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Worse Than A Crime (Gwen Moritz Editor’s Note)

4 min read

As I have confessed in this space before, I am suspicious but not devious. This combination has created in me a lifelong fascination with crime stories. Criminals confirm my worst suspicions about my fellow man, but their crimes often surprise and fascinate me because I’m not devious enough to think up schemes and plots. I’m not even creative enough to write fiction.

While it hasn’t been declared a crime, my latest devious fascination is with Volkswagen. Cheating on its diesel emissions test is not as tragic as General Motors’ decade-long cover-up of a defective ignition switch design that resulted in some 125 known deaths. That has been prosecuted as a crime — albeit one in which no actual persons were prosecuted, as is the federal government’s habit with big corporate criminals — and it may qualify as evil.

The only thing GM has going for it is I don’t think anyone actually set out to create a deadly ignition switch. Volkswagen, on the other hand, definitely did set out to lie and cheat on a massive scale. Code was specifically written so that the onboard computer would tell the engine to trap much more nitrogen oxide only when the emissions were being tested. When the cars were actually being driven, the computer knew to open up that trap and let ’er rip, because drivers can detect engine performance and fuel efficiency, but they have to take NOx levels on faith.

But, as NPR reported, there was much more to this scheme than just writing some code.

“It’s both writing the code, but you also need to do validation. So someone had to take these vehicles out, test them on the standard test cycle, make sure that the emission controls are supposed to be working when they’re supposed to be working,” John German of the International Council on Clean Transportation told NPR.

Figuring out a way to pass a test that VW couldn’t honestly pass was just the start. The company then created a whole fictitious marketing strategy around its fraudulent emissions tests.

And everyone believed it was true — great performance, high mileage, environmentally friendly. Even normally suspicious reporter types bought in. As recently as March, Car & Driver advertising critic Don Klein was praising VW’s “Golden Sisters” ads for humorously driving home the fact that “today’s diesels are clean, quiet, and powerful.”

Except, you know, that clean part wasn’t a fact. And those commercials, which really were terrific, have been pulled from the airwaves and even from the Internet.

It was a high-reward strategy for VW. Oh, not in the U.S., where only about a half-million Vee-Dub diesels were outfitted with the test-cheating equipment, but in Europe, where the balance of 11 million cheatmobiles were sold.

But the high reward came with high risk — and not just to the (presumably) few VW employees who knew the truth. The cost of retrofitting will be enormous, and in the meantime VW diesels are simply not being sold. But all that may pale in comparison with the lost value of the brand, which has had a quirky appeal in the U.S. for half a century and an almost cult-like loyalty among owners.

I have a friend who used to brag endlessly on Facebook about his VW diesel, which was not his first. Then last week, on another road trip, he posted this bittersweet status update: “44 dirty, sooty, polluting mpg. Thanks, VW, for sullying my automotive virtue.”

Lying to the government might be a crime. Lying to the customers who buy your product is worse than a crime. It’s bad business.

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It wasn’t a government agency that nailed Volkswagen. It was some geeks at West Virginia University with a small grant from the International Council on Clean Transportation.

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In that interview with NPR, the ICCT’s John German made a comment that applies to all facets of human life, not just cheating on diesel emissions tests:

“You take a little step, you don’t get caught. So yeah, you take another little step. And then maybe you don’t even realize how far over the line you are.”

Whenever human beings are involved, there will be waste, fraud and abuse. This is true in business, in government, at your church and even in your family. The key is to build strong systems that anticipate the inevitable and punish those who take advantage of any weaknesses in the system.


Gwen Moritz is editor of Arkansas Business. Email her at GMoritz@ABPG.com.
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