Brandjack News

By Quentin Langley

There have been many scandals in business, politics and pretty much every field of life. This one at VW is breathtaking in its scope.

The deception seems not to be a matter of opinion. This is not Shell taking optimistic estimates of oil reserves and treating them as something proven. 

It is not a junior employee putting a thumb on the scales. Software was built into VW's diesel models. The device that cut emissions during tests doesn't seem to have been created solely for that purpose, but the software that detected the tests and shifted the engine to clean mode does seem to have been created simply to rig the tests.

This is worse than rigging the tests at the factory since this deception necessarily required considerable prior planning. It couldn't have been a spur of the moment decision to hide a temporary problem. 

Presumably the cars are not designed to run on this clean mode all of the time. It retains emissions – since this is diesel, I would guess particulates – during the test in order to expel them later. But if you can design a system with this level of sophistication why is it so hard to design something which retains the particulates permanently and is constantly engaged? I am sure there is an engineering answer to that. Perhaps it would have fuel efficiency or performance. But there is no answer which addresses the serious ethical breaches on display here.

This is both a public affiars and a marketing issue. VW has set out – presumably at a strategic level – to deceive both regulators and consumers. 

It will take a very long time to earn back that trust.