Comment on Job losses likely at VW as the people’s car brand becomes uncompetitive

Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

• AbidanYre@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  brand-wide emissions cheating scandal

  To be fair, didn’t it eventually come out that pretty much everyone was cheating? VW just got caught first.

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  • grue@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    To be even fairer, having such overly-strict emissions standards for diesels was a bad idea to begin with. Destroying diesels and forcing everyone into gasoline cars instead saved a little bit of pollutants like soot, NOx, and SOx, sure, but came at the expense of much lower efficiency/higher greenhouse gas emissions.

    The worst part is that biodiesel burns much cleaner than dino-diesel, but isn’t compatible with the fancy injection systems and emissions equipment on “clean diesel” engines. If we had let them keep building the same circa-2000 engine tech, we could’ve cleaned up the whole fleet at once simply by switching out the fuel (while still keeping the same high efficiency and reducing GHG emissions to net-zero because biodiesel is part of the short-term carbon cycle instead of the long-term one), but now we can’t because all the new engines break if you use more than 10% or so biodiesel in them.

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  • n2burns@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    At least in North America I think they were the only brand selling passenger vehicles diesel engines.

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  • Goronmon@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    To be fair, didn’t it eventually come out that pretty much everyone was cheating? VW just got caught first.

    Which other manufacturers were cheating?

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    • AbidanYre@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      …m.wikipedia.org/…/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal

      Check the “Other manufacturers” heading.

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    • gian@lemmy.grys.it ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Basically all of them.

      But this is what happen when you have rules set by people that think they can ignore physical laws and somehow make it work.

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  • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    To be fair, their reputation for having expensive parts fail right after the odometer ticked past the number on the warranty was earned long before dieselgate.

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    • AbidanYre@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Dieselgate really worked out for me. The car hadn’t started to break down yet and we were just starting to need a minivan when it all came out.

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• WashedOver@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  That was their identity that made them a high volume seller. It was simple and it was clear what their market position was. The line extensions into higher end never worked and required a new brand for these higher level offerings in the end. They never learned from this lesson. Brand identity can win the day but also lose it all for you when you try to shift from a popular product.

  A part of the issue is younger generations don’t necessarily know what goes on behind the scenes of their phones or laptops. They are shiny disposable products and this extends to their cars. If the product looks like the similar tech they interface with daily on their phones, it’s good for them. They won’t have the experience of simpler complex cars that broke down constantly from one thing or another or functions that just don’t work period because they cost way to much to fix.

  As much as I think vehicles should be made less complex and easier to service it might not be marketable beyond farmers or trades that do their own work on these things. Shiny and the latest tech is sexy and where sales are driven from.

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  • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    A part of the issue is younger generations don’t necessarily know what goes on behind the scenes of their phones or laptops.

    Damned millennials. Forcing VW to lower quality and cheat emissions like that.

    Shiny and the latest tech is sexy and where sales are driven from.

    How’s that working out for ol’ veedub?

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  • RunawayFixer@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Dacia sales keep increasing every year. This does show there is an increasing demand for simple cars.

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    • ominouslemon@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Or just cheap ones. VW and every other maistream cars are getting unaffordable.

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    • deleted@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Isn’t just a rebrand cars?

      Their duster model is a copy of Renault Duster. They didn’t even bother to change the name.

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      • RunawayFixer@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        I had never heard of Renault Duster before (nor seen one), so I looked it up. The Renault Duster is apparently a Dacia Duster with mostly cosmetic changes, for sale outside the eu, typically released later than the Dacia Duster is released in the eu. So it’s the same car, but different brand badges + cosmetics depending on the country were it’s sold. They are so similar, that I’d just call it the same car, not a copy.

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  • grue@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    The line extensions into higher end never worked and required a new brand for these higher level offerings in the end. They never learned from this lesson. Brand identity can win the day but also lose it all for you when you try to shift from a popular product.

    I’m not sure what you mean by this. Are you saying that VW didn’t understand they needed a luxury brand for higher-end cars? 'Cause they’ve got Audi, Porsche, Lamborghini and Bentley…

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    • WashedOver@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Yes but at first they tried to release the high end product under the VW brand. The Phaeton was one of the best engineered vehicles failures ever produced as many did not want to buy a higher end car with the VW economy badge on it. Brand does count for a lot even when a lower economy brand has a superior made product, the masses cannot always move beyond that. I’m sure there are many that lived that VW Phat on and were happy for owning it, but commercially it didn’t fit.

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      • grue@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        The Phaeton was a weird aberration that I agree should’ve been a different brand, but it definitely wasn’t “at first.” Audi had been owned by VW for decades before the Phaeton came out.

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