.
|
| As far as coal rollers, though, the best thing that could
| happen is that everyone stops getting worked up about
| them and ignore them. They do it for the attention, and
| I'll suggest that it works really, really well. If you
| see one, get the plate, call it into your local emissions
| enforcement hotline if that's a thing, and move on with
| life. Everyone getting all wound up about them on the
| internet is exactly what I expect a lot of them enjoy
| about it anymore.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Of course just scrapping diesels on the road isn't the
| best/most efficient idea. We have the technology to do EV
| conversions, we just need to make that more cost
| effective. Volkswagon has talked about shipping a mass
| produced "crate" system that could fit into older VW
| vehicles' engine blocks. Though if we are talking
| *trucks* the big player that should be building an EV
| conversion kit _yesterday_ is Ford, who still seem to act
| like EV is a passing fad they can just dip their toes in
| and not get serious about.
| Syonyk wrote:
| > We have the technology to do EV conversions...
|
| "We" do? If you know of any, please, share. I know a lot
| of people out here who own trucks who would absolutely
| love a reasonably priced ($20k or so?) conversion kit for
| a truck that would leave you with 100 miles or so of
| range with a 10k lb construction trailer (fully enclosed)
| or similar.
|
| I'm aware of the old electric Rangers one can find on
| rare occasions (swap their lead for lithium and you have
| a truck, though not one that can either haul much or tow
| much). I know of a couple more or less DIY conversion
| kits for vehicles (EVWest has some nice ones, $5k-$10k
| before you add a battery, for light VWs), but a 200hp
| class motor alone for a retrofit is close to $10k, and
| that's before controllers, battery pack, anything.
|
| But in general, I'm really not sure converting existing
| trucks is the right option, because how you build a truck
| for an ICE is probably not how you build a truck for
| electric drivetrains. If you just replace the input to
| the transmission with an electric motor, you end up with
| quite poor drivetrain efficiency - there's a lot of stuff
| spinning that you wouldn't use for a pure electric
| drivetrain, but if you're going to swap out pieces you
| don't need (transmission, maybe the transfer case - a
| motor hung on the front and rear differential, geared
| properly, makes a compelling argument), costs start going
| up again. And then there's the mass and weight of the
| battery pack. You could put a pack in the bed without too
| much trouble, but... whoops, you've just lost your access
| to a 5th wheel or gooseneck hitch, or you've got a lot of
| the bed not used for battery space. There's room under
| the hood, but it's weirdly shaped space, typically.
|
| I would love an electric pickup that could handle around
| town work, but even if I start with a free truck body,
| I'm likely $40k away from a useful conversion, and that's
| with me doing the work myself. And I still wouldn't get
| that much use out of it, because I couldn't do any longer
| hauling with it (the bulk of my trips in trip count are
| about 40 mile round trips to the home improvement store,
| but the few longer trips I take, often with 5k-8k lb of
| trailer back there, make up a good fraction of the
| miles).
|
| For that cost, I could buy a very nice used diesel truck,
| and still have a ton of money left over for other
| projects, carbon offsets, nice charity donations, a bunch
| of public EV charging stations, or whatever else I wanted
| to do.
|
| The problem is that competent electric pickups have been
| "coming soon now" for most of a decade. Via Motors was
| announcing extended range electric pickups on Chevy
| gliders back in 2012 or so - and they've since pivoted a
| few times and not delivered any of those things (at least
| that I'm aware of, and certainly not in any meaningful
| numbers). A 50 mile range on battery with a good trailer,
| then a gas or diesel range extender, with a big split
| phase inverter built in, would sell like hotcakes to
| construction companies - you can haul your trailer to the
| jobsite, power the jobsite before the power company gets
| around to running lines without the small generators
| otherwise used for that, recharge at night, and pay a
| fraction the operating costs of a diesel you'd otherwise
| use for that. Think $0.05-$0.10/mi (depending on power
| costs) vs $0.25-$0.30/mi, plus generator costs. That adds
| up in a hurry.
|
| But nobody sells one. I've no idea why. So diesel it is.
| Gassers are fine for infrequent towing, but their
| lifespan is an awful lot shorter if you use them for it
| regularly for towing.
|
| I'm aware the Cybertruck is "coming soon now," and that
| it's rated for 14k lbs, but as I've stated elsewhere in
| this sidetrack, you have to be somewhat insane to hang
| 14k lbs on a receiver mount (I'm actually not even sure
| that's permitted everywhere). That much tongue weight
| (1000+ lbs, perhaps even 2000 lbs for high speed
| stability) really needs to be on or slightly forward of
| the rear axle for combo stability. There's a big
| difference between "It can move it on flat ground" and
| "It can safely tow it long distances in somewhat adverse
| conditions." A ~6000 lb truck, with 14k hanging on the
| receiver, is (IMO) an unsafe combination.
|
| All of the above skips the legal problems with radically
| changing a vehicle (which an EV conversion is) and
| ensuring it's legal and certified for road operation.
| Hobby conversions and low volume conversions tend to fall
| between the cracks, but anything of a scale to matter
| would have to solve those problems, and they're far from
| trivial.
|
| Anyway, if I'm missing something, please, let me know.
| But what you're arguing "should exist," as far as I know,
| "Doesn't exist, and won't exist."
| kelnos wrote:
| Right, but the parent's point is that these things do not
| actually exist. VW "talking" about doing something or
| Ford "should" have done something does not describe
| things that are actually available on the market today,
| regardless of whether or not the technology is within our
| capabilities.
| samcheng wrote:
| It's not just trucks - I was able to get my (pre-
| cheating-scandal) 2003 VW TDI to belch a cloud of smoke
| if I idled for a while (over five minutes) then worked it
| hard (e.g. a freeway onramp). I remember getting honked
| at by a Prius once...
|
| IMO, these occasional particulate emissions were
| outweighed by the excellent fuel economy - rated at 46
| MPG but regularly 43 MPG.
|
| Of course, this technology has been largely obsoleted by
| electric drivetrains. No rolling coal from a Tesla!
| yread wrote:
| > My truck (24 years and change) will smoke a bit if I
| stand on it and the fuel flow outruns boost coming up,
| but it's also entirely emissions compliant and passes the
| tests cleanly - it's just something older diesels do
| under certain conditions
|
| I always thought that banning old diesels from centers of
| European cities was just silly (they passed their
| emissions after all so they can't be billowing smoke,
| right?), thanks for changing my opinion
| llampx wrote:
| Emissions standards change over time. You could get some
| really polluting cars in the old days, and you can't
| anymore. Why should we be breathing in the smoke from
| these old cars from an era where emissions and pollution
| weren't taken as seriously as now?
| gsnedders wrote:
| Looking at emissions standards in Europe, a truck from 24
| years ago in Europe, assuming its gross vehicle weight is
| between 1760 kg and 3500 kg, would be allowed to emit
| 0.25g of PM/km. The same limit for something built since
| 2013 is 0.0045g of PM/km. We're talking multiple orders
| of magnitude improvement here.
|
| As a sidenote, HO+NOx has gone from 1.7g/km to 0.350g/km
| in 2013 (and onto 0.215g/km since then, in 2016), which
| is often as significant when it comes to desires to
| reduce air pollution.
| Syonyk wrote:
| No problem. If your concern is the particulate matter,
| then, yes, banning old diesels makes some sense. They
| don't have the particulate filters - those started
| showing up in the 2000-2010 era. However, I would rather
| see that implemented as tighter standards, and if you can
| meet them with a retrofit kit, you can continue driving
| the older ones. We saw this with noise kits for older
| jets (retrofit kits that reduce the noise to the new
| standards), and if the concern is specifically emissions,
| then if you can make an older vehicle meet the newer
| standards, there's no reason to keep them out. I'm not a
| fan of arbitrarily destroying old but operational
| equipment.
|
| My truck is a '97, and I believe the smoke opacity limit
| for emissions testing is 40% (it's allowed to
| block/scatter 40% of the light going through the
| exhaust). I believe commercial trucks of the same age are
| held to roughly the same standards. That's a good bit of
| smoke in the exhaust. But until you get into the high
| pressure common rail stuff (up at 30k+ psi, multiple
| injections per cycle), you'll get some smoke under
| certain conditions.
| iso1631 wrote:
| Never heard of this before, I looked it up, but I still
| don't get it -- you're not getting more power, you're not
| getting better fuel efficiency, you're not getting a
| smoother ride, what's the point - you're literally
| burning money for no reason?
| Syonyk wrote:
| > you're literally burning money for no reason?
|
| Correct. And destroying your engine in the process.
| Beyond washing down the cylinder walls (cylinder/ring
| wear) and diluting the engine oil in the process (worse
| lubrication for the bearings), EGTs tend to go absolutely
| nuts during the process (you're on the oxygen limited
| side of mixture, not the fuel limited side a diesel is
| intended to operate in), which means you stand a good
| chance of doing damage to the hot side of the
| turbocharger (high EGTs tend to start melting the corner
| tips of the turbine blades first, which is an easy check
| for a used diesel - if the blade corners aren't right,
| the engine has probably been abused), and it's hard on
| the rest of the engine too.
|
| It's quite literally as stupid as it sounds.
|
| There are cases where you do want to run a diesel like
| that - some of the custom tractor pulling engines will
| smoke an awful lot while they're spooling up and pulling,
| but that's an engine that's making insane horsepower for
| a short period of time, and they don't have a
| particularly long service life (like any competition
| engine). I believe they run on the rich side to use the
| excess fuel to keep combustion temperatures down (a
| stoichiometric mixture is usually far, far too hot). But
| on a road engine, it's just pointless engine abuse for
| style points (among the few people who actually think
| it's cool).
| fossuser wrote:
| I've only ever seen it once when I was in an EV Uber (it
| was a Model S) behind a pickup truck in Baltimore and the
| pickup kept blasting us with massive amounts of black
| soot (presumably because we were in an EV).
|
| There's a political element of "Truck Driving Republican"
| vs. "EV Driving Liberal" that powers some of this. I
| think Elon has been at last partially trying to reduce
| this polarization with how he behaves online to widen
| Tesla's appeal (though maybe I'm attributing too much
| intentionality here).
|
| On the west coast I was tailed super aggressively by a
| pickup in my model 3 on 280 which was a little scary
| (blinding me with headlights, switching lanes to stay 1
| inch behind me). I watched cameras after to see if I cut
| him off or something, but I didn't. It has made me more
| wary of pick up trucks in general though.
| greedo wrote:
| It's a popular way of making a political statement:
|
| Own the libs!
| [deleted]
| agumonkey wrote:
| we decouple too much, every company is trying to survive the
| market and will always cut corners even though in the end no
| one ever asked for children to make shoes.. it was just
| global fear, frustration and risk that made everybody put
| pressure in the wrong direction.
| alasdair_ wrote:
| I always found it odd that Americans have no problem with
| child labor at home, so long as it's confined to movies and
| entertainment. We even have special laws just to make it
| legal when every other form of child labor is outlawed.
|
| It's absolutely not the same as a sweatshop, but hollywood
| has a long track record of ruining children's lives for
| profit.
| [deleted]
| notriddle wrote:
| Why did textile factories hire children? Because they could
| pay less.
|
| Why do movie studios hire children? Because the script
| calls for a child. Union regulations and price floors can
| be put in place to protect the child actor's interests
| without completely defeating the purpose of hiring them in
| the first place.
|
| Even though child actors tend to be considerably more
| expensive than adults, they still get cast. I don't think
| that would've happened in sweatshops.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| It might be an unusually American take, but I do think
| child labor is a bit easier to justify when the child is
| compensated with a tremendous amount of money. (When
| compared to the sweatshops you mentioned).
|
| From my understanding, the "special laws" put hard caps on
| the amount of hours that a child can work in a week, and
| establishes a bunch of other protections like making sure
| they get adequate schooling, etc.
|
| In a film with a child in a lead role, the entire movie
| production schedule often revolves around this hard hours
| limit.
|
| Perhaps a larger tragedy is children working in family
| businesses. Poor, legal immigrant families often put their
| children to work at the family restaurant, and this is
| legal for any number of hours.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| There are over three hundred million people the US. A
| sizable portion of them dislikes Hollywood.
| freeopinion wrote:
| Yet, as a whole they will spend over $2 billion in a
| single weekend at cinemas.
| Dirlewanger wrote:
| The mainstream corporate media machine doesn't cover it
| because they're complicit in it. You have shit like what
| happened to Cory Feldman on the View: that hag Barbara
| Walters saying "you're trying to ruin an entire industry!"
| when he tries to expose the horrors he and others went
| through.
| [deleted]
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| I heard old Nike Jordans are unwearable because the soles
| crumble with age. Is that the case?
| lumost wrote:
| it's almost impossible to effectively regulate externalities
| in a global economy. Local regulators are not inclined to
| care about products sold overseas and all products compete
| with the lowest common regulatory framework.
|
| All it takes for child labor to enter into the supply chain
| is one bad regulator and a couple levels of outsourcing. The
| final "complete" product becomes nearly impossible to audit.
| DFHippie wrote:
| Perfection in this, as in all things, may be impossible,
| but here's a good faith effort to audit supply chains:
|
| https://www.verite.org/
| andrepd wrote:
| > it's almost impossible to effectively regulate
| externalities in a global economy.
|
| It really is not. Take the EU, for instance. They have the
| biggest internal market in the world. They can effectively
| dictate many things unilaterally that companies have to
| comply with under pain of being locked out of a multi-
| trillion dollar market (and indeed they do, with things
| such as health and safety standards, etc.). There's nothing
| stopping then from properly pricing externalities of
| pollution for instance, or of mandating that clothes
| companies pass a workplace standards audit irrespective of
| where their factories are located. This isn't done because
| of lack of will.
| clajiness wrote:
| Exactly. Most other manufacturers were/are cheating as well.
|
| I've owned a few recent VWs and have found they're fine
| vehicles. The current gen Tiguan was underpowered, but my MK7
| GTI and MK7.5 Golf R are amazing cars. I have a feeling I'll be
| driving the R for a long time.
| kevinherron wrote:
| I had a MK6 GTI and I loved it. Once VW has worked the kinks
| out of their electric platform I'll definitely take a look at
| them again.
| madengr wrote:
| I had a Corrado, which was sold to make room for a minivan.
| Thankfully the minivan days are behind me and now I have a
| used Nissan Leaf.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| One of the sub-aspects of it also seemed to be tradeoffs
| between kinds of emissions (where driving down one drove up the
| other).
|
| Weren't the cheating VWs extremely fuel efficient (and thus
| less CO2 emitting), at the cost of emitting something else
| nasty?
| thrwyoilarticle wrote:
| I found it to be a bit of a Snowden moment. _Of course_ they
| were doing it, why all the surprise? Balancing good performance
| in emissions tests with the power and brunt that consumers
| enjoy in the real world had already made turbochargers and
| variable valve timings widespread instead of simply increasing
| displacement. In fact there were multiple other scandals in the
| decades before where loopholes in emissions regulations were
| treated the same way as in accounting or racing. I believe
| regulators were complicit by using ineffectual metrics like
| NEDC - no car buyer really expects to reach the quoted
| performance.
| arbitrage wrote:
| > they bore the brunt of media attention for something that
| nearly every auto manufacturer was later found to be doing
|
| Maybe a better answer would be holding ALL of the automakers to
| task like we felt needed to be done with VW, instead of giving
| all of the parasitic capitalists a free pass to do it all over
| again.
| tertius wrote:
| How has that not been done?
| Krasnol wrote:
| I always owned Toyotas and Nissans but when I got together with
| my SO, I sold my last Toyota (for a spectacular price even
| though it had quite a lot km) and we kept her VW. Afterwards we
| bought another one.
|
| The sheer amount of issues those cars had was astonishing. From
| bad electronics to just terrible manufacturing (water running
| down somewhere along the doors and causing mold inside for
| example) really cured me from VW and German cars altogether. We
| sold the VW when that emission thing came up and it looked like
| we might not be able to drive in our city with it anymore
| (Germany). Now we own a Hyundai Ioniq and it's great. I can
| even flash the firmware or update maps myself. The amount of
| electronic stuff that came inclusive is something you can only
| dream of with German manufacturers.
|
| I'm never going back from Japanese/Korean cars again.
| qrbLPHiKpiux wrote:
| Regardless of what you think they did was right or wrong, it
| was pretty clever.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Nah, they very just too cheap to install large enough AdBlue
| tanks and too greedy to allow people fill the small tanks up
| themselves. Or they were unable to come up with engines
| meeting emission standards.
| handol wrote:
| What's clever about it? They cheated, got caught, got fined
| $20 billion dollars, and spend some time in prison. It sounds
| pretty dumb to me.
| dghughes wrote:
| >...they bore the brunt of media attention for something that
| nearly every auto manufacturer was later found to be doing...
|
| Car manufacturers any company really tries to get away with
| whatever they can until until caught.
|
| Here in Canada the latest news is Honda vehicles without any
| heat. People are driving in -20C or lower with no heater.
|
| It's the terribly outdated laws we have in Canada some laws
| haven't been updated for 60 years. Car makers know this and
| here in Canada car buyers are often ignored or strung along for
| months.
|
| Hyundai implemented a warning light to let you know if your
| engine lost all its oil and was about to erupt in flames. In
| other countries Hyundai had to replace the engine free of
| charge. Here in Canada we get "Hey your engine's gonna blow.
| Sorry"
|
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/honda-crv-civic-heater-1.59...
|
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/marketplace-car-recall-inve...
| interestica wrote:
| > Here in Canada we get "Hey your engine's gonna blow. Sorry"
|
| It seems that there isn't even the 'sorry' part. I wonder
| what the design is like: generic light? icon? a "do not check
| engine" light?
| Shivetya wrote:
| my second favorite car was my TDI Beetle Convertible (2013) and
| I would be more than willing to line up to buy a BEV version of
| the same. The closest it appears I will get is an Audi TT which
| may be the first mass production convertible to be available;
| the Tesla Roadster of past doesn't count.
|
| Their current BEV platform is a good first shot, I am
| disappointed in the lack of front trunk but I expect they will
| eventually go that way. The real issue this platform suffers
| from but should be a software fix is that they don't support
| auto negotiation with charging stations. Even Ford is able to
| do so with Electrify America yet VW who backed it cannot.
|
| As for the name change, its fitting provided they quickly move
| to an all electric fleet. There are some nice variations of the
| ID.* platform coming and the .Buzz is the neatest of them all
| in my book. By quickly I mean get there five years before
| everyone else.
| macintux wrote:
| Other manufacturers were exposing monkeys to diesel emissions?
| Gassing primates is a pretty bad look for any company,
| especially VW.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Doesn't every car manufacturer (except maybe Tesla) expose
| primates (humans) to vehicle emissions?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Even Tesla if you include particulate emissions from tires.
| kvgr wrote:
| And it was basically founded by Hitler. Wrong
| hef19898 wrote:
| Well, there is a crucial, legal, difference between using
| illegal devices (VW) and using edge cases and loop holes
| (everybody else). The first one is illegal cheating, the other
| smart playing the rules. Both are not ok, so. But only one
| clearly illegal.
| milkytron wrote:
| Same boat here, I had a VW and sold it about a year and half
| ago. I will not be buying one again, they've lost me.
|
| But also, I don't really appreciate what any of the car
| manufacturers have been doing (location tracking, internet
| connectivity, subscription services, etc). Since I sold the VW,
| I haven't bought a car, and am currently without a car. I don't
| plan on buying one anytime in the near future.
| davedx wrote:
| We sold our VW and bought a Model 3. We had a serious look at
| VW's EV lineup for my wife's next car though. All
| manufacturers with a genuine EV programme have my support.
| lmedinas wrote:
| the VW ID4 is a great family car, imo its worth the wait.
| neuronic wrote:
| Europe here.
|
| I have been driving an ID3 nearly every day since a month
| or so (don't own it) and I absolutely adore the car. It's
| both simple and full-fledged at the same time. Voice-
| control is hot garbage but other than that it's fine.
|
| Disclaimer: I never drove a Tesla Model 3 before, but a
| few other EVs like the BMW i3. The VW ID3 feels like a
| genuine high quality car - as if the Golf simply reached
| a new era.
|
| BMW's i3 always felt like a weird toy and the Renault
| Zoes I drove where just an electric replacement for
| Smarts which are now electric too. I can see myself
| sitting in an ID3 for a longer trip with a nice charging
| pause.
|
| I would never even dare take a Zoe on the Autobahn or an
| i3 aside from a handful of kilometers. ID3? No issues
| here.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| > ID3? No issues here.
|
| Can you actually use it on the Autobahn like a "normal"
| car, i.e. drive over 130 km/h with AC or heating, while
| still getting reasonable range?
|
| One of my major gripes with EV was always that the range
| on paper is good, but only if you drive like a truck
| speed-wise and turn off every comfort - which is honestly
| not what I want to do when investing in an (usually)
| pretty expensive car. Would be pretty awesome if VW
| managed to get that right.
| lmedinas wrote:
| I can speak for the ID4, yes you can do this. Sure you
| will not get the 520km on paper and of course it depends
| how you driving it but you get around 400km with ok
| weather conditions, AC and seat/driving wheel heating. In
| Winter with negative temperatures I got high consumptions
| but I learned it might also have to do with the fact the
| batteries where not hot enough.
| lmedinas wrote:
| Same about the ID4. Its a great "normal" EV SUV. the ID3
| is to the Golf what the ID4 is to the Tiguan. Plus I have
| no issues with the >400Kms range with such a vehicle.
| Apofis wrote:
| Not particularly striking, however.
| reader_mode wrote:
| I'd say the interior looks like someone stuck the
| cheapest sale parts at a surplus store but I haven't seen
| the car live.
|
| Having tested latest VW ICE cars when buying a new car a
| while ago I would be shocked if it's anything but cheap
| plastics all over the place inside.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Me too, only owned a used old Toyota (pre ABS and OBDII)
| since and right now nothing. The VW I leased was a 2014 so I
| just managed to miss out on the era of rearview cameras
| though
| drno123 wrote:
| You are aware that the old Toyota has higher emissions of
| greenhouse gases than VW which cheated on emission tests?
| kbenson wrote:
| It might generate higher emissions, but whether using it
| for another year or two generated more emissions overall,
| I think it's a bit trickier to know if it was worse
| overall.
|
| Enough VW's not sold mean VW's not built, and producing
| the car is a large amount of the car's expected lifetime
| CO2 footprint (I've seen from 1/5th to 1/3rd).
|
| If they were just delaying a less polluting vehicle
| purchase, a delay is a net negative, but since now they
| are driving nothing, that means it's actually possible
| the older vehicle was the better choice, especially since
| pollution from cars if very front-loaded (if we assume a
| new car that was purchased would be unused or very
| lightly used, since they are able to go without a car
| now).
| reddog wrote:
| Plus if you trade in one functional old car for a newer
| model with better emmissions, that perfectly good car is
| not magically lifted into automobile heaven never to emit
| again. It will be bought on the used market by someone
| else can't afford a new car (much less a $70K Tesla) and
| continue to emit whatever it emits today.
| andrepd wrote:
| What's wrong with ABS and OBD2?
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Nothing, I was (am) just poor.
| anticristi wrote:
| D00d, pre ABS and OBD II? My 13-years-old car feels state-
| of-the-art! :))
| olyjohn wrote:
| Aftermarket rearview cameras are dirt cheap if you really
| want one. Tons of kits less than $100.
| AdamN wrote:
| I believe Mazda was the last without phone home functionality
| but I that's over as of 2020.
| core-questions wrote:
| Mazda has also said they will be decreasing the importance
| of an infotainment screen and focusing on having quality
| switchgear. People who actually _enjoy driving_ like these
| kinds of touches; in general, in the segments Mazda
| competes in, they have some of the most fun offerings
| available.
|
| For people who consider a car to be a status symbol that
| transports them from place to place, it's not the ideal
| choice, but I'm glad there's some variety. Otherwise, we'll
| all just be driving electric jellybeans with an iPad
| awkwardly bolted to the dashboard.
| inson wrote:
| Getting VW Jetta was the worst decision I've ever made, new or
| old doesn't matter because all of them have countless problem.
| Add to that emission scandal... Yeah, I won't exchange my old
| honda civic even for new VW because Japanese cars are affordable
| and reliable.
| gigatexal wrote:
| Wait so is this real? I thought it was a joke?
| sequoia wrote:
| "Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer"
|
| And in case you're wondering, yes the company was founded by the
| Nazi party. I think it's good they changed the name.
| supergirl wrote:
| I don't know how ppl can think that this is real. VW group is the
| biggest or second biggest car producer in the world. People
| really think they would rename to something so silly. This is the
| equivalent of Musk twitting about doge
| agrafix wrote:
| Hmm did they release their April 1 joke too early by mistake?
| Corrado wrote:
| Their ID.4 website[0] has copy that uses Voltswagen liberally.
|
| [0] https://www.vw.com/en/models/id-4.html
| letier wrote:
| Looking at the DNS records it's definitely a joke.
| cpach wrote:
| How so?
| letier wrote:
| .com for example was only reserved today and is using a
| domain parking service. Things like this would have been
| prepared if it was a serious rebranding.
| cpach wrote:
| AFAICT it was registered in 2003
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26637476
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Mistake? Look at all the coverage they are getting when they
| would otherwise be lost in a crowd.
| minxomat wrote:
| Maybe they grew tired of Americans pronouncing it wrong (most
| V are still pronounced as F, Vettel, Volkswagen etc.) ;-)
|
| Edit: This German apologizes for an attempt at a humorous /
| sarcastic comment and will revert to work-machine state at
| once. Beep boop.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| "Americans" here referring to Volkswagen USA's marketing
| department, rather than customers?
|
| https://youtu.be/kkdmz0XRrS4?t=26
| henrikschroder wrote:
| Btw, how do Germans generally pronounce "volt"? Folt? 230
| fau? Or is it like wolt and we?
|
| Does the name change still make sense in German?
| minxomat wrote:
| No the pronunciation would be similar (english V, not F)
| between German and English for Voltswagen. That's part of
| the joke.
| xattt wrote:
| It was vutile effort from the start.
| [deleted]
| pantalaimon wrote:
| Reminds me of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rA-BSuog7o
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Folxvagen
| Jailbird wrote:
| Folxvahggen?
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Watch out Subaru.
| sillyquiet wrote:
| Americans are pronouncing it perfectly correctly as most of
| us speak English and not German.
| [deleted]
| earthboundkid wrote:
| The worst part of English orthography is adopting the
| writing conventions of literally every other language in
| the world and then expecting people to pronounce the
| words "correctly." If you want English speakers to
| pronounce something a certain way, it should be written
| use our spelling system. There's no point in shaming
| people for not knowing literally every language. But
| that's basically the system we have now.
| Bud wrote:
| Except that English does not have a "spelling system". At
| all. Even a passing glance at English would reveal that.
| jablan wrote:
| Which spelling system? English is notorious for not
| having any spelling consistency.
| Udik wrote:
| That "correctly" needs an extra pair of scare quotes. The
| spelling bee competition is, essentially, the "guess the
| mispronounced foreign word" competition. Pejerrey? "Pay-
| ray". Lol.
| atleta wrote:
| This is an interesting observation. As a non-native
| speaker I was surprised by how many German expressions
| are used in English (with the correct German spelling).
| Even when there is a perfect (or near perfect) English
| equivalent.
|
| However, this is pretty different as VW is a brand name
| so you don't have much liberty in how you write it.
| tchalla wrote:
| It is respectful to at least attempt to pronounce names
| from different cultures. In many cases, I totally
| understand it is difficult. In those cases, an attempt is
| great. In this case, the syllable F exists in Latin and I
| don't see why it.
|
| I must say, I have seen many many times a lack of
| interest to even attempt to pronounce of even write a
| name properly. One example which comes to my mind is
| Ghandi instead of Gandhi.
| felipelemos wrote:
| Funny enough in my native language (portuguese), the h
| have no meaning on both cases.
| natch wrote:
| Do you pronounce "Volvo" as "Fuhao" since it is Chinese
| owned now and that's their name for it there?
| atleta wrote:
| I found a YT video saying it's "wo er wo". Which suggests
| they have a hard time pronouncing it, which shouldn't
| come as a surprise given how different their phonemes
| are.
|
| Approximating it, because you can't pronounce it is one
| thing. Not giving a shit, even though you _do have the
| same word_ (i.e. folk) is another one.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| The realest of questions there. Or how Chinese bought
| Rover and renamed it to Roewe. It's a China-only brand
| now.
| ike77 wrote:
| I would agree for a physical person name.
|
| But for a brand definitely not. It's the job of the brand
| creators to make sure that the name can be read and
| pronounced in the various target markets.
| chefkoch wrote:
| To be fair, when the brand was created the germans wanted
| to change the target markets.
| sillyquiet wrote:
| To re-iterate my point, it's not about 'respect' (respect
| for whom, exactly and why?) it's about communication.
|
| If I were trying to say the word 'Volkswagen' to a German
| speaking person, I would do my best to pronounce it in a
| way they would understand. As most of the time I ever say
| the word 'Volkswagen' out loud it's to my fellow English
| speakers, pronouncing it in the expected English way
| seems way less pretentious and way more effective.
| mixedCase wrote:
| >seems way less pretentious
|
| Or you could help do your part in normalizing pronouncing
| things correctly instead of perpetuating the perception
| that it's somehow "pretentious".
| fastball wrote:
| They're speaking English. The correct pronunciation of a
| "V" is in fact to make the english "V" sound.
| Bud wrote:
| Nope. Proper nouns are to be pronounced in whatever way
| is dictated by the country of origin.
|
| Also, no, English is not very reliable when it comes to
| spelling vs. pronunciation.
|
| (Former diction teacher, here.)
| fastball wrote:
| I'm going to avoid being snarky and point out this is
| merely the way you taught it. There is not hard and fast
| rule that says you have to do it this way.
|
| Also, Vs are actually pretty consistent in English. Can't
| actually think of a word with a V where the V doesn't
| sound like a V.
| sillyquiet wrote:
| The pronunciation is _already_ normalized in English, and
| most people already pronounce it correctly in English for
| other English speakers.
|
| Expecting non-German people to speak with German
| pronunciation is plain arrogant.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _It is respectful to at least attempt to pronounce names
| from different cultures_
|
| In many cases, it is unnecessary and only makes the
| speaker look foolish.
|
| "Hyundai" is pronounces its own brand name differently in
| American and Korean TV commercials. Is Hyundai being
| disrespectful to Koreans?
|
| The goal is to communicate. Making communication more
| difficult is the opposite of the goal.
| libria wrote:
| > In many cases, it is unnecessary and only makes the
| speaker look foolish.
|
| Comedic skits touch on this [1][2] and though a
| caricature, I think they capture the gist of how it's
| perceived when attempted.
|
| I think it stems from a desire for "cultural wokeness"
| which is a good thing and has its place, but as you say
| when communication is the goal, speak the language of the
| receiver.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKGoVefhtMQ
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWMp_z7Jnxw
| mlyle wrote:
| In practice, if a name has a common pronunciation within
| English, you show _respect_ by using that pronunciation
| when speaking to native English speakers.
|
| Otherwise you just cause confusion. The adapted names
| have their own history.
|
| If you insist on saying Kobenhavn and not Copenhagen, you
| get to have a little pretentious discussion explaining
| what you meant to every person you talk to. Ditto for
| Folks-vagen.
| tchalla wrote:
| > In practice, if a name has a common pronunciation
| within English, you show respect by using that
| pronunciation when speaking to native English speakers.
|
| Here's how I read this. "We as an English speaking group
| will continue to not make an attempt to pronounce it
| right even if we can. Once we don't we will have a common
| pronunciation that doesn't fit the original one. Once it
| becomes common, we will get offended if it is not
| pronounced in the common way that we as a group chose to
| actively ignore in the first place. If the original
| speakers insist, we will call them pretentious."
| mlyle wrote:
| > If the original speakers insist, we will call them
| pretentious."
|
| Way to overreach way beyond what I originally said. If I
| was speaking to someone I knew was Dutch, of _course_ I
| would (try to) say "Kobenhavn." Then they'd probably
| laugh at me and we'd agree to call it Copenhagen. :P
|
| Or if I want to read your view in the worst possible
| way-- similar to how you've read mine-- "People who use
| the established pronunciation of a loanword or place in
| their native tongue are wrong. We should always seek to
| find where we are using words of foreign origin and
| correct them to be perfectly pronounced in their original
| tongue, even when this causes confusion and isn't helpful
| to people from the original place. Japanese gairaigo
| should be abolished and they should just say those words
| in the correct original English (or German or French).
| And those damn Frenchmen should stop calling the place I
| live Californie dans les Etats Unis, which is _nothing_
| like how I say it, and should stop calling me 'Michel'
| which sounds a whole lot like the female version of my
| name"
| tchalla wrote:
| I'd like to take a stock of how this conversation went.
|
| 1.0 (me) : "It is respectful to attempt pronunciation if
| possible".
|
| 1.1 (you) : "There is a common English pronunciation.
| It's pretentious if you don't use the common
| pronunciation. Show respect to the English speaker!"
|
| 1.2 (me) : "The common pronunciation exists because of
| the lack of attempt in the first place. It's not
| pretentious. "
|
| 1.3 (you) : "It is established, we should use common
| pronunciation"
|
| You turned the initial conversation about making an
| attempt to be kind and respectful towards non-English
| speakers into something else. Almost feels like victim
| blaming to me. Once again, to be clear - we should make
| an attempt. Just because there's an established
| pronunciation (or spelling) doesn't mean it is right.
| Overtime, established pronunciation can move towards the
| original pronunciation. The right pronunciation is what
| the speaker wants to have. You, me or the English society
| don't have any say in it. It doesn't matter if it is
| established or not. Going the extra mile in kindness
| helps; calling others pretentious because they ask you to
| empathise doesn't.
| mlyle wrote:
| Did you miss where I said:
|
| > you show respect by using that pronunciation when
| speaking TO NATIVE ENGLISH SPEAKERS.
|
| or
|
| > If I was speaking to someone I knew was Dutch, of
| course I would (try to) say "Kobenhavn."
|
| Because what you're accusing me of-- and the words you're
| putting in my mouth "There is a common English
| pronunciation. It's pretentious if you don't use the
| common pronunciation. Show respect to the English
| speaker!"-- make no sense in that context.
|
| German is full of exonyms. All languages are full of
| exonyms and weird pronunciations of foreign words. It is
| OK.
| da_big_ghey wrote:
| I know persons who are doing this in times. A example is
| a person I am knowing who say "Mexico" with Spanish
| accent. A first problem is this person is not a speaker
| of Spanish and so it is bothering on me for bad
| pronounsing and no interests in improvement and not in
| learning more Spanish. A second problem is it disruptes
| conversation when a person is slipping into different
| accent without reasoning. A third problem is it takes
| persons I am knowing who are not speaker of Spanish extra
| time for to process these remarks. I am not seeing any
| good reason. There exists also a difference between
| nation name, is fixed, and brand, for which the job is
| make friendly for a consumer.
| mlyle wrote:
| Yah. It can also sometimes be difficult to distinguish
| between an attempt to use the native pronunciation out of
| respect vs. mockery. I know people that if I heard them
| saying "Me-hi-co" it would almost certainly be to
| exaggerate foreignness and to be racist.
| fermienrico wrote:
| This is an unreasonable expectation. People should try
| but if they don't, there is no malice here.
|
| There are many languages around the world and it is
| impossible to remember every nuance of how to pronounce
| things. Ghandi is common pronounciation even in Germany.
| The Japanese might pronounce it something else.
| tchalla wrote:
| > Ghandi is common pronounciation even in Germany.
|
| I don't think it is an unreasonable expectation to write
| the word "Gandhi" as "Gandhi". That's how he wrote the
| name, that's how he signed it and that's the actual
| spelling. I can understand the difficulty in
| pronunciation but getting the name right while typing it
| out is unforgivable in this century.
| fermienrico wrote:
| I meant the pronunciation, not the spelling.
| sorokod wrote:
| English used to fragmented enough for v being pronounced
| as f as attested by the related "fox" and "vixen"
| gbil wrote:
| Pronunciation doesn't go like that but that is a big
| discussion for its own thread
|
| Funny remark though while watching the F1 Netflix show,
| Schumacher said his name like SchumaKer , hence the
| Engish Pronunciation which goes to show that he adapted
| to the audience.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| This is an issue I face from time to time when I'm
| (native German) in international calls and am talking
| about a German colleague ... I could pronounce properly
| German (while it's not too easy always for my mind to
| switch) or adapt to the way most others do (which often
| is English with an attempt to Germanize)
|
| Luckily due to video conferencing software printing my
| name on my image, I don't have to do that for my name, as
| I had to do in phone conference times.
| sillyquiet wrote:
| If I were trying to say the word 'Volkswagen' to a German
| person, I would do my best to pronounce it in a way they
| would understand.
|
| As most of the time I ever say the word 'Volkswagen' out
| loud it's to my fellow English speakers, pronouncing it
| in the expected English way seems way less pretentious
| and effective.
| SllX wrote:
| > Pronunciation doesn't go like that but that is a big
| discussion for its own thread
|
| Honestly it kinda does. I wince every time I hear emoji
| pronounced like imoji (where the e rhymes with tea)
| instead of emoji (where the e rhymes with meh), or
| pluralize Japanese nouns ("emojis" "sushis"). That said,
| this is a me problem. People are going to pronounce words
| in whatever way makes sense to them, where the emphasis
| goes, how it is pronounced, which vowels get emphasized
| or contracted together will change over time. There is a
| reason we don't all sound like Elizabethan-era Englishmen
| when we speak English.
|
| Even proper nouns such as names get adapted. How many
| different variations and pronunciations are there for the
| name "John" in Europe?
| themaninthedark wrote:
| >emoji pronounced like imoji (where the e rhymes with
| tea) instead of emoji (where the e rhymes with meh)
|
| I understand your pain(and also have very similar pain
| when English words were put into katakana) but for that
| example, it does make sense as for native English
| speakers, my assumption was that the emo- part of the
| word came from emote. https://www.merriam-
| webster.com/dictionary/emote
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emote
| SllX wrote:
| Mate, that's why I stated forthright that this is a me
| problem and made no bones about it.
|
| The "e" is from [Hui ] and "moji" from [Wen Zi ] ,
| transliterated as [emozi] , "e" + "moji" gets you
| "picture message". It was a stroke of luck that it was
| similar enough to emoticon to neatly fit into our
| existing lexicon and be understood at a glance by an
| English speaker, at least the gist of it. A picture
| message is a little bit different than an emote icon if
| you think about it because there's many more pictures
| which are not emotes per se, but can be used within a
| message alongside the emoting emoji. :)
| mikelward wrote:
| I was trying to figure out whether Charles Leclerc really
| pronounces it as he did in the show, and if so, for which
| audience (Italian? English?).
| schwap wrote:
| I've decided that it must be the 'correct' pronunciation
| because "Sharl LeclerK" doesn't make sense for either
| language.
| Aldipower wrote:
| Ei sink ju wud bi surpreist if Ei wud tok to ju leik sis.
| (I think you would be surprised, if I would talk to you
| like this.) German pronounced English. :)
| certifiedloud wrote:
| The text exaggerates your point a little bit.
|
| "ju" would be pronounced the same as "you" when speaking.
| And "Ei" would be just the same as "I". "wud" = would
| "leik" = like "tok" = talk "bi" = be All of the above
| would sound exactly the same when spoken.
| Aldipower wrote:
| Sanx fo klarrifing. Truu!
| theodric wrote:
| That's an excellent representation of a Dutch accent
| titzer wrote:
| Does it bother you when Germans say "zis"? German has no
| "th" sound, so "zis" is what they start with before they
| practice. It's similarly grating to Germans to hear their
| language mispronounced by others.
|
| And yet, English has an "f" sound. German has an
| extremely consistent spelling and essentially all "v"s
| are pronounced as "f". We share (the latin) alphabet, and
| English has absolutely no authority, given how
| inconsistent it is.
|
| Given that, I will say the voiced "V" when speaking
| English and the unvoiced, as necessary, speaking German.
| sillyquiet wrote:
| 'bother' me? No, not at all, the sounds are close enough
| I get the meaning, mostly from context.
|
| I am not sure why there should be an emotional factor
| here, as expecting everybody to conform to some
| pronunciation ideal they have no experience with is
| arrogant, to say the least.
| titzer wrote:
| Well you claimed that Americans are pronouncing it
| "perfectly correctly," and Germans might disagree. It's a
| German word which has been Americanized. The company
| mostly doesn't care, but there _is_ a single correct
| pronunciation in their native language. Insisting you are
| correct mispronouncing a foreign word because the letters
| look a certain way is just hubris.
| sillyquiet wrote:
| Americans are pronouncing the English word Volkswagen
| perfectly correctly yes. BECAUSE THEY ARE SPEAKING
| ENGLISH
| simondw wrote:
| > there is a single correct pronunciation in their native
| language
|
| But see, that's the point. We're not speaking German when
| we use a borrowed word in English. It's no longer a
| purely German word, despite its origins, just as
| "xylophone" isn't a mispronounced Greek word, nor "Handy"
| a misused and miscapitalized English word.
|
| That's not hubris, it's just descriptivism.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| > Does it bother you when Germans say "zis"?
|
| It just bothers the historical linguistics nerd in me
| that all the other Germanic languages (other than
| Icelandic) lost the beautiful Thorn and Edh sounds
| consonants :-)
|
| I've always found it interesting that the German
| approximation is "z" here when it could be "t" or "d",
| since that is what "th" sounds turned into in Old
| Franconian.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| No one cares what Germans think about people abusing
| their language. I personally have zero issues with
| accents or mispronunciations here and there by non-native
| speakers. That smells of "fear of the other" to me and
| taking easy potshots at people I consider my full equal
| isn't cool. If I feel a little "anger" then that's a
| fallacy in me not in their pronunciation. As long as I
| can understand we're good otherwise we'll work it out
| someway or other.
| disgrunt wrote:
| > Does it bother you when Germans say "zis"?
|
| Nope.
| jboy55 wrote:
| Sorry, but just noticed you were using an English-only
| term to describe the homeland of someone who doesn't live
| in your country. The correct term is Deutschland.
| theodric wrote:
| No, I am not bothered by someone having an accent when
| speaking a second language. It's just a thing, not a good
| or bad thing.
| gnulinux wrote:
| Accent is an inevitable part of second language speakers.
| I've lived in US most of my life, but English is not my
| native language and I started learning it around the age
| of 5 and at the age of 25 after living here more than 20
| years, I still have a distinct accent I can't get rid of.
| It's just the way things are, human brain seems to learn
| pronunciation differently when we're a child.
|
| This same goes for English speakers too. I know how
| Volkswagen is supposed to be pronounced (I know some
| German) but that's not the way English speakers would say
| it.
|
| I don't think there is anything to be bothered by any of
| this. This just adds to our diversity.
| trgn wrote:
| > It's similarly grating to Germans to hear their
| language mispronounced by others.
|
| Americans are generally very tolerant and patient with
| non-native speakers butchering proper english. So no,
| it's not nearly as grating to an American to hear people
| mispronounce english words than it might be for Germans.
| guitarbill wrote:
| Vice versa, it's interesting to me why German speakers
| tend to approximate the pronunciation of e.g. "think" as
| "sink", rather than "fink" or "vink". There's even some
| British accents where it sounds more like "fink". English
| is hard :D
| Bud wrote:
| Um, that doesn't make an incorrect pronunciation correct.
| That's not how anything works.
| sillyquiet wrote:
| The point is that it _is_ a correct pronunciation in
| English, as Volkswagen is _also_ an English word.
| virgil_disgr4ce wrote:
| Volkswagen is not an English word though
| sillyquiet wrote:
| It most certainly is an English proper noun.
| nmstoker wrote:
| It has been adopted to a degree. Just like you don't need
| to say Paris as "Pari" in an imitation of the French
| pronunciation (which would probably sound rather affected
| and twee in English if you did)
|
| Anyway, let's hope they make reliable electric vehicles
| (as their combustion engine cars have traditionally been)
| otherwise people may render it as Faultswagen
| madengr wrote:
| I don't think Volkswagen is reliable (nor any German
| car), at least compared to Japanese cars.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| faultswagen.com is unregistered; anyone?
|
| https://www.namecheap.com/domains/registration/results/?d
| oma...
| jodrellblank wrote:
| Somebody took it!
| bloak wrote:
| Typically the capital city has an English name, which is
| often not just pronounced differently but also spelt
| differently from the local name. But for almost every
| other town English speakers use the same spelling, or a
| transcription of it, and aim for something like the local
| pronunciation. So for France, there's "Paris" and
| "Strasbourg" and that's about it. For Germany, there's
| "Berlin" and "Munich" and that's about it. But for some
| reason loads of Italian towns have their own English
| name: Venice, Milan, Naples, Florence, Turin, ...
| kgwgk wrote:
| Strasbourg?
|
| Note as well that Turin and Milan are the names in the
| local (regional) language.
|
| Edit: And Munich is almost identical to Munichen which is
| the old form of Munchen. Cologne could have been a better
| example (but it also comes directly from French, like
| Rome, Florence or Naples).
| NullPrefix wrote:
| How to pronounce jalapeno?
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| ?Como pronunciar jalapeno? ;-) Halapeinyo ;-)))
| mastre_ wrote:
| The _i_ in your _pei_ shan 't be there, the sound is a
| flat _peh_. All of the syllables are flat sounds, _hah-
| lah-peh-nyo_.
| atleta wrote:
| Nope. It's not about using similar phonemes instead of
| the actual ones a German would use. It's trying to
| pronounce the wrong word/name. The name doesn't start
| with a V but with an F. It's just written with a V. It's
| nothing Americans can't pronounce.
|
| If you argued that you can't pronounce 'Wagen' as the
| Germans do ("'va:gn", according to Wikipedia), that would
| be a different thing. But we're not talking about that.
|
| Indeed, the word, i.e. folk, you are not willing to
| pronounce happen to exist in English as well and can mean
| the same (or very similar) thing. "Volk" (i.e. "wolk")
| OTOH doesn't mean anything in either languages. (It does
| mean wolf in Russian, though ;) )
|
| People's car or you could say "Folk's Wagon" (or maybe
| "Folks' Wagon"). Yeah, weird choice of words and won't
| exactly sound like it was German but close enough, kind
| of meaningful and nothing you couldn't pronounce. Just
| remember to write is as VolksWagen.
| jfengel wrote:
| I never did quite master what the Germans do with their
| "n"s. I live near Washington and can never quite master
| their pronunciation of that, either.
| cardiffspaceman wrote:
| Some Americans have pronounced it "Voltswagen", not sure
| why.
|
| I wonder if it would be less confusing to Germans if we
| used "Fow Vay" to pronounce the abbreviation. Instead of
| "Vee Double-You." I'm not being sarcastic, but I don't
| think a change to the correct pronunciation is likely.
| minxomat wrote:
| Double-You is just ridiculous in the first place. I
| cringe a bit every time I have to say "AWS", but that's
| just because it's much smoother in German.
| sudosteph wrote:
| Do you actually pronounce it like "double-you" (with 3
| syllables) in that context?
|
| I'm a native speaker from the US South, and hadn't
| realized this until I read your comment. For me, the "W"
| always gets shortened to "dub-you" in AWS (or "dubya" if
| I'm not being picky about it). Standalone, I might
| pronounce "W" more like "dub-a-you if I'm emphasizing it,
| but not usually.
|
| Anyhow, thanks for pointing this out. I will also now
| forever think that "double-you" is ridiculous.
| jessaustin wrote:
| "AWS" ends up being more like "ay-dub-yes", doesn't it?
| wizzard wrote:
| I'm a native speaker from the north and west US and it's
| definitely "double-u". A double-u S. In my experience
| only Southerners shorten it the way you describe.
| protomyth wrote:
| They most certainly did not want Americans pronouncing it
| in German when they came to the US after WWII. Hell, they
| called them Victory Wagon at first.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Maybe they grew tired of Americans pronouncing it wrong_
|
| Americans learned how to pronounce "Volkswagen" from 50
| years of Volkswagen's own advertising. They didn't just
| make it up on their own.
| max-ibel wrote:
| Obligatory reference:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MUsVcYhERY
|
| Edit: more complete version.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Ya, this is like releasing superbowl ads weeks out now so
| they don't get lost in the flurry of activity a few days out
| cyral wrote:
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/30/22357166/volkswagen-name-...
|
| > The proximity of the name change to April Fool's Day
| initially raised suspicions that it was just a joke. But VW
| insists that it's a real thing, so here we are.
| HenryKissinger wrote:
| Until companies insistence that this the real thing becomes
| itself part of the joke.
| spathi_fwiffo wrote:
| Maybe the most brilliant time to rebrand; always have that
| "it was really just a joke" line to fall back on.
| stingrae wrote:
| they got the twitter account voltswagen verified,
| https://twitter.com/voltswagen. which makes me believe it is
| real.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _" The company was apparently planning to make the
| announcement at the end of April but accidentally published a
| press release about the name change early Monday afternoon,
| which was first spotted by CNBC before it was taken down. The
| proximity of the name change to April Fool's Day initially
| raised suspicions that it was just a joke. But VW insists
| that it's a real thing, so here we are."_
|
| Sounds to me like a publicity stunt -- they "accidentally
| published" a press release a month early? Sorry, that doesn't
| happen.
|
| Seems like trying to generate buzz on social media, then
| they'll quietly "decide" not to change the name after all,
| but people associating VW with electric cars more so --
| mission accomplished.
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| Huh, why does the name change have to be announced 2-3 days
| before in your world? They would need to send new
| stationery and signage to dealers, so the chatter would
| start in the coming week or 2 anyway... Why not pre-empt
| that with a press release.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I didn't say anything like that, where did you get "2-3
| days" from or "signage"?
|
| VW themselves said they didn't plan to put out the press
| release for a _month_. They didn 't say _anything_ about
| the timing of "stationery or signage".
|
| Did you mean to reply to a different comment...?
| __david__ wrote:
| You find it that hard to believe that someone typed the
| wrong date into a CMS?
| sib wrote:
| No, but I find it very hard to believe that a gigantic
| company had a press release finalized and sitting in a
| CMS a month in advance, just waiting for time to pass.
|
| (Source: have worked in 3 large public companies and seen
| how these things come down to the wire with approvals
| from PR, Marketing, IR, Legal, Country Leadership,
| Corporate, etc...)
| crazygringo wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| If I had a dollar for every press release at every public
| company that was written and finalized a _month_ in
| advance...
|
| ...I 'm pretty sure I'd have zero dollars.
| rriepe wrote:
| It turns out that they did.
|
| https://nypost.com/2021/03/30/vw-says-voltswagen-rebrand-was...
| devy wrote:
| No, it's not a joke. https://electrek.co/2021/03/29/its-not-
| april-fools-yet-vw-wi...
| manigandham wrote:
| The whole thing was an elaborate joke:
| https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/30/volkswagens-name-change-of-u...
| mgerullis wrote:
| Kinda sums up their efforts so far on electrical vehicles.
| arcturus17 wrote:
| I thought the same, it sounds completely ridiculous.
| [deleted]
| TLightful wrote:
| Entirely appropriate for the new direction.
|
| I dig it ... (speaking as someone who still sees their
| average cars as steam engine, emission test defeaters)
| treis wrote:
| >I dig it
|
| At least there's two of us amongst the sea of ridiculue.
| airstrike wrote:
| Make that 3. I'm not going to go out and buy their car,
| but I don't see how this is ridiculous in any way. 50
| years from now, people may look back and think "yes, that
| was the moment that really marked their switch to EVs"
| mortenjorck wrote:
| This is the Long Island Iced Tea Corp. to Long Blockchain Corp.
| stunt-rebrand, writ large.
|
| They're still called Long Blockchain; they even changed their
| ticker symbol to LBCC. I wonder if VW will be as committed.
| zeeZ wrote:
| I've seen mention that this was initially supposed to be
| released on April 29 and gone out March 29 by accident, so...
| Yes?
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| For the S&G of r/woosh:
|
| In the latest tz, it's currently:
|
| 05:44:48 UTC+14 Wednesday, March 31, 2021
| troelsSteegin wrote:
| You mean like jokeswagen? http://voltswagen.com/ is a parked
| domain, no pun intended, so I think it's all hype.
| pulse7 wrote:
| They will pay premium for not snapping the domain name first
| and then releasing their PR peace...
| laurensr wrote:
| Looks like the domain was already registered in 2003:
| https://whois.domaintools.com/voltswagen.com
| troelsSteegin wrote:
| Agreed. The Post says it's no joke: https://www.washingtonp
| ost.com/business/2021/03/30/voltswage...
| whoisthemachine wrote:
| I think it's likely they're feeling that their EV product isn't
| compelling enough to stand out on its own, so they need to do
| something ridiculous to capture attention and hopefully gain
| market share in the EV market.
| Shivetya wrote:
| they may not even have the site by the name registered
| mc32 wrote:
| Oh, darn.
|
| They could have made it WOKESWAGON for the youth of today
| powered by the minds of tomorrow.
| [deleted]
| alexaholic wrote:
| The joke is the cars will run on electric current during lab
| testing, and burn fuel during normal operation
| jeffrallen wrote:
| Ouch, that's one of those "ha ha only serious" kind of jokes.
| dathinab wrote:
| Supposedly they insist on it not being a joke.
|
| But Voltswaken, honstely if that isn't a joke it's sad. It is
| basically guaranteed to be a typo crisis. I can just say have
| fun, to all the banks and other companies doing business with
| it.
| rriepe wrote:
| They're now saying that it was in fact a joke.
| cpach wrote:
| Source?
| travismark wrote:
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/messaging-says-vw-usa-to-
| rebran...
| trey-jones wrote:
| Surely this is it. I know that the wold today can be a bit
| stupid, but this is too much.
| mikece wrote:
| What is the relative difference in emissions between a gasoline-
| powered car and an electric car that is recharged by power from a
| coal-burning plant?
| strict9 wrote:
| Gasoline will always come from dead dinosaurs and plants but
| electricity doesn't come from 100% coal. And the ratio dropping
| changing fast as other forms get more inexpensive.
| mikece wrote:
| Gasoline also comes from corn or anything else that can be
| distilled to ethanol. For greater calorific efficiency we
| should be looking to biodiesel as the environmental side
| effects are as minimal, you get more miles per gallon (km per
| liter), and the production of biodiesel via algae can happen
| efficiently in places not currently used for livestock
| grazing or growing crops.
| quonn wrote:
| Besides the fact that a coal-burning plant is more efficient,
| one difference is a cleaner city. Another difference is that it
| can be charged from other sources, e.g. solar at home. Another
| difference is that the grid is typically a mix, not just coal.
| And another difference is that the battery is basically an
| abstraction which abstracts away the power supply so this
| becomes a different (easier) problem to fix.
| mint2 wrote:
| If you want to know there's plenty of reliable sources like the
| doe (and if you want confirmation bias rather than facts,
| there's plenty of unreliable sources)
|
| Last time someone made a comment like yours, I actually tried
| googling and there's a doe site that actually tells you the
| carbon emissions by state for an ev, hybrid or normal gas car
| given that states specific energy sources.
|
| Even W Virginia, the worst state I could find, having about 90%
| coal, gives much lower emissions for an ev than a gas car. And
| that's with the current mix. It's only getting better from
| here. And that's the worst state!
|
| Here you go
| https://afdc.energy.gov/vehicles/electric_emissions.html
| mikece wrote:
| Thank you: this is EXACTLY the kind of information for which
| I was looking!
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| here's an article I usually reference when this kind of
| question comes up:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20170417164448/https://www.vanco...
|
| tldr; In dirty electricity regions, driving
| on electricity creates similar climate pollution to gasoline.
| Regions that burn mostly coal and natural gas to generate
| electricity create high levels of climate pollution for each
| kWh. In Alberta, for example, a Plug-In Prius will cause a
| similar amount of climate pollution driving on gasoline as it
| does driving on Alberta's electricity. Some
| electric car owners have worked around this problem by putting
| up their own solar panels, or by purchasing cleaner electricity
| directly from their utility.
| mikece wrote:
| Thank you: this is EXACTLY what I was looking for!
| oarsinsync wrote:
| Assuming this is a good faith question, the pollution generated
| by ICE cars driving 1+ metre away from me pollutes the air I
| breathe in a much more concentrated way than the pollution
| generated by a power plant 10+ miles away.
|
| Air pollution in cities is a real problem that nobody really
| talks about because there's no easy solutions.
|
| I don't drive an EV, because it's not practical / affordable
| for me yet. I hope this changes soon.
| AYBABTME wrote:
| Why do you find it useful to bring up this trope which is only
| tangentially related to the post?
| mikece wrote:
| If WV's point is that they are emphasizing their they make
| electrical cars, and the assumption is that those are better
| for the environment than all other cars, then it's fair to
| question that assumption. If 90%+ of our power came from
| zero-carbon sources like nuclear then it would be a fair
| point but we're a LONG way from that.
| srg0 wrote:
| > If 90%+ of our power came from zero-carbon sources like
| nuclear then it would be a fair point but we're a LONG way
| from that.
|
| Energy production in EU-27 in 2020: 38% renewables
| (growing), 25% nuclear, 37% fossil fuels (decreasing).
| That's already 63% from zero-carbon sources.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| I'm mostly surprised they haven't just rebranded to VW. Kentucky
| Fried Chicken did the same thing years ago.
| RedComet wrote:
| What is it they say on reddit...
|
| "thanks, I hate it"
| de6u99er wrote:
| They should rename it to Folks-Wagon.
| Tade0 wrote:
| I think Speed-Wagon would catch on among the younger
| generations.
| _jal wrote:
| Then they should release a model called the Reo.
| drewzero1 wrote:
| Heck, why not bring back Oldsmobile while we're at it?
| mikestew wrote:
| I'm pretty sure you meant Baby Boomers, not "younger
| generations":
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REO_Speedwagon
| Tade0 wrote:
| I'm referring to a very different Speedwagon.
| mikestew wrote:
| Guess who the Baby Boomer is who did not know there was a
| third option for "Speedwagon"?
|
| _(First two options are the rock band, and the proto-
| truck from the early 20th century which the band was
| named after.)_
| mikece wrote:
| If memory services, that marque is owned by General Motors
| and the modern version of the Speedwagon are GMC trucks.
| Would be catchy to actually release a new vehicle with the
| Speedwagon model name.
| Aeronwen wrote:
| Reo as Ransom Eli Olds' second car company, the first one
| is what became the Oldsmobile divison of GM. But GM never
| owned Reo.
|
| Supposedly Volvo owns the name now.
| flyingfences wrote:
| That's literally what the name has been since the company was
| founded.
| akmarinov wrote:
| That's literally the joke.
| justusthane wrote:
| It's also literally not a very good joke.
| [deleted]
| CHsurfer wrote:
| Folks-Vagon
| Gravityloss wrote:
| Walt's Wagon http://www.rvnetlocator.com/PHOTOS/15/0624/1839/
| 1024x768/150...
| jedberg wrote:
| Ok this is kinda brilliant. Almost everyone already refers to
| them as "VW", which will still be accurate after the name change.
|
| So they get the media boost of the brand name change without
| actually having to suffer any hit from lack of recognition.
| fy20 wrote:
| BP tried something similar in the early 2000s, but abandoned
| the new name after their incidents in the following decade:
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottcarpenter/2020/08/04/bps-n...
| exikyut wrote:
| Wow, they actually did it. I'm kind of impressed.
| chromatin wrote:
| Please tell me someone in marketing released the Apr 1 press
| release a bit too soon?
| kbos87 wrote:
| The same thought crossed my mind. Then I thought - could they
| have done this now to gauge feedback, stick with it if it
| works, and write it off as an April fools joke if there's too
| much backlash? That feels like the next level of chess here :)
| mustafa_pasi wrote:
| Or on purpose before the news gets inundated with other stunts.
| socialist_coder wrote:
| But the German company is still called Volkswagen?
| ivankolev wrote:
| I can't wait for my voltswagen to toll my mobile ohm ;)
| samblr wrote:
| Volkswagen to Voltswagen
|
| By having 'Volts' can they can grow market share ?
|
| Can anybody think of a similar name change that worked before ?
| maverwa wrote:
| Long Island Iced Tea, or Long Blockchain, comes to mind:
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-21/crypto-cr...
| samblr wrote:
| Wow for real.
| [deleted]
| Tepix wrote:
| According to at least one German media site it's an April fool's
| joke that was released prematurely.
|
| https://www.t-online.de/finanzen/news/unternehmen-verbrauche...
|
| However there are now several other sites claiming it is not a
| joke.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| Well, if that doesn't signal the end of combustion consumer
| vehicles, I don't know what does!!
| [deleted]
| bilater wrote:
| April Fool's
| [deleted]
| interestica wrote:
| So we have car companies who can trace their names to Alessandro
| Volta and Nikola Tesla.
|
| Up for grabs: Andre-Marie Ampere? Faraday? Edison?
| mdelias wrote:
| https://www.evfaraday.com/
| decafninja wrote:
| Faraday and Edison is already taken. See: Faraday Futures,
| Edison Motors
| amelius wrote:
| Maxwell
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell_automobile
|
| Interesting:
|
| > Maxwell was one of the first car companies to market
| specifically to women.
| hinkley wrote:
| Maxwell should produce an electric motorcycle called the
| Demon.
| js8 wrote:
| Henry Ford!
| ignoranceprior wrote:
| Watt? Joule?
| S_A_P wrote:
| Virtuesignaling of America is how I interpret this. How about
| General Electric Motors next? Voltvo? Big Mega Watts?
|
| Im all for electrification where it makes sense, but this seems
| like a bad pun more than a good idea.
| ppf wrote:
| >the ID.4 is the first product to be sold nationwide that
| confirms the company's commitment to sustainable mobility.
|
| Exactly what about the mass extraction of lithium is at all
| sustainable to provide the energy storage for all motorised
| personal transport?
| JBiserkov wrote:
| Coming soon: Voltvo, Chevoltlet, BMV, Tovolta, ..
| p1mrx wrote:
| > Tovolta
|
| "It's electrifying!"
| tigerlily wrote:
| Next they'll appoint a Technoting.
| GhostVII wrote:
| > Founded in 1955, Voltswagen of America, formerly Volkswagen of
| America, Inc., is an operating unit of Volkswagen Group of
| America and a subsidiary of Volkswagen AG
|
| So Voltswagen is a unit of Volkswagen Group of America? That's
| not confusing to say at all... I feel like having your
| subsidiaries name differ by one letter (which both looks and is
| pronounced similarly) is a bold choice. Too bad, I liked the
| Volkswagen name.
| burlesona wrote:
| I don't know if anyone else took like 3 paragraphs to realize
| this, but point is Volkswagen is is _changing their name_ to
| Voltswagen -- as in VOLTS wagon - as in electricity.
|
| I hate to admit this but I somehow couldn't see the change until
| I got to this quote:
|
| "We might be changing out our K for a T, but what we aren't
| changing is this brand's commitment to making best-in-class
| vehicles for drivers and people everywhere," said Scott Keogh,
| president and CEO of Voltswagen of America.
|
| Also, apparently not an early April Fool's joke: they confirmed
| the name change to Car and Driver:
| https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a35970854/vw-name-change-v...
| rkagerer wrote:
| I'm in Canada and my last car was a Volkswagen Eos. I'm unlikely
| to buy another VW, for reasons which have nothing to do with the
| emissions scandal.
|
| A few years ago I had to spend ~$10k to replace all the roof
| seals and repair damage after water leaked into the interior. I
| bought the vehicle new and diligently lube the seals according to
| the owners manual.
|
| Last month my girlfriend found a piece of a suspension spring
| that broke off. I took it into the dealer, who replaced the front
| springs and shocks. I specifically asked them to check the rear
| ones, which they said were fine. Also asked about any
| undercarriage rust, which they said wasn't bad, and in line with
| what they'd expect for a 10 year old car.
|
| Two weeks later this larger chunk of a rear spring fell off while
| I was driving:
|
| https://m.imgur.com/a/uHhdD1p
|
| I've had other minor issues. eg. Ever since the new seals were
| installed, one window sometimes takes multiple tries to close
| right, despite several attempts to correct.
|
| It's a fun little car and the Service department has been very
| accommodating, but all in all the money I've spent on repairs
| could easily have paid the bump to buy the BMW hardtop instead.
|
| After the last incident I bought a Toyota RAV4 with green
| Consumer Reports reliability ratings across the board. VW has a
| lot to prove if they want me back as a customer.
| outside1234 wrote:
| ... and it turns out this was actually an April's Fools joke.
|
| And, right on brand, VW screwed up the execution...
| melvinram wrote:
| Imagine telling someone in 2003 that this was going to happen. It
| would have been seen as a joke (as some are seeing it today) or
| something that absolutely wouldn't happen.
|
| If this is not a joke, this seems like the best indicator that
| Tesla is meeting it's mission to "accelerate the world's
| transition to sustainable energy."
|
| Tip of the hat to Elon.
| balozi wrote:
| Reminds me of the Netflix / Qwikster fiasco. They can still
| transform without changing their name. Less effort and resource
| on PR, more effort on the sustainability part.
| croes wrote:
| It's more like Volkswagen's attempt to get rid of the bad PR
| from the emission cheat scandal. Without that electronic cars
| wouldn't be on VW's agenda.
| shrimpx wrote:
| I don't believe that at all. These giant companies are not
| just in the business of fending off bad PR, they're looking
| to make a lot of money for their investors, for decades to
| come.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| Isn't it more likely that it's just electric's time? Like when
| you see a bunch of people inventing similar things, not because
| they're copying the first person, but the rest of the context
| is such that the invention is finally important and achievable?
| Maybe I'm just being contrarian, but I feel like this "first
| mover was a visionary compared to the second or third" thing is
| like the Great Person theory of history and overdone.
|
| And people will twist it either way. A second mover doesn't
| appear soon, so the first is way ahead, or a second mover does
| appear, so it must be because of the first's influence.
| jonplackett wrote:
| Just checking the calendar. Nope not April 1st yet!
| barbazoo wrote:
| It is a premature April fools joke.
| myself248 wrote:
| For decades, people have been doing DIY EV conversions based on
| the VW Beetle, and the colloquial term for them has been
| "Voltswagens".
|
| It's surreal to see it embraced by a company that, just a few
| years ago, was pushing diesel to the point of a planet-scale
| fraud.
|
| First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight
| you, then... you win?
| duxup wrote:
| I'm no fan of the fraud but I'm happy to see the agility /
| change.
| ape4 wrote:
| Watt the heck
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| Amp-ing up the marketing efforts.
| philk10 wrote:
| Shocking, but they have to stay current and have no capacity
| to resist
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| Maybe they'll start making trains. Then they can have a
| conductor between two points.
| webmaven wrote:
| That seems like it would generate publicity, all right.
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| General Motors will follow-suit with Electric Motors.
|
| General Electric will follow-suit by doing nothing.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| They should also rebrand their Audi brand to "Odd-e"
| Vrondi wrote:
| Early April Fools' joke?
| bfgoodrich wrote:
| (Yes this comment with be dead because dang is a sniveling,
| right-wing bitch)
|
| Look at these hilariously stupid comments. During the same period
| while TSLA is languishing, VW has risen 60%+. They've gone all in
| on electric cars, and are committing to it.
|
| "Hurrr, is it April fools....gurrr gurrr"
| danans wrote:
| A shocking change in their current direction. One hopes they have
| the capacity to close the circuit on this. But beyond this press
| release, they really have to charge forward to transform
| themselves.
| Hamuko wrote:
| I first thought that it was a pretty poor decision considering
| the brand value of Volkswagen, but then I remembered that I've
| used the phrase "Volkswagen engineering" at work to refer to a
| suggestion that we optimise our application to work better in
| customer benchmarks.
| [deleted]
| chrischen wrote:
| Is this an April fools joke? https://www.reuters.com/article/us-
| volkswagen-name/volkswage...
|
| First fake emissions scandal... now fake name change?
| adaisadais wrote:
| _April Fools_
| fraculto09 wrote:
| High time, should've done that in 1945.
| eric_b wrote:
| I think names are more important than people think. I am frankly
| shocked they would make this change (assuming it's not an April
| Fool's joke)
|
| This has to be the worst branding move I've ever seen, with the
| exception maybe of Netflix and Qwikster
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