Volkswagen, as you may have heard recently, used its engineering prowess to deceive us. It did this so it could sell diesel passenger vehicles that pump huge amounts of lung-searing pollution into the air.
Actually, the goal was likely more basic. Make more money.
If you only caught snippets of the news, it would be easy not to realize just how scummy this latest round of corporate malfeasance appears to be.
But first, know this: Nasty air tears up our lungs. And it’s particularly awful for the young, the old and people who have health issues such as asthma.
I asked a Chattanooga pediatric lung doctor to describe what a kid in the throes of an asthma attack looks like. The answer: a fish gasping to survive out of water.
The kids wheeze. They have a look of doom.
“There is hardly anything worse than not being able to breathe, that asphyxiation feel,” Joel Ledbetter told me.
I sought a doctor in Chattanooga because there’s probably no community in the nation more rah rah for VW than the one just over the border from Georgia.
I visited this past weekend, and even in the rain Nooga’s coolness impressed. It’s got mountains, a river, trails, a vibrant downtown and affordable, supersonic home Internet connections that blaze past those of most of the U.S.
Once labeled the nation’s dirtiest city, Chattanooga now revels in clean living and clean industry. A few years back it hit what it thought was a clean sweep: Volkswagen chose Chattanooga for its only assembly plant in the United States. Thousands of nice-paying jobs. Beautiful corporate support in the community. Wonderful bragging rights for a blossoming city.
I swung by the VW plant, where more than 117,000 Passats came off the line last year alone.
‘Think Blue’
Near the conference center where the company hosts community symphony and opera performances are signs touting VW’s environmental marketing line: “Think Blue.” VW installed rows of bicycle racks for anyone who wants to peddle to work. The plant relies partly on solar energy. And the company installed an air pump for visitors, along with a sign describing how proper tire pressure improves fuel efficiency and limits pollution.
Disclosures about VW’s corporate actions make all that look like a farce.
Ron Littlefield, a former Chattanooga mayor, told me he remains proud of the company overall and its impact in the city, but he said the latest revelations are “a disappointment.”
“It’s like hearing about a beloved relative that has done something that you think is inappropriate,” he said.
Me, I question the word “inappropriate” when it comes to such apparent levels of deception by VW.
Other companies have had things go wrong and then tried to hide the truth rather than keep the public safe.
But it appears VW started out with the goal of designing software for its vehicles with the specific intention of tricking government emission tests so it could sell vehicles with dirty diesel engines, including some of the Passats in Chattanooga. The vehicles’ software detected when tests were likely underway and switched into a lower emission mode to fool regulators into thinking the vehicles regularly met nitrogen oxide standards. Outside test situations, the vehicles pumped out far more pollution than allowed.
And it went on for years.
When others questioned the emissions results, Volkswagen came up with excuses. It was only after regulators threatened to keep 2016 models out of the U.S. market that the company opted to come clean, according to news reports.
The company now says millions of vehicles already on the road worldwide may be affected.
“In my German words, we have totally screwed up,” Volkswagen’s U.S. chief was quoted as saying last week. In a statement on the company’s website he said VW is committed to “making this right and preventing it from ever happening again.”
His boss, VW’s worldwide chief executive, is now out of a job (though he reportedly could get nearly $70 million in severance).
Ringing hollow
The mea culpas might eventually get VW forgiveness. But they ring hollow.
The wrongdoing looks like engineered deceit.
And I keep thinking of guppies stranded out of water.
Did VW’s perpetrators ever contemplated the ramifications of their decisions beyond sales or their careers? Did they ever consider the people breathing in their mess?
It’s hard to say with certainty that any specific person was sickened by such broad emissions. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t real health damage.
The victims of the scandal aren’t just VW vehicle owners and shareholders. The folks who should be upset shouldn’t just be regulators. If you breathe air, this scandal is a bad one.
Investigations are underway. Ultimately, we deserve to know who was involved and how high up it went at VW. Individuals, not just corporations, should be held accountable.
Sarah Steffner is a Chattanooga mom whose 10-year-old daughter has asthma.
VW has been good to the community, she told me, but that shouldn’t get it off the hook. She’s seen what it’s like when her daughter can’t breathe: “It’s absolutely terrifying.”
Sitting in Chattanooga traffic jams, she worries the fumes will start her daughter wheezing.
Pollution has a price tag, she said. “It is just disgusting that Volkswagen completely discounted that.”
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