Topic of the news: If governments will not punish VW’s shocking behaviour, consumers must.
The company is mired in scandals of pollution and animal cruelty. Does it deserve to be rewarded with electric car sales?
It is hard to think how Volkswagen could top a scandal involving it selling drivers 11 million cars that produced more pollution than advertised, harming human health and shamefully cheating regulators’ tests in the process. But the past fortnight’s mind-boggling revelations about research at the world’s biggest carmaker have come close.
First, it emerged the firm had taken the lead in a 2014 experiment on 10 macaque monkeys to test the health impact of exposure to nitrogen dioxide (NO2), a toxic gas produced by diesel cars. A VW Beetle, fitted with a cheat device of the sort the company used to game pollution checks during lab tests, pumped fumes into the monkeys’ chambers as they watched cartoons.
Later it was revealed that in 2015 an automotive lobby group part-funded by VW tested the effects of NO2 exposure on 25 healthy young people in Germany.
It’s often remarked that the banks emerged from the financial crash unpunished and unreformed. But the degree of effort that VW put into deceiving the world about the health impact of its diesel cars, and the pollution they were really generating, could be viewed as a bigger crime.
This is not just a case of destroying jobs and damaging people’s lives by creating a credit crunch: this is a matter of life and death. Nearly 9,500 people die prematurely in London alone each year because of the city’s illegally high levels of NO2.
We will never know the actual toll of the cheating and lobbying that VW took part in. But what we do know is that the punishment has been found wanting.
Chief executive Martin Winterkorn quit in 2015 after the emissions scandal was discovered. Last week, VW’s chief lobbyist, Thomas Steg, was suspended in the wake of revelations about the tests, which were carried out by the European Research Group on Environment and Health in the Transport Sector (EUGT), a car lobby group funded by Volkswagen, Daimler and BMW. VW’s new chief executive, Matthias Müller, who was not in charge at the time of the tests, said: “We are currently in the process of investigating the work of the EUGT, which was dissolved in 2017, and drawing all the necessary consequences.”
But those consequences should arrive at his door too, because of his failure to “drain the swamp” during his leadership of VW. Steg was promoted by Müller shortly after the emissions scandal, and reported directly to him.
The reality is that VW has hardly been hurt at all by the scandals, despite them costing $25bn (£17.6bn). The company now sells more models than ever and, thanks to a post-dieselgate cost-cutting programme, has a growing cash pile.
However, the blame doesn’t stop at Müller’s door. European governments have failed to punish the German car giant for the contempt it showed to a regulatory regime designed to protect human health.
While $4.3bn of fines have been imposed by US authorities, EU ministers have yet to hit the firm with any financial penalty. In the face of such timidity, VW has maintained it does not need to pay compensation to European drivers, including the 1.2 million cars sold in the UK that were fitted with cheat devices. To the UK’s credit, on Friday ministers did pledge unlimited fines and criminal charges for carmakers found fitting cheat devices, but that will do nothing to punish past failings.
So if governments and the car industry can’t be relied on, where does that leave us? It’s time motorists exercised their consumer power.
The car industry has, finally, got the message: diesel is over, and electric cars are the future, maybe not in the short term, but definitely in the long run. Even VW recognises that, with Müller doubling investment on zero-emission vehicles last year.
So as a consumer, the question is: who do you want to reward? Will it be the Teslas and the Nissans, which have forged ahead in this new electric world and pioneered efforts to clean up our air? Or – much as you might fancy an electric Golf – will it be the cheats with the monkeys?
Questions:
1. Identify and analyse issues that have ethical implications.
2. Briefly describe the background to the ethical ‘event’, and the main actors and stakeholders -including those affected by the event.
3. Briefly describe the event itself and its consequences.