Suicide Mission? Audi R&D Chief To Lose Job Over Diesel Cheat After Only 9 Months

Becoming the R&D chief of the German premium brand Audi used to be the dream job of any engineer. Dieselgate has turned it into a suicide mission. Audi’s chief engineer Stefan Knirsch is at the end of his career only nine months after taking the job, German media report. This would be Audi’s second R&D boss to lose his job over dieselgate. Volkswagen’s statements that the cheat was the work of a few rogue engineers, and that nobody at the top had any idea, has turned into a bad joke.

According to the official line, Volkswagen is busy digging for the truth behind dieselgate, but it hasn’t found it. Changes at Volkswagen’s top speak louder than press releases. Soon after the scandal broke, Volkswagen decapitated its complete engineering leadership, from CEO Winterkorn, and rockstar über-engineer Hackenberg, on down. Volkswagen lost its R&D chief Heinz-Jakob Neußer, while Porsche lost Wolfgang Hatz.

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TheSteve - 9/20/2016 2:14:04 PM

+1 Boost

A year after Dieselgate first hit the stands, and there's still no sign of the dust settling. Or VW coming clean and openly and honestly revealing how they got themselves into this mess.

As far as I can tell, it sure looks like:
- VW was/is ruled through systemic intimidation and fear
- VW execs knew about the diesel cheat technology
- Bosch, VW's engine computer supplier, knew about it, knew it was illegal, and continued to sell millions of units to VW
- VW has been "less than completely honest" in a number areas, including but not limited to: over-stated fuel numbers, CO2 emissions, CO2 emissions tax fraud (in European countries that tax owners annually based on CO2 emissions), falsified gas and noise emission certifications (South Korea and Mexico), cooperating with US authorities during the dieselgate investigation, etc.

Kinda makes me lose faith in huge corporations and the folks running them :-/

mre30 - 9/20/2016 3:30:44 PM

0 Boost

Couple of observations...

(a) No one died as a result of diesel gate.

(b) While a portion of the general public is upset, diesel gate has elicited only a 'shoulder shrug' from another significant subset of the population who are more upset about the fact that 'lawyers run everything' in America and create too much regulation and too many stupid rules for minimal benefit.

(c-1) The existence of these people who are tired of being 'lectured-to' by so-called 'leaders' in the government who think of themselves as 'smarter than the general public' or feel they are entitled to make up rules arbitrarily (i.e., many democratic leaders - including Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Mario Cuomo, and Eric Schneiderman - Attorney General of NY) that have no real world benefit except for increasing the cost of doing business and/or increasing the penalties/pitfalls payable back to the government.

(c-2) Re-read point (c-1) above - it is why Trump is able to gain traction in America (and might win) and it is why "Brexit" passed in Britain. People are so pissed and so frustrated with government - that they may throw caution to the wind and elect a Trump just to be rid of the 'lawyers who run/ruin everything' (and/or the bureaucrats who run the EU in Brussels).

(d) Basically, on some level, all this regulation becomes just another tax to be paid. For example, if you take a big picture view, trucks pump out all kinds of diesel emissions compared to cars but VW will have to pay out billions for adding a relatively tiny amount of pollution, relative to the pollution of trucks (and ships and planes for that matter).

(e) On some level, all this governmental regulation is becoming a comedy of the absurd.

(g) Most Americans would welcome junking the old, selective/arbitrary rules and replacing them with simple, sensible, and consistent ones - but we all know that will never happen.