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Imagine that. Get a reputation for cars that are precisely engineered to have expensive parts fail shortly after warranty expiration, and cement that with a brand-wide emissions cheating scandal, and then wonder why no one trusts you.
Boomers only bought your air-cooled offerings because they were cheap. You got no brand goodwill out of the deal.
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.
At least in North America I think they were the only brand selling passenger vehicles diesel engines.
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?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal
Check the "Other manufacturers" heading.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Dacia sales keep increasing every year. This does show there is an increasing demand for simple cars.
Or just cheap ones. VW and every other maistream cars are getting unaffordable.
Sounds like management problem, not an engineering one, but management doesn't have to pay: everybody else does. Typical.
Funny how job incomes don’t scale similarly when brands become “competitive”
Same will happen to other German car manufacturers. This is what happens if lobbyists and corrupt politicians wank each other off behind closed doors. No incentives to go with the times and trying to squeeze out as much money short term as possible
Fuck around and find out
Fuck me so much this.
I’ve owned three generations of Seat cars (a popular European VW group brand).
This generation is absolutely atrocious. I’ve honestly got an almost endless list of issues with it - it just does not work. It crashes. It beeps. It blares. It can’t. It won’t. Doesn’t open. Doesn’t lock. Disconnects. Connects when it shouldn’t. Charges for features that seem like they are MVP. Everything is touch. The few things that aren’t aren’t in the right place. In every single way it’s awful.
I will never buy another VW group car and I tell everyone I can how awful it is.
Fuck around and find out indeed.
No one wanted touch buttons.
Also, a 4-cylinder engine for atlas is a joke.
they got billions to invest into new drive technologies and didn't
they have really tight contracts with all of their suppliers but didn't act in time to get the electric vehicle suppliers into similar contracts
Good Fuck VW. My mom had an 86 Jetta and that thing was the biggest piece of junk on the road. and every time she took it to the dealer to get it fixed they would do the cheapest thing possible. I ended up taking to my local mechanic who fixed it properly for her.
And also be wary of any good deals on some newer model VW's. They got the court case cleared up where a bunch of cars got damaged by sea water and those vehicles which were supposed to have been sold as scrap are now on the road.
Surprise ! workers pay the price for the 30 billion they spunked on fines and compensation for cheating diesel emissions.
At least they have the id.buzz coming. I've been waiting to replace my minivan, but so far nothing is better than the wearing out one we have.
I really liked how the car drove but after owning a 2001 Jetta I'd probably never buy another VW. That car had the worst quality control of any car I've ever seen. It was insane how much stuff broke in that car. I'll stick with Japanese cars if I was in the market for one.
That's how I feel about my 2010 Tiguan. It is just such a piece of shit. I like how it handles but every other day something on its breaking or the electricals acting up. Never again
Yeah it was crazy what went wrong in this thing in the space of a few years before we got rid of it... Just off the top of my head:
- Pulled too close to one of those parking dividers and the bumper barely scuffed up onto it. All the plastic attachment clips in the front bumper snapped and the bumper sagged a couple inches from there out. They quoted me something like $500 to replace some plastic clips.
- Fuel injectors sprayed gas onto the engine block causing smoke to come out from under the hood
- Recall on the turn signals
- Fabric in the roof of the car bubbled up and sagged down
- Labels on the center console (radio/climate control/etc) started peeling off
- Lid of the center console broke
- Glove compartment door broke
- Stereo broke
- Cupholders broke
- Driver side door speaker went
There was some other stuff too but it's been a while now. My last car was an Accord that I had for many years and that thing was rock solid. I still miss it but had to sell it when I moved out of the country.
I test drove one of those when I was in-between Mazdas just to see if it was better and was disappointed with the handling and power. Plus it was $8k more at the time. The Mazda I bought instead has only needed brakes and tires once in 8 years.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The news organization saw a post on VW's intranet quoting CEO Thomas Schaffer, who blamed low productivity and high costs for the impending cuts.
"With many of our pre-existing structures, processes and high costs, we are no longer competitive as the Volkswagen brand," Schaffer said at a staff meeting.
EVs remain significantly more expensive than an equivalent car with a four-cylinder engine, an effect that's more pronounced in the market segments VW serves.
Lackluster products haven't helped—an ambitious plan by VW Group to master its software destiny has become a chaotic mess, delaying new vehicles in the process.
Feedback about the company's new capacitive multifunction steering wheel was so overwhelmingly negative that last year, Schaffer promised to ditch the design.
VW's board member in charge of human resources told staff that it will look at partial or early retirement agreements but that the majority of the $10.9 billion in cuts would come from savings other than job losses.
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