Dieselgate: The Volkswagen Emissions Scandal

look I'll be real with you RC our stories is an exercise in Monday morning quarterbacking in a general sense I don't do many recent stories because oftentimes those stories don't really have conclusions which would prevent me from being able to really comment on them in any sort of insightful way since well things are still in motion this is not to say I've never done an RC R story which lacked formal closure but for the most part there's a beginning and a middle coupled with an ending that gives a clear indication of where the story goes once I stopped covering it the Chrysler merger was a disaster and so was cash for clunkers but the stories themselves were cautionary tales for regulatory incompetence cash for clunkers reshaped the auto industry into the 2010s and the death of Pontiac sparked debate over whether the brands GM chose to save were any more viable than the ones they killed and no we never found James Dean's Porsche 550 spider and I have no idea what ever happened to Liz Carmichael but those were complete stories detailing a rise and a fall suggesting there was nowhere else for the figures involved to go one because of an untimely death and another because of financial ruin the death of Mickey Thompson still has unanswered questions but a man was convicted of his murder while Thompson's legacy lives on through his son Danny and his personal brand and the accomplishments of a life well-lived and Lee Iacocca's RCR story was more of a look into the life of a man who never stopped believing the auto industry could be better even after he was no longer really a part of it it's not always ideal but at least I feel like I'm not leaving you hanging even if you can't really call some of these endings closure but current events are very much in flux even when years have passed there's a certain recency bias to how a story gets told when it hasn't been that long this brings me to a bit of a conundrum how do you cover a story like dieselgate when the entire tale is yet to be told this is an RCR story I've been wanting to do since I first started doing these years ago every time I told myself diesel gates coming next got a do diesel gate yet like covering the Arab oil crisis the idea of tackling all the socio-political implications involved sounds so far above my paygrade that I'd need to take cram amine to keep from getting sick I still don't think I could ever really do the Arab oil crisis justice as a result but with dieselgate the story always felt more accessible yet I kept thinking now it's better to wait until more information comes out one month became two two became six six became a year a year became three well technically four either way here we are and frankly I'm done waiting so how do you tell a story about an emissions debacle that ranks among the most infamous automotive scandals in history a story that's still in motion even as I speak right now well if you're listening to this it must mean I finish telling it this is our see our stories dieselgate the Volkswagen emissions scandal what is diesel Cade well it's the term given to the scandal surrounding Volkswagens attempts to cheat emissions tests in the wake of tightening environmental restrictions over the amount of nitrogen oxide a car could produce so let's go back a bit but not too far when the EPA announced they would be altering emission standards in the United States it caused automakers to take notice the new regulations would restrict the amount of nitrogen oxide that could legally be produced by a given vehicle with the plan being to limit diesel emissions over time the plan was announced in 1999 but the law didn't actually go into effect until over ten years later almost concurrently with cash for clunkers as 2009 proved to be a divisive period in American automotive history once the law went into action so did Volkswagen basically the German automakers cars were somehow passing regulatory testing despite no evidence that they'd changed all that much during the manufacturing process it seemed unlikely that this could be the case since like the construction of the second Death Star auto manufacturers were doubling that efforts to make certain they were in compliance at significant cost to their bottom line since none of this would be cheap - especially if any vehicles had to be reworked to comply with the new law could it be that Volkswagen was always in compliance and the testing results reflected the naturally low emissions of Volkswagen cars mmm no VW was fitting their vehicles with defeat devices that would allow them to pass regulatory testing these devices activated emissions controls during the test that would essentially mask the real nitrogen oxide output of each vehicle although calling them defeat devices is a bit of a misnomer since there was no observable Hardware that specifically allowed the cars to cheat emissions rather it was a change in software code that allowed a car to distinguish between lab testing conditions and real-world driving and adjust its emissions output accordingly so in reality not only was VW we in violation of the law but their vehicles were producing as much as 40 times the amount of nitrogen oxide according to a report by the EPA titled learn about Volkswagen violations specifically Volkswagen violated the Clean Air Act a federal law first mandated in 1963 with the goal of controlling air pollution and improving air quality through regulation according to the EPA's report Volkswagen faced allegations that they quote violated the Clean Air Act by the sale of approximately five hundred ninety thousand model year 2009 to 2016 diesel motor vehicles end quote that also utilized these defeat devices and as a result created significant excess air pollution in this case oxides of nitrogen okay so Volkswagen did something wrong and got away with it for far longer than they ever should have that much is clear but who cracked the case and brought the cheating scandal delight as it turns out it was a group that hadn't set out to uncover a scandal they were just doing research yep it was academics because who else you know it was 2013 and the International Council on clean transportation or the ICC T hired a team to record emissions output this team was comprised of academics from West Virginia University including Dan Carter the director of WVU Center for alternative fuels engines and emissions professors Gregory Thompson and Arvind Theo van Gotham and students mark Bosch and Hammond kappanna at the time none of these men realize just the magnitude of what they'd signed up for as theater Venga Dom told NPR in 2015 quote our happiness was Wow we're going to be the first guys to test feasel cars on the road and then after that when we were getting the data we were like okay we're going to write a lot of journal papers and we'll be happy if three people read these journal papers that's our happiness at that point end quote but the situation ballooned far beyond what anybody expected and it wouldn't have gotten to this point had the West Virginia University team not won the contract from the ICCP in the first place according to Phillip M Keyes article for Spiegel international titled the three students who uncovered dieselgate one of the benefits this team had that other researchers lacked was the presence of portable measuring equipment which was produced entirely in-house this gave the West Virginia University team the freedom to measure emissions in longer driving conditions out in the real world rather than in a laboratory setting although the team expected their budget of $200,000 to be met be ICCT only gave them $70,000 to work with with the goal being to test three or four diesel cars to find cars for their study the team utilized their connections with the California Air Resources Board or carb for short and made inroads with car rental companies offering more environmentally safe options so they rented a Volkswagen Jetta 2.0 TDI with a NOx trap a VW Passat 2.0 TDI with the selective catalytic reduction system and a BMW x5 3.0 diesel and I figured now would be as good a place as any to explain how the NOx trap and the selective catalytic reduction systems work and this is essentially how Besh Capanna and Darryl van Gotham explained it you see with the selective catalytic reduction system urea fluid is combined with exhaust fumes and that allows the NOx to be broken down into oxygen and nitrogen the latter of which would be relatively harmless but the bad part of this is that the cars would then need to be equipped with this tank specifically for the urea solution which would be called an ad blue tank which is fine except that it takes up a bunch of space and you got to refill it every couple thousand miles it's a pretty big added expense the NOx trap meanwhile or an ads or bur as some call it it essentially binds the NOx during the operation of the engine and when saturation capacity is reached for the ads or BER diesel fuel is injected in order to purge it as the Spiegel international article explains it the goal being that the NOx is then made to desorb into nitrogen now the negative with this part is that the technology really only works at high temperatures and it also deals with a high fuel consumption so you've essentially got this machine that is not as effective as the selective catalytic reduction but the positive is that you don't need to get this AdBlue tank in order to use it so it's also cheaper in a way and from here this is where we get to the troubling on the road testing from M keys article quote the emissions measuring device consumed a lot of electricity of connecting them to the cars own power supply would have interfered with the readings there were battery-powered devices but they tended to run out of juice after just an hour the students went to a hardware store and bought gasoline generators which they screwed onto particle board panels in the backs of the cars they channeled a generator exhaust through a tube out of the car window it was now impossible to hold a conversation inside the car because it was too loud and the generators had to be refilled constantly but the back seat of the car stuffed with measuring devices one of the students sat in the passenger seat with a laptop and another drove end quote so here you sort of see the problems that the team faced with the respective measuring systems that they chose to use you see you have the selective catalytic reduction system which is good but it requires this big tank and then you have the NOx trap which doesn't require the tank but it's pretty thirsty you know what I mean a September 24 2015 report by city lab titled the study that brought down Volkswagen elaborated further on how the tests were run quote the cars were warmed up before each test which is important because it's normal for a vehicle to spew higher NOx emissions when the engine first going they were also relatively new none exceeding 16,000 miles meaning there's no reason to think the emissions filters would have deteriorated from age and quote that is how they measured the vehicles in the study but what did they ultimately find well as City labs report said quote VW failed spectacularly NOx emissions for vehicle a the Jetta were 15 to 35 times higher than the EPA standards and those for vehicle B the Passat were five to twenty times higher and quote the bmw x5 had performed as anticipated by the team but the Passat was so wildly off-base that they saw more red flags than the Danish raised during the Olympic parade of Nations when it seemed like a foolproof strategy for cutting corners in evading the long salad fingers of the law had become a scandal the size of whatever we're canceling a celebrity for this week although the men knew that defeat devices were a thing they hadn't considered the possibility that a major auto manufacturer would actually utilize this type of software to beat the emissions tests but they eventually completed their 117 page report titled induce emissions testing of light duty diesel vehicles in the United States finally the team was ready to report their findings but was the automotive world really ready to hear them well yes and no let's do a little time travel you could pick any number of starting points for the dieselgate saga but I'm deciding to zero in on a man we lost fairly recently as of this video's publication Ferdinand PA an automotive legend who only just passed away on August 25th 2019 pH was a man whose name carried with it not only the magnitude of his bloodline but also a reputation for Stern governance and a no room for failure mentality born April 17th 1937 PA was the grandson of Ferdinand Porsche by way of Porsches daughter Louise pH somewhat modeled himself after his grandfather the man responsible for co-founding Volkswagen and creating the VW Beetle like his namesake P wished to be a business man in the automotive industry but also much more his career would later suggest the lengths to which he had to go in order to not only innovate but to sharpen the bottom line of the family business even if it meant fracturing those very familial connections but it makes a cold sort of sense that pH turned out the way he did when you consider his upbringing Ferdinand pH father Anton was a lawyer and eventual manager of Volkswagen Burke GmbH during World War two the wartime factory was supposedly a Dickensian hellhole for political prisoners and forced labourers from Poland Belgium Italy and other countries to say nothing of the concentration camp prisoners who were also put to work in service of the German war effort much of this is detailed in a 1996 book by hans mommsen and manfred greiger titled the Volkswagen factory and its workers in the Third Reich in which we learn that not only were pregnant women forced to work in the factory but mothers were forced back to work just two weeks or less after giving birth in the camp separated from their parents and placed in an orphanage ill-equipped to care for them no fewer than 350 children died during this war-torn period yet in his youth PA didn't seem to grasp the horrific conditions surrounding the family business at least according to his autobiography in fact the warm memories he recalls suggests he was all but oblivious and I get it he was a child his focus was less on the people and more on the machines it would seem as his autobiography suggested that the memories forged in that horrible factory would compel him to want to get into engineering in the first place hanging around the Machine surveying the factory spending time in a place of productive commotion riding the trains responsible for transporting production materials for weapons it inspired in Ferdinand the desire to be more hands-on than his father as he would later tell his dad that he wished to work in the factory rather than in some dreary office an excellent profile on the Porsche and pH families from Spiegel International titled the Porsche story of fierce family feud by deep Mahara neck details some of the issues that separated the blue collar PA family from the more privileged Porsche clan for instance Pei had a boarding-school upbringing intended to toughen him up as he would learn a lesson through his social and academic struggles that would carry over into his time in the auto industry namely as PA himself put it quote an extremely strong mistrust of others end quote and the recognition that certain things quote can only be achieved by doing them yourself because he can't rely on others and quote that is in comparison to the Porsche cousins who attended Waldorf schools where their education focused on the principles of anthroposophy developed by Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner long story short it basically amounted to well how do I explain it I guess the quickest way to put it is that it was an appeal to spiritually guided rational thought without a dependence on any specific Authority but I've read several different definitions and I'm still not entirely sure I understand it so I'll just use the definition a member of the PF family used when making fun of his or her Porsche relatives that their education consisted of and I quote crafts crocheting and singing to say PA had a certain bitterness to his educational upbringing would be understating yet as he would later write quote I grew up as a domestic Pig and was forced to live as a wild boar end quote compounding his harsh academic experience pH lost his father as well Anton PA passed away in 1952 when Ferdinand was just 15 years old so yeah not a great adolescence by adulthood Fernan mph seemed intent on moving past the dark legacy of the previous generation he earned his degree in mechanical engineering in Zurich Switzerland on the strength of his thesis on the evolution and operation of Formula One engines keep in mind PA was of whip-smart dude completing his master's program at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and he eventually became focused on designing Porsches 16 cylinder can-am 907 engine because if you're going to get out from under your family shadow it's either go big or go home PA worked at the porsche headquarters in Stuttgart Germany from 1963 to 1971 having a hand in the development of everything from the Porsche 906 to the later 9 1 7 the former a street-legal racecar and the latter a can-am sports car that eventually kept its flat 12 engine after Peaks flat 16 didn't work out according to a profile in the German car magazine auto motor sport the man was a hard-ass willing to fire anybody for any of a number of reasons to the point where people were on edge over the possibility of losing their jobs former Chrysler CEO Bob Lutz recalled pH telling him that if he wanted superior panel fits on his cars he should threaten to fire everyone involved in body precision if they couldn't get body gaps down to three millimeters in six weeks yet Peake was admired for his determination and engineering acumen so much so that when his 40th birthday came around a ball was held in his honor the ball attracted luminaries of the automotive world including a towel designs Giorgetto Giugiaro not only designed some of the most iconic cars ever made in the form of the BMW M Lotus Esprit s1 the DeLorean and the Volkswagen Golf mark-1 but he also designed nikon camera bodies Apple Computer prototypes and even a new pasta shape calling the man prolific would be coming up short that's all just to give some idea of how important kick truly was of course PA was born into this business so you could argue he had a leg up over his contemporaries but it's not as if PA had no agency in his decision to pursue automotive engineering like the old saying goes the most important day of your life is the day you're born then the second most important is the day you find out why if I had to guess I would argue that second day came earlier for patient than most however being in the family business is far from the guarantee of familial harmony there was a lot of infighting particularly with regards to PA smother Louise Porsche and his uncle Feri Porsche the family frequently butt heads on the direction the company was to take among more personal squabbles detailed at length by deep Mahara necks aforementioned 2009 profile on the Porsche PA feud pa was willing to die on the hill of the Porsche nine one seven race car even though development would cost a small fortune but not everyone in the family agreed some viewed Ferdinand Piech as being too wasteful with the company finances putting his desire to create attractive high-performance cars ahead of financial bottom lines in a sense it's a valid concern if you can't guarantee that these high-cost cars are going to make back the money spend to produce them then again that's always the case with industry you can make forecasts and projections you can never really know for sure until the product is out there but the Porsche side of the family was bristling against even giving Ferdinand pH any chance and the reasons went beyond business you see PA generally didn't get along with his cousin Wolfgang Porsche who used to tease the entire ph side of the family for having not inherited the Porsche surname declaring them quote non name bearers and implying a sort of unworthiness to the legacy of Ferdinand Porsche but the differing opinions on how the company should spend money led to well let's say spirited disagreement so much so that ferry Porsche had the entire family participate in group therapy at their old home in Austria hoping that the reminder of the home they shared during World War two would spark some form of kinship however the opposite happened as memories of wartime tend to do the article details the fallout of the family reunion as horror neck writes quote we quarreled terribly says Ferdinand pH the family decided that none of its members would work at Porsche in the future and that outside managers would run the company since then most of the family members have only played within the auto industry the role of relatively invisible Porsche owners but no longer as active managers however for Ferdinand pH the changes jump-started his career which first led to the top post at Audi and then to the chairmanship of the VW Group end quote now part of what makes the family drama sound so complicated is the sheer number of Ferdinand's on the Porsche side all of whom played a significant role in the Porsche and Volkswagen company's Wolfgang's eldest brother Ferdinand but see Porsche the third for example designed at the 911 if you look at the Porsche family tree its Ferdinand's all the way down even but C's son is a Ferdinand it's why I'm not surprised Wolfgang's father decided to go by ferry or why ferry son decided to go by but see but see and why I wouldn't have blamed PA for going by Nando or some other nickname or maybe even his middle name of Karl just shake up the name you know but I digress most family members largely bowed out of the family company's daily business for example Wolfgang Porsche remains a shareholder and chairman of the Supervisory Board of both Porsche Automobil holding se and Porsche AG to this very day but the day-to-day op relations were handled by outside managers the company very much remained a family business in spite of the squabbles however the disagreement boosted Peaks career far more than the Porsche side of the family probably could have expected which I mean fine maybe you don't like the guy but as long as he's getting business done everything should work out right not so much the family issues only worsened as the years wore on and pa wasn't exactly innocent in this you see PA was something of a ladies man having 12 children by four different women no judgment of course he can't really help who you fall for but what complicated things was the affair that developed in 1972 as PA fell in love with Marlene Porsche the wife of his cousin gerhard porsche the second son of ferry Porsche as well as Wolfgang second eldest brother now look it's bad enough to have an affair with anybody's wife much less your cousins but it's several thousand times worse when the affair happens in the midst of a cold war for control of the family businesses you see ferdinand porsche had split his estate equally between the ph and porsche sides of the family not just splitting the company in dealership network among his own children but giving shares to his grandchildren as well however when Marlene decided to divorce Gerhard to be with Ferdinand Gerhard had to give part of his share to his now ex-wife which prompted the family to speculate that this affair was just one big ploy to get extra shares in the family business but Ferdinand himself debunked this by never actually marrying Marlene realizing that it was an untenable scenario given the powder keg of a family situation he was facing so they basically just lived together husband and wife in all but law having two children together and remaining that way for 12 years before the relationship came to an end still in spite of his family's feelings towards him pH managed to hold on to his high up technical engineering role at Audi but it's not like he got that far out from under his family's thumb in the years following this quarrel considering that Audi was a subsidiary of Volkswagen it was an he'll battle but px goal was to take a relatively unexcited brand and liven it up which is more or less what he did at Ali's facility in Ingolstadt Bavaria this is where I reveal why I bothered to bring pick up in the first place he was able to prove the viability of diesel engines in smaller cars and even if someone else removed the blocks you could still argue pH built the Jenga tower that would eventually come tumbling down to make a really long story at least somewhat shorter piak had developed a 5 cylinder in-line diesel engine from mercedes-benz a piece of engineering he would then carry over into his time with Audi he spent much of the 70s as outies manager of technological engineering delivering the Audi ad the Audi 100 which offered gasoline-fueled 5 cylinder options in addition to the standard 4 cylinder engines and the much heralded outie Quadra which utilized a turbocharged version of the Audi inline 5 P was full of diesel adjacent ideas by the 1980s such that it wasn't exactly the craziest idea in the world to suggest diesel engines on mass production passenger cars and why not you get a fuel with higher compression that at least in theory gets better fuel mileage than gasoline diesel engines also are built to be more durable thanks to the fuels need for higher compression however the trade-off was a louder engine that uses more expensive fuel that didn't even promise greater performance this is without even getting into the emissions issues at a time where regulations were gradually becoming more severe in the United States this was largely in part to the development of the Clean Air Act between 1970 and 1975 in 1977 Congress passed an updated version of the Clean Air Act which tightened standards on tailpipe emissions including clamp downs on pollutants ranging from carbon monoxide to oxides of nitrogen the first standards of 1975 saw NOx standards settle 3.1 grams per mile for cars and light-duty trucks between 1977 and 1979 Congress took another pass at the Clean Air Act and made restrictions even tighter with the NOx standard dropping to 2 grams per mile for cars and 2.3 grams per mile for light trucks by 1988 the EPA had set their tailpipe standards at 1.7 grams per mile and 1.2 grams per mile for lighter trucks and in 1994 the Clean Air Act became even more restrictive allowing just point 6 grams per mile for cars now this is where advanced injection technology comes in the turbocharger coupled with a fuel injector could essentially regulate how much fuel was being delivered to each cylinder and the rate at which the fuel was being delivered this new engine would utilize an on-board computer to control the whole shebang as PA had spent the better part of eleven years trying to perfect this model with this engine the fuel air mixture could alter based on driving conditions howdy was under the purview of Volkswagens so when the turbocharged direct-injection was finally finished Volkswagen named it the TDI because acronyms are easier than coming up with some name that sounds like a discarded album of Judas Priest b-sides I'm looking at you iron Duke the TDI made its world debut as part of the Audi 100 at the Frankfurt Motor Show it was presented as an engine that ran cleaner with less fuel waste and emissions improving the viability of diesel engines outside their primary identity as the beating heart of service and utility vehicles in this sense everyone could have these engines at their disposal with the torque that compensated for road conditions that the TDI was a success isn't all that surprising but it became one of px' defining triumphs not just in Europe but worldwide by the 1990s PA was running the show over the entire Volkswagen Group having been named chairman of the board of management in 1993 but he wouldn't be running it all on his own virtually concurrently with pH secend see what's the rise of a man by the name of Martin Winterkorn who began his career at engineering and tech company robert bosch gmbh where he was a specialist assistant in bee research division in 1977 before transitioning to the substances and processes division in the 1980s before long he was on Volkswagens radar as a potential executive hire eventually earning appointments to the head of quality assurance at Volkswagen in 1993 the same year peach took over as chairman according to a 2013 Forbes article titled how Volkswagen will rule the world even though VW had some successes under their belt venture corns arrival came at an underwhelming time for the company after buying out a Chrysler factory in New Stanton Pennsylvania in 1978 Volkswagen had this notion that they were going to take the u.s. car market by storm to the tune of no less than five percent but that didn't happen because the car they decided to lead with was the VW Rabbit which couldn't touch the popularity of Japanese offerings of the same era the plant wasn't producing at the level it should have been and it would ultimately be closed a short two years after rolling its first Jetta off the line during his rise through the ranks venture corn became famous for micromanagement to the point where his Stern method of running the show wasn't too far removed from piays by 2002 he was chairman of the board of management for Audi AG a group within the wider Volkswagen Group that includes the Audi Volkswagen and C operands or is it pronounced C I'm so sorry if I'm getting this wrong at the same time Victor corn had also been named a member of the larger Volkswagen Group's Board of Management five years later he was CEO of Volkswagen and by 2014 he was the highest-paid CEO in all of Germany inventor corn was part of a team that oversaw the expansion of Volkswagens global hierarchy as their number included Oliver Schmidt the German born businessman who would become the lead emissions compliance manager for VW in the United States James Robert Liang a fellow engineer who served as leader of diesel competence while employed at the Volkswagen testing facility in Oxnard California and Rupert Stadler the successive CEO of Audi AG Stadler started out as head of the board for the Volkswagen Group in 1997 and head of group product planning in 2002 it seemed everyone under the employ of PA and inventor corn focused strictly on how to raise the international profile of the various brands under VW's purview yet for all the possibilities for vendor corn and pH as a dream team in their own right vendor corn was an idiosyncratic sort of guy as detailed in the Forbes report quote shortly before Lamborghini was set to introduce the new Aventador super luxury sports car in 2011 for instance vendor corn took a 690 horsepower behemoth for a final test drive after racing around the track at speeds close to 200 miles per hour he told engineers the instrument panel on the $387,000 sports car had to go he made them rip out the dashboard and redo it resulting in a six-month launch delay vinter corn isn't apologetic I have always been driven by the ambition to solve every problem I face I don't know why I'm doing this voice every problem I face whether as a scientist engineer or entrepreneur he says the main things are dedication to the task at hand and consistency in performance before the launch of the redesign VW passat in 2011 Venter corn flew to Chattanooga Tennessee seven times to inspect the vehicles quality when it was finally unveiled at a press event venture corn was furious after discovering a tiny paint flaw on one of the media test drive cars according to one colleague at the Frankfurt Motor Show in 2011 vendor corn was caught on video pouring over a new Hyundai model griping to one of his engineers that the Koreans managed to cheaply design a steering column adjuster that made little noise yet feet you could not end quote in a sense the work environment pH created was a demanding one and in the process it created executives as hard-nosed and ambitious as ph himself even if their visions differed Winterkorn seemed to understand the value of good engineering for crying out loud Venter Korn did his doctoral program at the Max Planck Institute for metal research and metal physics or is it MOX plunk yeah but basically the man was no slouch yet the business of cars can be as challenging as their creation because engineering and branding can often hold an equal measure of importance after all what's a great car without the reputation of being one under PA cars mattered but being internationally respected as a top brand was arguably just as important even if it meant trying to rebrand diesel as a clean fuel in the public consciousness so that's what Volkswagen was set out to do after all it would help their reputation and as long as the worldwide reputation was upheld everything would be ok so what went wrong exactly well time to go back to the future in spring 2014 when the West Virginia University team presented their findings at a Hyatt Regency in San Diego in front of some 200 attendees at a conference for oil industry representatives and auto manufacturers the lid was blown wide open and dieselgate as we'd come to know it began to crystallize you see Alberto Ayala a former West Virginia University faculty member and the deputy head of the California Air Resources Board was in attendance when the team presented their report California doesn't mess around when it comes to emissions and carb wanted answers from Volkswagen carb launched an investigation of their own resulting in the conclusion that defeat devices were the culprit behind these tests discrepancies before long the Environmental Protection Agency was involved and by that point it was time for VW to start offering some explanations on September 18th 2015 the Environmental Protection Agency issued a violation against VW and Audi citing diesel vehicles from 2009 to 2015 with two liter engines computer world detailed the fiasco in a September 24th 2015 article titled EPA details how VW software thwarted emission tests the article notes quote according to the EPA's violation letter to Volkswagen dated September 18th several models of Volkswagen vehicles built between 2009 and 2015 and Audi a3 models from 2010 to 2015 had software installed in the vehicles electronic control module that could sense when an emissions test was being conducted according to the EPA the position of the steering wheel vehicle speed the duration of the engines operation and barometric pressure all very specific indicators of an emissions test acted as the activation switch for the defeat device essentially the vehicles electronic control module was set to clean mode for the remainder of the emissions test procedure the switch was activated and the vehicle ECM software ran a separate Road calibration reduce the effectiveness of the emission control system and specifically the selective catalytic reduction or the lean NOx trap the EPA said Kirk Winter strim marketing director of the Greenwich Concours d'Elegance on vintage and classic car show in Greenwich Connecticut explained that what VW did with its embedded software was akin to a sports jock hiring a gangly nerd just to pass SATs end quote the vehicles affected according to the EPA index included among 2-liter diesel vehicle models made between the model years 2009 and 2015 there was the Jetta the Jetta SportWagen the beetle the Beetle convertible the Audi a3 the golf the golf SportWagen and the Passat among three liter diesel vehicles for model years 2009 to 2016 there was the Volkswagen Touareg the Porsche Cayenne the Audi a6 Quattro the Audi a7 Quattro the Audi a8 the Audi a8 L the Audi q5 and the Audi q7 needless to say the government was pas pissed because these supposedly clean diesel TDI engines resulted in a $1,300 federal tax credit on each Jetta sedan or wagon sold as Volkswagen of America announced in the summer of 2008 and yes Volkswagen feigned ignorance by claiming it was all the result of a technical glitch later VW claimed that it was all the doing of a handful of rogue employees and of course they would argue that it's literally the first line of defense when you're facing me indefensible and appeal to ignorance argumentum at ignorant iam you may have proven that our vehicles were in violation of the emissions standard but you can't prove we purposely intended to subvert the test therefore we didn't purposely intend to subvert the test that sort of argument and it's ridiculous it's like old reverse Occam's razor which I'm sure has an actual term although I'm too late to try and find it right now Hickam dictum may be either way don't shave with Occam's razor if you don't want to get cut on August 21st 2015 prior to the EPA's violation notice an unnamed VW representative supposedly told EPA's director of its transportation and air quality office that the company was guilty and had been cheating regulations the California Air Resources Board official was also tipped off at the time but this still wasn't an official admission to wrongdoing that didn't come until September 25th 2015 with the resignation of Martin Winterkorn in his resignation Venter cornrowed quote I am shocked by the events of the past few days I am stunned that misconduct on such a scale was possible in the Volkswagen Group as CEO I accept responsibility for the irregularities I am doing this in the interests of the company even though I am not aware of any wrongdoing on my part and quote prior to his resignation vendor corn apologized for the damage done to Volkswagens reputation writing quote I personally am deeply sorry that we have broken the trust of our customers and the public and quote now the problem with his statements of course is that vendor corn rained over the full duration of Volkswagens emissions cheating with his tenure beginning at the beginning of 2007 and ending in September 2015 yet he only stepped down under pressure believing the defeat devices to be the creation and implementation of only a few people within the company this is troubling for another reason the 2017 report by Der Spiegel revealed that PA had learned of the emissions deception in February 2015 from avi prime or Israel's former ambassador to the EU and later to Germany to his credit pH allegedly took the issue straight to Martin Winterkorn who denied any wrongdoing this prompted pH to continue to share the information this time with the forum of the Volkswagen supervisory boards steering committee including lower saxony prime minister stefan vial volkswagen chairman of the general works council Bernd austere low the former head of Volkswagens metal Workers Union Berthold boo-bear and Wolfgang Porsche yes the cousin pH never seem to get along with which illustrates just how serious this was but vile whose state of Lower Saxony owns an 11.8% subscribed capital in Volkswagen and controls 20% of the company's voting rights wrote off the emissions scandal as quote fake news case accusation of wrongdoing against the steering committee prompted Volkswagen to threaten a lawsuit against its now former VW CEO though the board would later claim to have only learned about the cheating in September 2015 P aches accusations suggested a far-reaching cover-up and it's at this point where I find it necessary to take another detour that maybe would have been more helpful to have learned earlier but I think chronologically it makes more sense to place it here because you see while this all was happening PA was locked in a power struggle with vinter corn and it all started with a phone call on April 10th of 2015 months before Volkswagen admitted to any wrongdoing or before the story officially broke for diesel gain basically EPA reached out to Spiegel the German publication responsible for detailing much of the PA Porsche turmoil detailed in this video you see it had gotten back to pH that Spiegel planned on running a story on pH criticisms towards how vinter corn was running the company in addition to Peaks alleged plans to have his wife Ursula take the role of successor as the head of the Supervisory Board the point of the call wasn't to get the story killed but rather to offer a defense of his wife by noting that he wanted the right people to head the management and supervisory boards and that quote those people are not family members they are also not my wife end quote but by the time pH made the call the story had already gone to printers in making the call to reporters p-perhaps said too much PA told Spiegel quote I plan on distancing myself from vendor corn and quote it spoke to his fundamental mistrust of the way in which vendor corn operated and so Spiegel Online ran an article concerning pH call and it was printed out and placed in front of vinter corn by that afternoon vinter corn is quoted as having said what's with that I can't even believe it after having read the article he was hurt that his mentor had so publicly expressed his lack of confidence in him he was hurt but he was also angry at the insult and yet the situation but still have been salvaged if PA simply offered a mitigating explanation that would lessen be implied insult from Spiegel quote what could be done several members of Volkswagens supervisory board tried to disarm the statement by spinning it but for this to work they needed P X cooperation on Saturday and Sunday he received a lot of visitors some of whom suggested he explained that the chairman of the Supervisory Board needs to keep his distance from the Volkswagen CEO in order to be able to provide sufficient oversight over him this would render his previous statement self-evident suggesting that distance was being used as a principle of corporate organization but Phe didn't go along with it he wanted to let his words mean what people had inferred that P H no longer trusted vendor corn the media quickly began to speculate that CEO vendor corn would soon be ousted and quote and so an executive meeting of the Supervisory Board was held with vial uber austere Lowe and Wolfgang Porsche meeting in pas office vinter corn was also present but he didn't actually attend the meeting instead waiting outside for the results of their conference the meeting itself basically involved the Supervisory executives taking Ferdinand to task for how his statements undermine vendor corns Authority as well as that of the Supervisory Board since the implication was that Volkswagen had a chairman that didn't give a damn about his company's board to this n pH admitted that the board was right his comments did undermine vinter corn and in light of this the board prepared a statement that would cpa tacitly endorsement ur corn as their best possible CEO choice along with the recommendation to extend vinter corns contract through early 2016 ph agreed to this on the condition that upon the expiration of his own contract in April 2017 the board would recommend his re-election as chairman of the Supervisory Board after lengthy discussions this proposal was rejected which prompted pH to go into full-on attack mode according to Spiegel quote pH was angry with his cousin he believed Wolfgang Porsche was scheming against his wife Ursula and that he would prefer to push her out of the supervisory board completely he accused Venter corn of having similar ambitions who ever wanted to take a stand against Ursula however would have to deal with him pH also accused Porsche of having demanded his resignation Porsche said that's not true Ferdinand you asked me if I want that and I just said at some point the issue will have to be addressed and quote by a two-thirds majority of the board pa would face being voted out like the world's highest stakes game of Survivor but there are no hidden immunity idols in this one and there's no lousy edge of extinction either so he had little recourse but to resign and his wife Ursula resigned from her position in the company along with him on April 25th 2015 boo-bear issued a statement on behalf of the board quote Ferdinand piëch has made an enormous contribution of Volkswagen and the entire automobile industry the developments of the last two weeks have however led to a loss of trust between the Supervisory Board Chairman and the other members which in recent days has proven to be impossible to resolve end quote now the reason I bring this up is because there's been speculation in the years since pekes claims of wrongdoing against the board for knowing about dieselgate before it broke was revenge for his and his wife's austere but really that's all it is speculation either way ph and his wife were muscled out as the rank-and-file stood with vinter corn perhaps to their detriment at the height of the scandal in 2015 VW of america's CEO michael horn didn't mince words admitting at a press conference for the new Passat quote we've totally screwed up and quote presumably he wasn't talking about the posad in the same speech horn got specific saying quote our company was dishonest with the epa and the California Air Resources Board and with all of you end quote yet the cover-up allegations only drew from their German publication süddeutsche Zeitung reported that warnings about illegal activities had been ignored as far back as 2011 although VW had announced plans in 2015 to fix all the affected vehicles it was going to be a pretty big ask considering the sheer number of affected cars across their brands the defeat systems affected some 5 million VW cars 2.1 million outies 1.2 million SCOTUS and countless other commercial vehicles adding up to roughly 11 million cars being affected worldwide between 2009 and 2015 official publicly released documents pertaining to the case painted a clearer picture of the road ahead for Volkswagen on November 2nd 2015 a joint investigation between the EPA carb and Environment Canada resulted in the issuing of a second violation over 2014 to 2016 Volkswagen Audi and Porsche three litre diesel vehicles which were found to emit up to nine times more pollution than allowed by January 4th 2016 the American Justice Department filed a lawsuit against Volkswagen to the tune of 46 billion dollars for their flagrant disregard for anti-pollution laws 2016 would see executives begin to turn against the company to save their own skins beginning with the man who sought to implement the launch of clean diesel vehicles in the United States back in 2008 the leader of diesel competence himself mr. James Robert Liang in the midst of all this by April 2016 PA had repeated his accusations against the VW Supervisory Board and Martin Winterkorn to VW's law firm Jones day as well as to the public prosecutor investigating the scandal however no verbatim record of his testimony transcripts are said to exist the only thing known is that he spoke to them on September 9th 2016 Liang pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to defraud the US to commit wire fraud and to violate the Clean Air Act according to official documents by the Department of Justice's Office of Public Affairs they admitted that he and his co-conspirators within Volkswagens began designing an e a 189 diesel engine in roughly 2006 they had every intention of later selling this engine in the United States but the ei 189 had the cheat software to make adequate power without the typically hired diesel emissions readings Liang's testimony flew in the face of Volkswagens defense that it was just a bunch of rogue low-level employees who banded together to perpetrate this fraud if anything the implication was that this scandal went all the way to the top a year later Liang would be sentenced to 40 months in prison and a $200,000 fine which in the corporate world probably doesn't sound like much considering the gravity of the offence towards the environment but it's more than anybody from GM God for the whole ignition switch debacle regardless this turnaround made things significantly worse for Volkswagen let's go in a timeline mode courtesy of Canadian advocacy organization environmental defense on October 25th 2016 the first partial settlement was reached in the US and Volkswagen regarding the 2-liter diesel engines with Volkswagen being forced to pay 4.7 billion dollars that would then be used to promote pollution reduction policies and programs in addition to implementing infrastructure for the production and maintenance of zero emission vehicles the deal also called for 10 billion dollars to be used to buy back or repair roughly four hundred seventy five thousand cars affected between 2009 and 2015 later on December 20th 2016 a second partial settlement was reached over the three liter diesel engines as Volkswagen had to pay an additional 225 million dollars to fund the EPA's pollution prevention work it all culminated in the second big arrests in the dieselgate case remember Oliver Schmidt the lead emissions compliance manager for VW in the United States well during a stopover on his way back to Germany from his Christmas holiday in the US on January 7th 2017 Schmidt was apprehended in the men's room at Miami International Airport and arrested on federal conspiracy charges after being extradited to Detroit Schmidt was denied bail and subsequently held in custody for months on the premise that he would flee the jurisdiction if he were to be released since from what I could find Germany usually doesn't allow its own citizens to be extradited to other countries although I'm sure someone in the comments will correct me if I'm wrong and if I am wrong I apologize but this appears to be how five of the 6 VW executives facing federal conspiracy charges were able to avoid capture once things really hit the fan so it stood to reason that no amount of turning over passports or agreeing to home surveillance would be enough to ensure Schmidt stayed put as assistant US attorney Ben singer argued in court quote the simple fact is that mr. Schmidt has every reason in the world to go back to Germany under these circumstances and if he goes back he's never coming back that said end quote not that this prevented Schmidt's attorneys from arguing that his willingness to even go on holiday in the US how heated the situation was for VW showed he wouldn't be a flight risk hey he loved the u.s. they said he'll he and his wife got married on the showroom floor of a Florida Volkswagen dealership for crying out loud what's more American than that and after all how can you charge my client with conspiracy when the entire criminal enterprise started eight whole years before he supposedly became a part of it which is a silly enough argument on its own me to be like one of the senators responsible for assassinating Julius Caesar trying to claim innocence by saying they were the 8th stabbed or something like I wasn't even the one that stabbed him in the junk like I did Schmidt even wrote a letter to the presiding judge in his case claiming to have felt quote misused by my own company in the diesel scandal end quote but this wasn't enough Schmidt was eventually indicted by US federal authorities for conspiracy to defraud the US government via wire fraud in addition to violation of the Clean Air Act hope for the company deteriorated on January 11th 2017 when VW pleaded guilty to three felony counts related to their attempts to defraud the US government the EPA and their consumers ultimately VW was ordered to pay fines totaling 2.8 billion dollars along with an additional 1.5 billion dollars in fines regarding civil offenses as a condition of this arrangement Volkswagen was prohibited from retracting any admission of guilt in the dieselgate scandal if they were prosecuted in other jurisdictions such as Canada not that any of these threats really stopped Volkswagen anyway as they continued to sell non-compliant cars in Canada well into 2017 albeit with the permission of the Canadian government that was contingent upon VW providing a software fix which they did but then VW got sued anyway when on April 1st 2017 class-action lawsuits were approved in Ontario and Quebec this was no April Fool's Day prank as the lawsuit allowed nearly 105 thousand consumers who bought affected cars to sue VW to the tune of two 1 billion dollars Canadian over the summer of 2017 Canadian environmental organizations petitioned the Ministry of Environment and climate change to investigate for criminal allegations against Volkswagen however the Canadian government refused these requests stating that there was already an ongoing investigation led by Environment and climate change Canada or the EC CC however the ECCC also refused to provide the progress and action reports required every 90 days under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act which prompted Environmental Defense Canada and the Canadian Physicians for the environment to ramp up their campaign against the Canadian federal government by September Ontario would finally take action staging a raid shadolla I mean a raid on VW headquarters on charges of failing to adhere to admissions standards now this brings us to another judgement day when one of the key figures in the dieselgate cover-up was sentenced for his involvement on December 6 2017 Oliver Schmidt was sentenced to seven years in prison for his role in covering up the whole dieselgate scandal destroying documents and misleading investigators you know all that corporate espionage stuff in his sentencing u.s. district judge Shawn Cox addressed Schmitt directly stating quote I'm sure based upon common sense that you viewed this cover-up as an opportunity to shine to climb the corporate ladder at VW your goal was to impress senior management and quote he would go on to add quote without trust in corporate America the economy can't function end quote for his part Schmidt owned up to his mistakes in a statement to the court Schmidt declared quote for the disruption of my life I only have myself to blame I accept the responsibility for the wrong I committed and quote it was a rare show of humility from anyone at VW which had engaged in a fair amount of buck-passing in an attempt to prevent the hemorrhaging of their public image but sometimes you can't outrun any amount of bad press health sometimes it helps to just take ownership of the things you've done in the hopes that people might one day be able to understand why you did them as well as how you were able to justify them to yourself as necessary with several of the dieselgate all-stars doing prison time you'd think this would be the end of it the beginning of the rebuilding period for Volkswagen out of the frying pan and onto the plate where things might finally cool down onward to the aftermath and all that but the thing about aftermaths is that they're still part of the story which means the story isn't exactly done by January 30th 2018 VW is facing new allegations this time they were accused of animal testing it came to light that a research group funded by VW BMW and Daimler was testing diesel exhaust on monkeys because now we're getting into the territory of cartoonish super villainy according to an article by Prashant s Rao and Melissa Eddy from the New York Times titled Volkswagen vows to end experiments on animals volkswagen even admitted to it writing a letter to the german branch of peta to reassure the organization that they would no longer finance research examining the effects of diesel exhaust on the health of animals particularly the ten macaque monkeys who were exposed to exhaust in sealed chambers even then VW tried to soften the blow by saying that they technically didn't break any local laws in carrying out the tests ultimately PETA was satisfied by Volkswagens pledge to end animal testing and called on other automakers to do the same so at least there's a sense that some lesson was learned here not that this meant the end of Volkswagens woes on May 3rd 2018 the long arm of the law finally grabbed Martin Winterkorn by his lapels and gave him a good shake when he was charged with fraud and conspiracy in the u.s. even if his argument was that it was just a bunch of rogue engineers at VW it's pretty hard to imagine that the right hand didn't know what the left one was doing all that time someone high up the chain had to be held to account an inventor quorum wouldn't be the last caught in the cowcatcher of justice just one month later On June 18 to 2018 howdy CEO Rupert Stadler was arrested in Germany for his part in the scandal according to prosecutors Stadler likely knew about the emissions-cheating but took no action stop the illegal practice or the sale of these compromised vehicles in all it was a pretty bad month for volkswagen as they were additionally fined 1 billion euros in Germany for failing to prevent in legal interference with their emissions cheats after his arrest rupert Stadler was essentially forced out of Volkswagen Group by the Supervisory boards of both Volkswagen and Audi putting an end to his tenure as CEO and terminating his standing contracts on April 5th 2019 Europe's antitrust regulators officially charged VW BMW and Daimler with emissions collusion for allegedly planning to delay the rollout of clean emission technology I guess misery loves company what can I say and on that subject on April 15 2019 the German government formally charged Martin Winterkorn and for other VW managers with fraud a charge that would be levied against Rupert Stadler and three VW Group engineers just a few months later on July 30th 2019 and yet as July came to a close actual faith in low emissions vehicles appeared to be in an all-time low in the country in general with the biggest sales growth occurring among gas-guzzling SUVs and all-terrain vehicles according to German agency Dana meanwhile clean energy wires timeline on the after-effects notes both the city wide bands as well as the economic effects of being wrapped up in a scandal clean energy report writes quote the government of the federal state of Berlin decides to ban older diesel cars from eight roads in the city and create dozens of zones with a 30 kilometer per hour speed limit according to public broadcaster RB B 24 the diesel bans will come into force in September on roads with a total length of just under 3 kilometers residents delivery services mobile nursing services and tradespeople will be exempt from the ban following a string of profit warnings Daimler reports its first loss in years triggered by legal risks related to the dieselgate scandal unquote but this still wouldn't be the most significant loss of the next 30-day period in the history of Volkswagen on August 25th 2019 while out at dinner with his wife in Rosenheim in Germany's upper bavaria region Ferdinand pH collapsed suddenly despite being quickly taken to the hospital pH did not real waken he was pronounced dead at the age of 82 his C NBC obituary details how P X legacy was impacted by the dieselgate scandal an obituary which included comments from Peter wells of the Cardiff business school in Wales quote while prosecutors haven't revealed any direct links between pH and what has come to be called dieselgate a scandal will forever stain all great things he accomplished said Erik Schiffer chairman of reputation management consultants perhaps but it won't wipe out P X legacy entirely said Wells suggesting that peak was perhaps more influential a man than anyone else in the industry since Henry Ford pH sought to distance himself from the diesel scandal pointing fingers at other managers including his cousin Wolfgang Porsche who also sat on the Supervisory Board that only added to the bad blood that led him to retire in May 2015 a month after the board decided to a new vendor corns contract the two men then having had a fierce falling-out PA remained active even after leaving Volkswagen and according to a statement by his wife Ursula he was on his way to an industry conference when he died suddenly and unexpectedly and quote even if PA had no direct involvement in the emissions tebah chol former Chrysler president Bob Lutz eulogize pH in a road and track article titled the complicated legacy of Ferdinand PA in which he drew a correlation between the work environment fostered by PA and the mentality that cheating emissions was a necessary evil in the name of profits and productivity some of this was mentioned earlier in this video but it feels prudent to share the full quote now as what's stated quote then there's the VW scandal still fresh in all our minds how could a global corporation possibly commit such a crass willful criminal act when asked at the time I opened that it was a direct result the corporate culture created and nurtured by PA the mantra top to bottom was you will get it done and if you can't you will be replaced by someone who can PA and his colleagues were determined to use clean diesel as their way into American hearts and garages but they were unwilling to include what they saw as crippling emissions control equipment thus the adoption of cheater software which reliably showed legal emissions levels in testing but went offline in real-world driving how could sensible engineers most of them honest condone and conceal such a fraud the answer lies in the atmosphere of fear and reprisal hallmarks of any organization led by PA once at an Auto Show I congratulated PA on this herb panel fits of his new cars he told me you want this at Chrysler here's how it's done call everyone who is part of body precision into your office tell them you want three millimeter body gaps in six weeks when they're all fired I told him this was him culturally difficult in the US he replied essentially that I was too weak to get what I needed for my company at the time I was president and chief operating officer of the Chrysler Corporation but I'm sure PA regarded me as just another nice well-educated executive who couldn't get the job done PA got the job done end quote perhaps that's how PA would prefer to be remembered as a man who got things done in the auto industry it's not often about whether or not you're a good person as in any industry success in one's career is often measured by their accomplishments or shortcomings and their failures PA had his failures but his successes arguably outweighed them on the scale then again I suppose one can make an argument with regard to the damage something like dieselgate does to a legacy regardless the year would come to an igneous end when on September 24th 2019 Martin Winterkorn faced new indictments in Germany as prosecutors charged him with stock market manipulation alongside Volkswagen Supervisory Board Chairman hans-dieter poach and chief executive Herbert dese and the case continues into 2020 as six additional volkswagen managers were charged for dieselgate related fraud in Braunschweig Germany On January 14th so I guess this brings us to the aftermath such as it is I mean realistically the story is still ongoing closure is illusory because it's still shaping the auto industry at a worldwide level but even if it weren't again closure is illusory dieselgate changed the way some people few cars distrust in truly green vehicles became standard in the aftermath how could you really know another diesel gate isn't around the corner how do you know there isn't some hidden software you're unaware of polluting the environment as you go about your daily errands your commute to work we're in an age where plenty of people leave their cars idling or drive unnecessarily either for leisure or simplicity's sake and yet this has always been the case hasn't it cash for clunkers was an attempt to incentivize people to drive green but it didn't exactly work the way the government intended or maybe it did but the way they intended was just destined to fail either way cars have always been something of an enemy to the environment albeit far from the only one I think dieselgate had the net harm of distracting from that effect because it refocused attention on cars as the prime catalyst in harmful environmental effects when everything from coal mining to lead smelting to other means of manufacturing and production do significant amounts of damage to the environment worldwide I don't really know what the answer is electric cars in Europe are expected to triple by 2021 with the goal of eventually having most if not all cars on the road be environmentally friendly but we've never come to this point in history before with cars even if it's a success in Europe it's almost like a high-school protest walkout it doesn't work unless everybody agrees to go along with it maybe the legacy of dieselgate will not be in how it negatively impacted Volkswagens global reputation since they aren't exactly dead right now you know and plenty of people still buy their cars even knowing the history No perhaps the biggest part of diesel Gates legacy will be in how it stimulated a global conversation on the effects of air pollution that sounds pretentious as hell but I feel there's something to the idea that a scandal even in the age where one can flip a coin on what sticks and what falls away in the wake of the next big headline can inflate it's change you

Channel: RegularCars

Views: 335,691

Keywords: Regular, Car, Reviews

Id: SvokGhOaHGg

Length: 75min 23sec (4523 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 30 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

I liked this story a lot but I still feel that the story of the Porsche family feuds could have made an extremely interesting standalone video and an abbreviated version in this story may have served to keep the piece more focused. All this being said this is of the most impressive Story times yet with top notch research and attention to detail. Keep up the good work and Im going to need many more dick and poop jokes to make up for this show of intelligence

[u/AlexSpalex]

I want a future RCR Stories on Bruce Meyers, the creator of the Dune buggy.

[u/gnoxy]

Loved the story! Great job in researching it, putting it together and presenting it. I always love these from you. Thank you :)
The only knock I would give it as at the end with the whataboutism. Thats never an argument. Everyone needs to deal with their own shit.

[u/SuspiciousCitus]

Is this their third emissions scandal? What happens at strike 3?

[u/DrBiochemistry]

Roman, I really appreciate you spending so much time on this. In an era where news organizations reprocess press releases as news, you going and doing the research and synthesizing the facts into a coherent story is fantastic.

Thank you for your great RCR story for me to enjoy while pooping.

[u/billyalt]

Another excellent listen.

[u/eddiedougie]

Thanks Roman. That was a really good listen.

[u/Terny]

Roman is a good writer and immediately put the video as soon as I as I saw it but, I don't really the way he delivers it (and it's not his voice because I don't really get the same vibe from the podcast). In stories it sounds like he puts on a more breathy voice.

[u/faraway_hotel]

Yo /u/RegularRoman, if you ever want help with German pronunciations, hit me up. You're already doing pretty good on most of them.

Anyway, great video, and I really enjoyed the background on the Porsche/Piëch shenanigans.