Faster, Higher, Farther: The Volkswagen Scandal

by Jack Ewing

A shocking exposé of Volkswagen’s fraud by the New York Times reporter who covered the scandal.

In mid-2015, Volkswagen proudly reached its goal of surpassing Toyota as the world’s largest automaker. A few months later, the EPA disclosed that Volkswagen had installed software in 11 million cars that deceived emissions-testing mechanisms. By early 2017, VW had settled with American regulators and car owners for $20 billion, with additional lawsuits still looming. In Faster, Higher, Farther, Jack Ewing rips the lid off the conspiracy. He describes VW’s rise from “the people’s car” during the Nazi era to one of Germany’s most prestigious and important global brands, touted for being “green.” He paints vivid portraits of Volkswagen chairman Ferdinand Piëch and chief executive Martin Winterkorn, arguing that the corporate culture they fostered drove employees, working feverishly in pursuit of impossible sales targets, to illegal methods. Unable to build cars that could meet emissions standards in the United States honestly, engineers were left with no choice but to cheat. Volkswagen then compounded the fraud by spending millions marketing “clean diesel,” only to have the lie exposed by a handful of researchers on a shoestring budget, resulting in a guilty plea to criminal charges in a landmark Department of Justice case. Faster, Higher, Farther reveals how the succeed-at-all-costs mentality prevalent in modern boardrooms led to one of corporate history’s farthest-reaching cases of fraud—with potentially devastating consequences.

Genres: Nonfiction, Business, History, Biography, Technology, Crime, True Crime

352 pages, Hardcover

First published May 23, 2017

About the author

I am European Economics Correspondent for The New York Times, based in Frankfurt. I have worked as a journalist in Germany for 25 years, and was previously European Regional Editor for BusinessWeek magazine. I'm a graduate of Hampshire College (B.A.) and Trinity College in Hartford, Conn. (M.A. in History). I grew up in Shelburne, Vt.

Reviews

[Leo Breton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This review is from the former EPA engineer, Leo Breton, discussed in Chapter 7 of Jack Ewing’s book “Faster, Higher, Farther”, specifically in the chapter entitled “Enforcers.”
I really enjoyed reading the book, especially about the corporate and business conditions which made fertile grounds for the deployment of an emissions control “defeat device.” But I will restrict this review to a clarification of the part for which I have first-hand expertise and experience, namely the testing and regulatory side of the story as well as the players involved. I am supplementing the book with additional details to help clarify why real-world testing was not always done and about how it came into being. I don’t fault Jack for not sorting out the myriad details of this in finer detail because I understand that “Faster, Higher, Farther” was focused on the corporate and business aspects of the scandal and not so much about how it became possible to find the “defeat device.” I could easily write an entire prequel to Jack’s book just about the development, under the most difficult circumstances, of my ROVER/PEMS real-world emissions and fuel economy testing technology that was used by West Virginia University in finding the problem. Since my work is briefly described in the book, I will take this opportunity to provide additional, clarifying details of the account for the reader.
Since the Volkswagen scandal became public, there have been many accounts or suggestions by many other groups that they either developed or improved the Portable Emissions Measurement Systems (PEMS) technologies which enabled the real-world testing that was used to find the defeat device. These accounts and suggestions are simply not true. Jack was in no position to be able to sort through such conflicting information, maybe some of it off-the-record, because it was not the focus of his book. But as the pioneer of real-world engine and vehicle emissions and fuel economy testing, and as the inventor and commercializer of the real-world PEMS testing technologies, I lived through the entire process from the beginning to the present and may be the only person who knows all of the relevant details with corresponding documentation.
THE SHORT VERSION IS THE FOLLOWING:
I started working for EPA in 1991 and by 1995 I was unconvinced that laboratory-based vehicle testing results were providing the necessary information for the Agency to make the best decisions regarding the improvement of ambient air quality. Measurements of ambient air quality have always been the basis for the regular reductions in vehicle emissions standards over time. But vehicle emissions in comparison to those numerical standards were being assessed through a rigorous and well-known laboratory testing regime, using standard test cycles, and under very limited ambient temperature, pressure, and driving conditions. The standardized test equipment cost millions of dollars, required huge amounts of space and electrical power, and would not work properly outside of a laboratory environment. The adoption of more stringent emissions standards over time was causing more emissions control hardware to be used on new vehicles but it wasn’t clear to me that there were corresponding reductions of real world emissions. On my own initiative I developed the portable testing technology that I called ROVER and which later became known as PEMS. It was a great technological achievement, much more so because it was developed under the most difficult and adverse internal and external conditions. The PEMS technology development was simply a means to enable the ultimate goal: real-world testing. After proving that ROVER/PEMS worked, I used it successfully in many compliance and enforcement actions for the Agency while simultaneously commercializing the technology and getting it to market so others could benefit from its use. In fact, the Horiba PEMS system used by West Virginia University (WVU) to generate the data that was later used by others to identify the existence of defeat devices is the commercial ROVER system built under license to the ROVER/PEMS patents.
THE LONG VERSION IS THE FOLLOWING:
It wasn’t until reading Jack’s book in 2017 that I became aware that I had been working in such an unglamorous field while I pioneered real-world vehicle testing and invented the equipment that made it possible. But now that I look back on things, I agree with him, although I’m glad I didn’t know it at the time. My job included overseeing laboratory vehicle testing by an EPA contractor in the early 1990s. Witnessing tests made me wonder whether the test results had anything to do with what vehicles emit in the real world. The testing was performed in a sophisticated laboratory using very expensive, accurate, and precise equipment that was developed for this exact purpose and collectively cost millions of dollars. A large dynamometer was literally built into the floor of the laboratory and provided rollers that a vehicle’s tires sat on. The dynamometer controls were set by a technician for the specific vehicle to be tested so the rollers would resist the rotation of the wheels of the vehicle in the same way they would be resisted in the real world as vehicle speed changed. And the dynamometer had large weights that were chosen to simulate the weight of the vehicle’s inertia. The weights rotated with the rollers.
All of the exhaust gas of the vehicle was routed through a gas mixing system that mixed the exhaust gas with a precise amount of ambient, conditioned air to prevent water condensation. A precisely metered sample of this diluted exhaust gas was then siphoned off into a collection bag made of special materials that would not chemically react with the gas sample. There were separate collection bags on a rack, each for a different part of the official test. The sample bags were also connected to plumbing which allowed the samples to be withdrawn and routed through very precise gas analyzers to measure the concentration of each regulated pollutant contained in the samples.
A separate room in the laboratory usually housed the rack containing numerous gas analyzers which were used to measure the concentrations of each regulated pollutant contained in the exhaust gas samples. Other aspects of the testing process were also controlled from this location.
The vehicle to be tested was placed on the dynamometer rolls and strapped down so it could not come off of the rollers. A well-trained technician drove the vehicle on the dynamometer by using the gas pedal, brake pedal, and gear shifter (in the case of a manual transmission) to match the vehicle speed with the prescribed speed published in the Agency’s test procedures (i.e. the test cycle). Gears were shifted according to a shifting pattern supplied by the vehicle’s manufacturer. There were separate tests and test cycles to simulate rural, urban and highway driving, but each of these cycles always had the same speed and distance driven.
While a test cycle was being “driven,” the exhaust sampling equipment, as described above resulted in separate bag samples for each test cycle or phase of the test. Another technician in the control room would draw samples from each bag, one at a time, through the gas analyzers to measure the concentration of each regulated pollutant from each phase of the test. The concentrations were then entered into a computer along with the measured quantity of diluted exhaust gas flowing through the dilution mechanism mentioned above. From these values, the total mass of each regulated pollutant was determined and divided by the test cycle miles to calculate a vehicle’s emissions in grams of pollutant per mile driven. A direct comparison with the emissions standards could then be conducted because the emission standards were specified in grams per mile for each pollutant.
It is of utmost importance to note that the emissions standards are mass-based standards. They are not concentration-based. This is because it is the mass of emissions that affect the health of people and the environment once the exhaust gases mix with ambient air. Concentration measurements require only exhaust gas analyzers while mass measurements required all of the dilution equipment and sample bags described above.
Once I decided that I wanted to see what emissions looked like in the real world, the technical challenge was how to avoid needing most of the laboratory equipment described above. There would be insufficient space, electrical power, and carrying capacity on any passenger car and most trucks to be able to test with conventional equipment, not to mention that test throughput would be very low. Pulling a trailer was not an option in my mind. A system had to be very user-friendly, cost-effective, and applicable to any and all vehicles. As Jack mentioned, I had no budget and the Agency had no money for “science projects.” Many, many hours were spent figuring how to make a compact, energy-efficient system that would easily fit into a vehicle and would not need a portable generator to power it.
When I first suggested the idea to my management in the Agency, there were 2 camps of thought relayed back. The first was that current regulations didn’t prescribe or contemplate real-world testing so its value would be limited because we could only act on laboratory-based emissions levels. The second was that even if mass emissions measured in the laboratory did not accurately reflect real-world emissions levels, the planned reductions in standards over time should be reflected in the real world. For example, if standards were expected to be reduced by 50%, then real-world emissions should be expected to go down by 50% as well. Neither of these management objections made any sense to me, the first because I felt the Agency was responsible for knowing what happens in the real world whether or not it had regulatory authority or a framework in place to do something about high emitting vehicles in the real world that passed the standard tests in the lab. I rejected the second objection because there was no information or data to support such thinking and I didn’t expect it to be true. Vehicles were becoming computer controlled which meant they could act very non-linearly and for anyone to think they could predict how changes over a test cycle would affect changes in the real world made no sense whatsoever.
The technical challenge was to figure out how to replace or eliminate the need for all of the expensive and expansive equipment which was standard in any testing laboratory. I quickly realized that the key to the whole idea was accurately measuring the exhaust gas mass flow rate of a moving vehicle in a safe manner which would not degrade or affect the operation of the vehicle being tested. If I could accurately measure the mass flow of exhaust gas from the tailpipe of a moving vehicle, the remainder of the system would be straightforward in comparison. Of course, this all had to be done with no budget as Jack pointed out and while I continued to do my normal job duties.
Years before I worked at EPA I had seen a device being used for liquid flow rate in an industrial setting. Without going into technical detail, it came to mind because it had positive attributes for my intended use and avoided problems that I expected to encounter in a dirty and wet exhaust gas environment. If I could somehow make it work for a highly transient, dirty exhaust gas that ranges from very little flow when an engine is idling to a very large flow when a vehicle is accelerating, I would have the heart of the system figured out. While this low-dollar part was being custom-manufactured to my specifications, I assembled the remainder of the system and wrote all of the software to control the first ROVER/PEMS system. I borrowed a gas analyzer, scrounged other parts, and worked many nights and weekends as Jack pointed out.
Many hours were spent collecting and analyzing data and modifying the exhaust flow measurement device before it could be incorporated into the overall system and provide accurate measurements. By August of 1995, the complete system had been assembled and prototyped. It was a fully-functional, user-friendly system.
I thought of other, simpler ways of estimating exhaust gas flow but rejected them for use in a technically rigorous testing program because the values would be error-prone and could be manipulated. More specifically, electronic signals from vehicle computers could be used but what I was seeking to develop was a system that would always give a correct measurement for any vehicle, whether it had electronic engine controls or engine data available or not. I referred to this type of testing as “blind testing.” I needed to develop a system that could be placed (blindly) on any vehicle or engine that would not require any information from the vehicle manufacturer whatsoever, to conduct a valid and accurate test of the mass emissions of the vehicle. To accomplish this aspect, I needed to develop the exhaust flowmeter as described above.
Once I had a working prototype, I thought it would be an opportune time to use it as well as demonstrate it to others. I used the first fully-functional prototype in a compliance action in 1995 as Jack describes. This use brought the technology development to the attention of enforcement officials in the Department of Justice who embraced it. During the various enforcement actions in which the technology played a key technical role, also described to some degree in Jack’s book, the automotive and heavy-duty engine industry resisted its use and development. So, not only did my management not want me to develop the technology, but the automotive industry and engine companies, through their trade association, fought the development as well. (I hold no grudges against any of the automotive organizations because they probably had a justifiable approach from the point of view that it was extremely unlikely that some young, runny-nosed, government employee who had no real lab of his own, no budget, worked out of a cubicle in Washington, DC and had never even published a technical paper, would develop a system that is accurate, robust, and works reliably on-the-road. And, of course, it was desirable that real-world emissions remain unknown because there were enough issues to deal with, not to mention the undesirability of non-governmental organizations being able to conduct emissions or fuel economy tests on their own. But that’s all history now…)
So there I was with a beautiful, fully-functional prototype that nobody wanted and that my office said had no use, once the investigations were done. So I conducted demonstrations for many organizations, both within and outside government, including state environmental organizations, universities, and other EPA offices. This is what created a demand for the initial funding that I eventually received years later – not for the development of the technology, but for the duplication of my system so those other organizations clamoring for it could use it. The funding allowed me to make 6 copies of the original system, which I loaned out to help those organizations and continue creating demand for the use of the technology, all the while single-handedly defending its technical integrity and validity of use with industry and within EPA.
One of the organizations that I loaned a copy of the equipment to was West Virginia University. After my use of ROVER/PEMS related to the Department of Justice settlement with heavy-duty engine manufacturers in 1998, the settlement required the companies to conduct their own on-road testing similar to what I had done. But there was no off-the-shelf commercial equipment available yet, and because industry had fought against the use and development of my system during the settlement negotiations, they were allowed to have their own system built by a contractor, using best available technology. Well, there was only one technology available, and that was ROVER/PEMS. Like all good researchers, the WVU engineers evaluated my system in their laboratory. Initially they were very skeptical, in particular they made a laundry list of potential problems with my flow measurement technique. But after using my system and rigorously analyzing the data, they concluded that it worked indeed, that it was accurate, and they did not have to develop other methods of measuring flow. For all practical purposes, and certainly in terms of patent law, the WVU system that was developed was a ROVER/PEMS even though it used similar basic parts from other sources.
Once the 6 systems were out there and others were using them, I quickly decided I didn’t want to be the 1-800 number help desk but I even though I wanted others to have access to the use of the technology. I was already patenting the technology and decided to find an appropriate licensee. Horiba Instruments was seen as the “gold standard” company in the automotive emissions area at that time. I felt it was necessary for me to license the invention to Horiba if I wanted it to survive beyond me. In other words, until the system became a commercial, off-the-shelf system available for purchase from an irrefutably reputable company, all of my years of work and accomplishments would disappear if I left (or was fired) by EPA. I expected automotive companies to generate data from any commercial system and try to poke holes in its accuracy and usability. But if I could get Horiba to manufacture the system and help defend the data quality, I could finally be done with the development effort and move on. I wanted to get the technology out of the laboratory and onto the market so I could do other things as I was viewed by my office management as a loose-cannon for conducting and continuing this work even though all of the usual controls to get me to stop had been applied by my office director (the usual poor performance reviews, lack of promotions, reversing the results of a desk audit promotion, and other means of professional isolation which won’t be discussed here.)
I made a phone call to Horiba Instruments, not really knowing if they had heard about my work. It turns out they had and things progressed quickly for a while. I met with a very high level of company management from Japan that wanted to determine whether or not I was someone they wanted to work with. Things progressed very quickly until additional organizational roadblocks were encountered. Those additional roadblocks, not described here, delayed the appearance of the technology on the market by another 2-3 years. But it eventually happened (other companies have also commercialized the ROVER/PEMS technology) and was available for West Virginia University to use in their testing program for the ICCT that generated the data later used by others in identifying the existence of the defeat device. While others have since used and experimented with real-world measurement technologies, the technology on the market today and used in the VW testing program is the same ROVER/PEMS technology that I invented in 1995. There is a straight and unbroken lineage from the original prototype in 1995 to the six copies of the system, to the commercial systems from Horiba, Sensors Inc, and now AVL and NGK.
Once the licensed, commercial systems became available by Horiba and Sensors, EPA continued to use my hand-built systems for many years because they had more capabilities than the commercial systems. Commercial systems had the features that satisfied most of the small market at that time, but didn’t have all of the features that our test programs had come to rely on.
I was able to leave EPA in 2008 on my own terms. I knew the benefits of work pioneering real-world testing and inventing the technologies to make it p

[Athan Tolis · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve done two reviews for this book.

First, my book review for car lovers:

This is a book about Ferdinand Piech where the numbers 9, 1 and 7 do not appear once on the same page, let alone next to each other.

The End.

Second, my review for everybody else:

In the 1990’s Volkswagen was caught in the middle of a mortal battle with the 100% government-supported and to a great extent government-owned French industrial complex. And it was losing.

A barrel of oil, after you refine it, does not only give you gasoline. The other major byproduct is Diesel. In the (wasteful) US, where nobody once thought anything of transmitting electricity at 110 Volts or fluorinating rather than chlorinating water, or leaving the air conditioning on while on vacation, for that matter, that problem was dealt with via an energy-intensive process called cracking, which pretty much converted the whole barrel of oil into gasoline.

The French and Italian oil industries also being to a great extent government-owned (and government supported via the largely government-controlled banks) used their influence to ensure that Diesel would be promoted as appropriate fuel for passenger cars, rather than just commercial vehicles. The tax on diesel was set much lower than the tax on gasoline. Renault, Peugeot-Citroen and Fiat got the jump on the Germans, with the exception of Daimler-Benz, who in addition to selling luxury cars are also one of the world’s largest makers of trucks.

Two enormous breakthroughs made normally slow and smelly Diesel cars competitive: Peugeot was first to launch a turbo-diesel car, in its Pininfarina-designed flagship, the 604. And Fiat invented common-rail, a cheap but effective way to deliver Diesel to each cylinder.

With the full support of the powers-that-be in the EU, Diesel took the European market by storm, getting up to 40% of passenger cars in no time.

The Germans were in a pickle. Not just VW, but also BMW and the German subsidiaries of Ford and GM (Opel / Vauxhall). They all took different approaches to solving their problem.

BMW took everything they knew about engines, distilled it into a new motor and rushed to market the 524td. Its guinea-pig drivers soon discovered that while it delivered both good fuel economy and fantastic performance, it tended to self-combust. BMW quite simply replaced every single car with the next model, the 525td, but the lessons gleaned from the enormous experiment that had been the 524td fast-tracked BMW to Diesel stardom. If you’re driving on the Autobahn and something indeterminate suddenly overtakes you in a rush of wind and disappears into the distance, it was a 4-door BMW Diesel sedan. Count on it.

Ford was much more practical. They did a deal with Diesel pioneers Peugeot. Twenty years later, my Ford C-Max is running the same 1.6 turbodiesel engine you will find in any Peugeot, Citroen or DS. The fancy Jaguars above 2 litres today still run Peugeot engines today, reflecting the legacy of former Ford ownership. As does your Volvo V40 D5, though not for long. With Chinese money (and input from Denso of Japan), Volvo are now developing their own.

Bosch, masters of everything electronic, had to eat humble pie and buy the rights to common rail Diesel technology from Fiat.

GM refused to play. They stuck to gasoline for so long, that by the time their “whispering Diesel” was finally on the market, their market share was no longer compatible with profitability. They are no longer in Europe. They sold out, to Peugeot, inevitably, last year.

To make a long story short, the plans of the Eurocrats have worked out well. Renault is back to thriving, Peugeot-Citroen (after a quick brush with death) now has the largest market share in its history, and Fiat actually owns Chrysler of the US! Oh, and Diesel is now part of the moral high ground, because it uses less CO2, it’s now our ally in the war against global warming. How convenient!!!

The opposition to the Eurocrat juggernaut lies either crushed or humbled and the weapon was Diesel.

Not so Volkswagen. Led by the indomitable Ferdinand Piech, the Volkswagen group, the “sick man of Europe” of the 1990’s singlehandedly fought the bureaucrats of the EU and won.

And boy did they do it in style. Much as he did with Porsche in the seventies and much as he did with Audi in the eighties, Piech stamped his authority on this new challenge via motorsport. No expense was spared in developing in-house Diesel technology, with multiple strands competing inside the same group. When Piech had picked the winner, he got a catchy name for it (TDI) that he would first sell on the luxury Audi brand and then allow to trickle down to the lesser brands like VW and Skoda.

When in 2006 the Automobile Club de l’Ouest, organizers of the Le Mans car race, and 100% captive to the French industrial complex, announced favorable rules to Diesel, so Peugeot could become the first ever Diesel winners of the 24h du Mans upon re-entering in 2007, they were in for a surprise: seemingly out of nowhere, Audi would ALSO be fielding a Diesel contender, and right away, in 2006. They won!

2007 was a closely-fought thing, but Peugeot, twice winners in the 1990’s lost. Audi and TDI triumphed. Peugeot had to wait two agonizing years more and did not squeak in a win till the 2009 edition of the race, as German racing nous overcame what was probably still a French technological advantage. Piech repeated this exact same feat with hybrid electric power, incidentally, pulling the same move on Toyota for the 2012 race, also scoring the first ever hybrid victory. Toyota are still chasing that first victory, incidentally, some five long years later…

The upshot is that VW has bulldozed its way from bloated and hopeless “sick man of Europe” to being the continent’s (and, briefly, the world’s) #1 car maker.

But there have been costs. The Diesel battle in Europe, which was emphatically won against state-supported opposition, both on track and in the marketplace, meant that VW took its eye off the American market.

This is the historical background you need to understand what happened with the Diesel scandal. The man who beat the French, the Italians and the Eurocrats at their own game via a mostorsport and technology led marketing campaign made some very wrong decisions, thinking he could also bulldoze his way around American regulation. He lost. And now he may lose his company.

That’s the story I was expecting “Faster, Higher, Farther” to tell!

Instead, author Jack Ewing chooses to tell a story that is only tenuously related to the Diesel scandal. He takes you to the founding of Volkswagen by you-know-who and tells the story of Ferdinand Porsche, his sons and grandchildren. It’s got so hopelessly little to do with the Diesel scandal, it really adds nothing other than pages.

Moreover, by telling stories from when Piech was a boy and from there moving on to the machinations involved in his ascension to power inside the VW group, this really reads like a petty corporate scandal, of the kind we regularly read about in the Wall St. Journal. That’s a true pity, because what we have here is a story worthy of classic Greek drama, full of hubris and, eventually, nemesis.

I’d give it one star, except for two things.

First, I learned stuff from this book. I made discoveries from which my hours of reading of car magazines (which depend on advertising from the car industry) had sheltered me. Allow me to list them:

1. The original, 2009 defeat device acts on two different parts of the engine: when it’s active, it both makes less gas recirculate and it also flushes out the NOx trap less frequently. It is no afterthought.

2. The brain behind it started life in Audis. Diesels only really burn nice at high pressure / temperature (thought that’s precisely when they emit more NOx). At lower revs the burning is uneven, leading to local explosions inside the cylinders, causing them to rattle. Audi combatted this by injecting more gasoline at idle, which eliminated the poor burning. But they needed a way to keep rattling if the car was being tested for emissions, leading to the technology to detect if the car is being tested (and to the name of the defeat device: “acoustic function,” because it stops the engine from sounding awful)

3. There were new, separate, devices in the 2012 car, to meter urea slowly when not being tested, in order to ensure the contents of the urea tank could last between inspections.


Second, Ewing explains very well what VW did wrong. Yes, yes, it is absolutely ridiculous and hypocritical that Americans, the most wasteful polluters the planet has known, feel they have a right to criticize a company that makes some of the least polluting and most economical vehicles on earth, BUT:

1. VW set out to break the law. It did not merely fail to report. The analogy to tax, made by the author, works well. VW is not like somebody who did not declare tax. It’s like somebody who filed a false declaration.

2. VW set out to misinform the public and misleadingly advertised its cars as “clean.”

3. VW, once found, refused to come clean. They tried for two years to cover up.

4. VW has refused to concede that the fish stinks from the top.

“Faster, Higher, Further” has helped me understand these issues better, so I’ll part-forgive it having listed the wrong history. It scrapes with three stars.

[Marks54 · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a largely journalistic account of the Volkswagen (and Porsche and Audi) emissions scandal in which VW adjusted its engine software on its diesel cars sold in America to fool the emissions testing without actually controlling emissions of nitrogen oxide and related pollutants to required levels. The book reads quickly and is effective in describing what the problem was, how VW started its cheating, and how the scandal was uncovered and addressed. It is a complex and interesting story that is still unfolding. The book gives required background on the companies involved and their histories going back to the Nazis. It also discusses the outsized egos of the executives running VW and Porsche. The dynamics of the scandal are very understandable and not really novel. The implications for corporate control and public accountability are also immense, but not discussed in much detail.

For example, how did such a massive cheat happen? VW is likely neither evil nor stupid and yet this scandal seems to be such a huge mistake that one is baffled to find how reasonable engineers and managers could do this. Was it due to performance pressures from the top? Was it originally intended as a temporary fix that turned permanent as no solutions to the US emissions situation were found but sales increased? Was it just that VW was too cheap and did not want to risk US sales, even though Mercedes and BMW did what was necessary? Did it continue because middle managers did not want to communicate bad news or was it that top managers wanted their bonuses at any cost? These are all possible explanations and they all likely contributed to the scandal. So does that degree of complexity let the firm off the hook? Does that justify top managers employing the Sergeant Schultz excuse (I know nothing!)? No to both - and a worthwhile discussion could have considered what sort of control system could have kept this from happening.

It was interesting that the same problem about diesel emissions was present in Europe as well as in the US. What differed was the enforcement regime and the potential sanctions. So does that make European VW righteous while American VW was not? What is the focus problem here - following government regulations or putting excessive amounts of nitrogen oxides into the air? The discussion of how the scandal was initially uncovered was fascinating and is something I have wondered about every time I take my car to get its emissions checked. The idea that the car manufacturers could play the testing scheme to their advantage is not surprising but was good to learn about. I have much more respect now for the University of West Virginia!

Overall, the book was informative and rang true. I am not sure what Ewing has added over what could be discerned from the business media but it was worthwhile reading. Some more depth in sorting out the knotty issues in the case - for example comparing wrongdoing in American versus European contexts - would have greatly improved the book.

[Donna · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is nonfiction on corporate scandal. I'm not sure I'll be able to look at German cars the same. This started off well with a story you want to see the end of. Then there is a shift before the ending can happen because the reader is now being propelled into the lengthy back story. We get the full history and weight of the situation. (That was my least favorite part.)

Once the book was caught up to modern day, it got interesting again. But I still have a question...maybe it's rhetorical but here it is. Did VW really think they could hide this forever? They should have been working on a fix long before the cat was out of the bag.

[Gopal R · Rating 5 out of 5]

Two things led me to this book - I own a Volkswagen car and have an automotive background. And this book did not disappoint me. Apart from providing an account of the defeat device, this book also provided a glimpse of the early days and the management style of Volkswagen. Any automotive enthusiast reading this book will not be able to put this down. It's interesting to note that German automotive technology, with all its awesomeness, was also capable of designing something fraudulent.

[Amanda Tuinstra ( Liefde voor boeken Amanda) · Rating 3 out of 5]

recensie volgt op m'n blog.

[Daniëlle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interessant, een zeer grondige uiteenzetting van dieselgate. Fijn geschreven, ondanks de overload aan feitelijke informatie weet de schrijver er toch een meeslepend verhaal van te maken.

[Anni Reeds · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very well researched work on the history of Volkswagen that helps understand the background of the scandal.

[Arthur · Rating 4 out of 5]

Through description of the Volkswagen emissions scandal arguing that Volkswagen consistently did the wrong thing: creating defeat devices, then denying that they did, and then promulgating that only a few rogue employees knew about them. The story is well told. I enjoyed the character descriptions of some of the key players.

[Arun · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book helps us understand how the pressure to meet corporate goals at any cost, leads to setting unrealistic targets. A good learning was that - Stretch goals are good, but there needs to be clear boundaries, else execution is hard.
The book provides us with a well researched history of VW, how the problem was determined, and what was the corporate response.

[Brian Rankin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very well reasearched including the history of VW, how the problem was determined, and then corporate response. Also a fascinating look at the people working for the company and their relationship to regulators.

[Allan Macdonald · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not exactly what I thought it would be from the title! However, this book was something of a very pleasant surprise to me. Having been in the presence of the man twice in my life, and with a few key moments of my career directly tied to his personal opinion, I have been looking for a book on the story of Ferdinand Piëch for many years, and unexpectedly this book turned out to be exactly that. Of course I understand that this means my review is somewhat biased by my own fascination with VW and Piëch in particular.

Whilst the subject of the diesel scandal is of course covered, in many ways it is not the main thrust of this book, which is far more centered around the machiavellian climb to power of Piëch himself, and the role his personality played in everything that happened at VW Group. The book guides you through most of his career, from Porsche, to Audi and eventually on to Chairman of the Board at VW Group, and I found it somewhat awe inspiring/inducing to read how one man could shape and bend the will of such a large conglomerate to his own personal whim! Of course this comes from framing the book around the idea that Piëch himself is greatly responsible for the scandal due to the culture of expectation and fear he built within VW Group. As such, if you are in the market for a book on Ferdinand Piëch (there are not many (any?) to be found, especially in english) I can highly recommend this one. If you are looking for something to explain dieselgate specifically, then this book is fine, so long as you dont mind the story being woven into a much wider narrative.

I was also fascinated to learn more about the history of modifying engine characteristics to the detriment of emissions standards! GM in '93, Ford in '97, Cummins/Caterpillar Inc./Detroit Diesel Corp./Mack Trucks Inc./Renault Vehicules Industriels/Navistar International Transportation Corp./Volvo Truck Corp. in '98.

The almost blow by blow account of the ill-fated Porsche attempt to buy out VW was another section that had me gripped. From near success, to massive failure! We follow a storyline which saw Porsche hours from bankruptcy and briefly saw VW become the most valuable company in the world, but ultimately ends in massively building and strengthening the Piëch grip on the VW empire!

[Karl · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book details the "defeat device" scandal perpetrated by Volkswagen in the United States. It details the history, politics, and regulatory environment affecting Volkswagen. I read this book to review its suitability for an engineering ethics course, and this review is about its suitability for that purpose.

Strong Points:

• The book does an excellent job detailing the historical, political, economic, environmental context in which the scandal occurred. These are some of the primary objectives of the course.

• The details of the scandal lend themselves to discussions on virtue ethics (practice being who you want to be). The initial lies in Volkswagen were resisted, but once established, ever bigger lies seemed to become acceptable.

• The study lends itself to a discussion on rule-based utilitarian ethics. First, regarding the regulatory rules affecting auto manufacturers: Should we assign regulatory rules moral weight? If they can be evaded without breaking the rule, would that be unethical? In an environment in which everyone is evading the rules, at what point does following the rule cease being ethical and make you a sucker? If evading a poorly-written and largely unenforced rules becomes common practice, is it unethical to simply break the rule outright. Second, the rules established internally for compliance: At what point does pressure for results become an undue pressure to commit fraud? When an organization establishes strong incentives for results, and asks few questions how those results were achieved, is that itself unethical? Is the breach of ethics on the part of those that set up the incentive structure, or those that committed the infraction?

• Many of the characters in the story have complex motivations and divided loyalties. A Volkswagen CEO has a duty to the employees, shareholders, and corporate legacy for sure. What of the regulatory apparatus? Is the fear of punishment the only reason for regulatory compliance? If evasion of a regulatory rule could be achieved with little fear of punishment, perhaps it is not merely permissible, but a duty that will confer a competitive advantage that the competition would be equally willing to exploit? What are the effects of family prestige, personal fortune, and plain vanity? To whom does a division manager or a software engineer owe a duty. Should a mid-level engineer be worried about regulatory compliance if that is not his assigned role?

• The story plainly illustrates several of the chief sources of corruption as it occurs in industry, even going so far as to use the cliche phase "paying the mortgage". Any individual has a lot to lose by speaking up, and doing so is very unlikely to make a difference. These problems become worse when speaking up and causing problems will disrupt your colleagues work and could also endanger their jobs.

• There is ample material to discuss the soft pulls in moral reasoning that affect people's decisions. To what extent were the engineers and managers Volkswagen chauvinists, believing that their company was different or special, and things worked differently here than in other places? How much would objecting to Volkswagen's practice be interpreted (and feel) like subversion to the shared goal? Once an engineer became complicit in the scheme, how much would attempting to stop it seem (and feel) like betrayal?

Weak points:

• The first half of the book is written like a popular history book, recounting the well-known story of Volkswagen. After that, the tone of the story shifts to something more like an investigation or an after-action report. It gives conflicting narratives and inconsistent timelines like one would expect in a contentious issue examined closely. The problem (for the purposes of using it for an ethics class) is that the book remains focused on the top levels of management, and never really brings the story down to the level of the salaried engineer where some of these decisions are known to begin. To be useful in an ethics class, these stories must be inferred, guessed at. I think this is likely to be a flaw in studying any real-world case of any complexity.

• I worry that some student may not appreciate the harm done by the Volkswagen scandal. The book assures us that the increase in nitrous oxide emission may (statistically speaking) have killed hundreds, but this is a contentious assertion. That fact that Volkswagen got caught and the full extent of the fines and tort claims (while as still unknown) will probably be in the $30-60b range may be similarly unappreciated. Responsibility for the scandal and the effects of the malfeasance are distributed very broadly and, except for people who thought they were buying a "clean" vehicle, hard to identify the victims. This can be spun on into a question presented in the text, however. Should it be considered worse and be more financially ruinous to have an acute defect that kills people on the highway than to lie and statistically kill an equal number of people? What weight do we put on misrepresenting the product and depriving the customers of the moral righteousness of driving a "green" vehicle?


Overall, I this book will work well for the purposes of presenting a case study in engineering ethics.

[Bald · Rating 5 out of 5]

Volkswagen is a weird company.

You may be thinking that the only modern multinational company borne of a Nazi passion project is bound to be weird. And you are right. But exactly how weird Volkswagen is will defy even your wildest expectations.

In fact, Volkswagen is so weird, it’s a miracle the company can produce anything, let alone machines as sophisticated as cars—to say nothing of cars with technology as sophisticated as the doomed Turbocharged Direct Injection (TDI) diesel engine, a technically brilliant project whose abysmal long-run failure is the subject of this book.

How do I substantiate my insults? What makes Volkswagen so weird?

Consider the following. Volkswagen has characteristics of a worker-owned cooperative, a state owned enterprise and a dynastic family company, all in one! None of these corporate forms are known for delivering long-term stability and strong growth. All typically have leadership problems.

Volkswagen is like a worker-owned cooperative because German corporate governance gives workers significantly more power than is usual in any US company. But Volkswagen’s workers get even more clout than typical German workers because 20% of voting shares are owned by the State of Lower Saxony, where the company’s headquarters in Wolfsburg is located. But there’s also the Volkswagen law. To quote US News, the Volkswagen law stipulates that: "Decisions that normally require at least a three-quarters majority at the annual general meeting must be passed by more than four-fifths of Volkswagen shareholders, giving Lower Saxony a blocking minority. Any decision to build or move a production plant also needs approval of a two-thirds majority in the 20-strong supervisory board, the law says, without specifically mentioning closures. This means the 10 members on the board representing German labor can veto any far-reaching plans that affect factories."

In this way, Volkswagen is also like a state-owned enterprise. It is entwined with the state government in terms of ownership and voting rights, and has special status enshrined in law.

Then, there’s the family dynasty—the descendants of Ferdinand Porsche, who designed the original Volkswagen Beetle for Hitler. These descendants, the Porsche and Piëch clans, have always held significant voting power as shareholders. Some of them, like Porsche’s grandson Ferdinand Piëch, have stepped up to run the company. Meanwhile, the links between Volkswagen and the Porsche-Piëch family have lead to strange practices, like the many decades in which Volkswagen had no corporate research and development arm. These aspects of the business were farmed out to a nominal competitor, Porsche, one of Ferdinand Porsche’s post-Volkswagen projects. But the Porsche company wasn’t content to merely be affiliated with Volkswagen through business and blood ties. One of the more startling stories in the book is Porsche’s attempt at a hostile takeover of Volkswagen in the early part of this century.

Into this swirling cauldron of conflicting interests steps Ferdinand Piëch, who had long dreamed of refining dirty-but-powerful diesel engines into elegant machines appropriate for use in consumer cars, and had introduced the first such TDI engine in 1989. Born into Volkswagen’s first family in 1937, Piëch’s childhood idyll was the Volkswagen plant itself. Surrounded by slave laborers building armaments for the Nazi war machine, young Piëch blissfully rode the miniature trains carrying parts between different wings of the factory without a care in the world. Perfectionist, detail-oriented and tyrannical, Piëch was said to have more use for machines than people. He could cut a subordinate to pieces with a few carefully-chosen words, never raising his voice. His ego drove the TDI project forward, pushing previous frontiers of engineering to their limit. His ego, and the hubris that went along with it, would eventually doom the project, as Volkswagen infamously used a “defeat device” to hide the TDI engines’ nitrogen oxide emissions up to 40 times the legal limit from American regulators.

Equal parts history of a legendary company, psychological profile of the company’s dominant players, management case study, and retelling of the age-old story of man’s hubristic downfall, Jack Ewing paints a vivid picture of a corporate culture at once communitarian and harshly competitive, where everyone gets a say, but winning is still everything—even if you lose the public trust.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Faster, Higher, Farther: The Volkswagen Scandel, by Jack Ewing, is an interesting look at the recent Volkswagen scandal regarding the defeat devices used to cheat emissions tests on Volkswagen cars. Volkswagen, one of the largest automakers in the world, and owner of Audi, Porsche, Bugatti, Lamborghini and so on, used defeat devices in their diesel engines to trick emissions tests. Volkswagen was trying hard to push into the US market for cars, marketing their diesels as fuel efficient and environmentally friendly. Although receiving superior mileage, diesel engines burn NOx as emissions - a damaging greenhouse gas that creates smog, and is dangerous to human health. Volkswagen's had a technological out - they could have used a spray called Urea in their cars, which when injected into the fuel tank dissolves Nitrogen-Oxygen compounds. However, the Urea spray needed to be filled by the car owner, and Volkswagen worried that this would be a sales impediment by American drivers. Therefore, it seemed easier and cheaper to install a defeat device, something that was certainly illegal in most global jurisdictions, but with a low chance of discovery. Such devices had been used in the past in the trucking industry in both the US and Europe, and because of lax environmental laws in Europe, testing conditions were known before hand by the automaker, making it easy to guess the testing conditions and create code to defeat it.

Ewing argues that the main issue with Volkswagen in this scandal was its corporate culture. Volkswagen, developed under the Nazi regime, had always had an authoritarian business culture and close association with the Porsche/Piecth family. The family had developed Volkswagen to try and become one of the worlds largest automakers - and largely succeeded. The company had purchased or created many famous brands globally - including sports car and motorcycle brands, as well as many European mid-class and luxury brands. Ewing recounts the growth of Volkswagen's empire building strategies - and it is very interesting. Family squabbling, a closeness to the Lower Saxony government, and a powerful trade union and German laws on worker participation in shareholder meetings created a highly political company. This politicking often led to regime changes, family crisis and scandal, but also created a company that new how to take advantage of the situations surrounding it. Volkswagen built its empire through perfect timing, financial schemes and outright takeovers of competing firms. Managers in the plants and offices of the firm aped this attitude - creating a corporate culture centered on conflict, powerful personalities and competition.

Ewing has chronicled the history of Volkswagen - from a Nazi utopian project, to the Beetle, to the growth of TDI technology, and into the scandal, and has done a great job. The discovery of the defeat devices by regulators in California is also noted in detail, from how the defeat devices were discovered in road testing, to the machinations of various agencies in the US and Europe. He takes great pains in trying to dissuade readers from thinking the VW scandal was politically motivated by a notoriously protectionist US regulatory system - something I am skeptical about. It seems likely that VW was targeted to reduce its market share in the US and promote the lagging US auto industry - especially as regulators (at the time of writing) are increasingly engaging in protectionist and anti-competitive practices. However, Ewing is certain it was only for environmental protection and compliance that the scandal emerged, and why VW was targeted so harshly even after defeat devices were found in other firms.

Regardless, this is an interesting read, and certainly a quite definitive account on the scandal. Eqing has done excellent research, and offers a highly readable account both of Volkswagen as a business, and the growth, discovery and aftermath of one of the major business scandals of the past few years. I can easily recommend this book to those interested in business history, books on corporate culture, and those looking to learn more on a compelling and interesting scandal.

[Karel Alleene · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting read ... although I found this gripping for maybe the wrong reasons.

The portrait that Ewing paints of the corporate VW-structure is - according to me - excellent: a giant car manufacturer under the spell of Ferdinand Porsche's grandson Piëch. You get the impression he is some kind of Darth Vader, leaving a trail of fearful employees. Regardless to say: such a climate isn't very good for troubleshooting or finding new solutions for old problems. Old problems like the exhaust fumes of diesel engines.

For as long as I've been interested in cars the main problem with diesel engines has always been the same: small dust particles. It's inherent in the architecture of a diesel engine. I remember being very surprised when I read about the performance of the new diesel engines in the mid-2000's. They were more powerful, were more economical and more friendly for the environment. Count your blessings.

Needless to say: anyone who took notice could've figured out there was something wrong. A diesel engine is - literally - a dirty piece of engineering. A 'clean' diesel engine would be something like '100 % safe' nucleair power.

Which brings me to page 387 (in the dutch version that is):

'A lot of extraordinary intelligent people bought these VW's and Audi's because they thought the cars meant a breakthrough'

If they were that intelligent ... why did they believe VW sales' "clean-air" pitch? A visit to wikipedia could tell you how a diesel engine works. And who the hell believes a car-ad? They're called 'advertisements' for a reason.

If you bought a VW or Audi diesel you simply knew (if you took the effort to inform you properly) that a Toyota Prius or Nissan Leaf was healthier for the environment. And you always knew that a VW or Audi delivered more 'driving pleasure' than a Prius. I know because I have a VW/Audi-product in the garage with a 'faulty' engine.

As a consumer I could've bought a Prius at the time, but I didn't. So I try to use my car as reasonable as I can ... because I simply know a car isn't very good for the environment.

What I found particural disturbing was how American VW-consumers were portrayed as victims. I can imagine that you feel betrayed when you find out that the company who produced your car fitted faulty software. But - like I mentioned before - did you really believe that you were driving a 'wonder' car?

There's also no mention of the TTIP-war that's currently going on between the USA and Europe. Remember: a few days after the VW-scandal broke out in the U.S.A. Europe attacked Facebook about their 'privacy'-policy.

Ewing makes a few small mistakes (Audi wasn't the first with a TDI-engine, that was Fiat. Piëch didn't introduce the Golf GTI, that was Carl Hahn.) - but slips up in a big way when he makes a comparison between a Volkswagen Jetta and a 'diesel-engined' American pick-up truck:

page 380 (in the dutch version):

'An American Volkswagen Jetta diesel produced in 2010 twice as much Nox as a heavy diesel-engined pick-up truck.'

If you draw a comparison it's quite important to know what you're comparing to. So: which diesel-engined pick-up truck are we talking about? Ford doesn't deliver a diesel engine in their F-150 pick-up series, nor does Chevrolet in their pick-up range. So the comparison drops dead.

These are the drawbacks I found in this nevertheless good book. If you want to know how a giant company like Volkswagen can tackle itself by being arrogant, this is your book. If you want to know how a couple of talented, driven engineers can expose lies by simply doing their job like they're supposed to, this is your book.

If you want to know how the whole picture (public perception vs. politics), I think we have to wait for a few more years.

[Alex Furst · Rating 4 out of 5]

Faster, Higher, Farther: The Volkswagen Scandal by Jack Ewing.
4/5 rating.
Book #122 of 2019. Read October 18, 2019.

This book was an incredibly interesting read! I learned so much about "dieselgate" (the entire VW diesel emissions cheating scandal). Having worked for the parts development team at Hyundai, and even more specifically with the catalyst and catalytic converter manufacturers, I understand the amount of engineering, detail and responsibility of proper design for these components. With this deep understanding and as an engineer, I was utterly disgusted by the complete lack of morals, or acceptance of responsibility by Volkswagen and its affiliates. VW deployed outright "defeat devices" as direct ways to cheat the emissions tests in the US, while touting their technology as "clean diesel". This out-right lie endangered people and the environment to levels of potentially deadly nitrogen dioxide: levels in excess of the legal limit by as much as 40 TIMES FOR SOME VEHICLES!!

I think everyone working in the auto industry should read this, but even more broadly, this book is telling for anyone working in an industry where your choices impact a wide array of people, and lying to your customers can have a direct impact on their health or wellbeing. As was clearly stated in the book: "Precisely because [stretch goals] generate a lot of pressure, you have to make sure they are coupled with a clear sense of what the boundaries are. ‘We will grow, but we will do so in a way that is true to our brand.’ Ensuring those values is more important than reaching the goal. You should never let the goal itself get the better of you. That was just missing at Volkswagen." I was astounded at the direct and blatant malfeasance by VW, and definitely do not plan to support them with a car purchase any time soon!

Quotes:
"Most executives, it was clear, were not ready to stand up to Piëch. On the contrary, his style of management emboldened subordinates to behave the same way toward their underlings. That is how corporate cultures - the unwritten rules that govern behavior inside a large organization - come into being. The people at the top set an example, and the people below them follow."
"Europe made it so easy to undermine emissions standards legally, in fact, that defeat devices were completely superfluous."
"In the years preceding the West Virginia University study, Volkswagen had also considered detailed proposals, made on several occasions at product strategy meetings, for improving the pollution control equipment so that emissions under normal driving conditions would better match those achieved in the lab. The proposals were rejected. Too expensive, Winterkorn and others said. The use of defeat devices, which may have begun as a stopgap, had become a habit, as long as the deception remained undiscovered, a cost advantage."

[Aditya Iyer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Volkswagen became the largest carmaker in 2015. It pre-dominantly achieved it by installing software to deceive the emission regulators – ‘Clean diesel’ was a fraud claim.

Higher, Further, Faster is a detailed, slow-paced inside story that explores Volkswagen’s early beginnings from Hitler’s project – people’s car to global domination in automobiles and its ultimate fall. This story is about how succeed-at-all-cost culture led to one of the corporate history’s farthest-reaching cases of fraud.

The narrative has an automobile and financial-related jargon, but it’s clearly expressed. Technical details, especially how Volkswagen programmed the cheat was explained with diagrams and were understandable.

It is chronologically structured with a startling depth towards Volkswagen’s history.

The initial chapters aren’t gripping but it gets crazy as the story unfolds. At one point, I reacted, “Have they lost their minds? How in the hell did they have the guts to continue selling fraudulent cars while under surveillance from regulators? Was it a bold or a stupid move?”

That’s not all, some parts left me in complete surprise. For example,
1. The Volkswagen law: An unusual shareholder structure aimed at restricting the power of outside shareholders.
2. Co-determination law: It guarantees the rights of all employees at larger corporations to have a say – to elect workers council, introduce weekend shifts, or make job cuts.
3. Proche’s failed attempt to acquire Volkswagen resulted in Volkswagen acquiring Proche.

If you love cars, this book could make you hate car manufactures, likewise, it will show you that they are in a sorry position. Here why and how:

Breton, an employee of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) doubted about its emission testing methods and developed – ROVER. It exposed reputed car manufacturers like GM, Ford, and local truck companies.

The later part reveals that Hyundai and Kia were caught breaking the emission standards too. Following this, I lost my mind. I will now have a hard time trusting a car manufacturer’s claim. I don’t want to end up owning a car that kills people.

But are car manufacturers the only ones to blame, Volkswagen in particular?

In this scenario, yes, but what troubled me is that this isn’t a case, like Theranos corporate scandal where the technology didn’t work. The technology worked and reduced the pollution to the required levels, but it was expensive and added nothing to the car’s appeal. The management thought, that this extra cost would annoy the customer and hurt their sale. Hence, they decided to install a defeat device to cheat on its fuel emissions.

The harsh reality of the auto industry is automakers face a constant struggle to strike a balance between fuel economy, customers’ desire for performance and styling, and demands of regulators for cleaner emissions and safer vehicles.

Producing environmentally friendly products raises costs. Who do you think should bear it? Are we ready to bear it?

I picked this book because of my interest in this genre. You should read it too it’s a gripping inside story that uncovered the deception in slow and steady detail.

[Kay · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author spent a year chronicling the exposure of an outrageous scheme by Volkswagen to overtake Toyota as the leading seller of cars in the US. Top management had decided that the only way to capture a major share of the US market was to persuade buyers that switching to diesel would result in better mileage AND be far better for the environment. By 2015, they had succeeded, passing Toyota as the leading vendor of foreign cars in America. Unfortunately for VW, a small team of researchers from West Virginia University later discovered that--despite good readings in EPA Lab tests--VW's diesel engines actually spewed ten times as much nitrogen oxide into the air. Unlike CO2, which contributes to future global warming, nitrogen oxides cause immediate harm to human health and are the main ingredient in smog that chokes urban areas, both here and in Europe.
And this was no accident. It took a year to prove it, but investigators for the California Air authorities ultimately discovered that VW had knowingly installed "defeat devices" in its vehicles. Engineers who tried to persuade management that what they wanted couldn't be done without additional expense or inconvenience were removed or reprimanded (and subsequently blamed when the truth emerged).
Jack Ewing spent a year researching this book, including a description of the elements in VW's corporate culture that led to such an outrageous and risky gambit. Interestingly, many VW executives simply didn't grasp the extent to which US law punishes environmental violations, especially when they are deliberate attempts to deceive the public. The EU has similar regulations, but the penalties are relatively minor. Here in the US, many states have tied their approval process to the California standards, which should be immune to assault from Trump appointees--thank you California.
Despite knowing the outcome in advance, I found this as enthralling as a good who-dun-it.

[Shana Yates · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. This is a solid book of reporting on the VW scandal (thus far). In explaining the contours of VW's efforts to thwart United States emissions tests, Ewing first places VW in history. The book, after a brief introductory chapter, flashes back to the founding families of VW and Porshe (the Piëch and Porshe families), covering their interests in engineering, their place in Germany and Austria during WWI, the interwar period, and WWII, and the personalities at play. Ewing also gives highlights of each car company's products, explanation of some of the engineering behind advances, and a broad portrait of how the larger companies were run.

With this as foundation, we eventually find ourselves moving forward into the present day. We are given background of how the car business was changing, the competition for new markets, and the impact of oil prices and environmental concerns on both. That background, along with the knowledge of how VW was run (and the personality, in particular, of Ferdinand Piëch), sets the stage for the scandal that hit the newspapers a few years back and is still playing out in court (both the legal courts and the court of public opinion).

In the end, this is half history and half story of corporate hubris and recklessness. The book is interesting, but not necessarily gripping. Ewing is very workmanlike, and is clear and easy to understand, but not engaging enough to make this a book you can't put down. A few other reviews have noted that the story is incomplete as we are still in the pendency of legal ramifications (including class actions around the world) and long term PR effects. I agree, and the story just seems to abruptly end. I will at least be able to keep up to date on developments in the case with a lot more understanding than I used to have, but I can't help but think this book could have waited until the story had fully unfurled.

[Angie Boyter · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a fascinating story for which the author did impressive research, so I should have liked it better, but perhaps the extensive research explains why.
The book opens with a delightful chapter about a group of grad students from West Virginia University driving down freeways testing auto emissions under highway conditions, instead of in a laboratory. It was this research that ultimately led to the disclosure that Volkswagen deliberately rigged their autos to pass government emissions tests even though they polluted well above acceptable levels on the road.
After that chapter, though, the book delves deep, VERY deep, into the history of Volkswagen and does not really return to the scandal until halfway through the book. Some of it is fascinating. I had no idea that Volkswagen was founded in the early 30s by Ferdinand Porsche to fulfill Hitler's desire for a "people's" car, for example. And the extensive history gives the reader an excellent sense of the relationships and culture that led to the scandal. But it was REALLY more than I wanted to know.
And although it is nice to be able to visualize what is being written about, I really did not need (or care) to hear how the conference room of the California Air Resources Board is furnished or what kind of brick some of the buildings were constructed of, etc.
A little more editing would have been desirable, too. For example, the acronym ICCT was used before the organization it stood for had been mentioned.
Don't get me wrong; this is a good book. Once he got started on the main story, it was a fascinating read. But it could have been better.

[Wilmer Calle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Todo funcionario público debe leer este libro porque es un aprendizaje de las malas decisiones tomadas por los gerentes, sub-gerentes, ingenieros y técnicos etc. que a larga trajo diversas repercusiones tanto económicas como legales.
Le quito una estrella debido a que, al inicio cuenta la historia desde la fundación de volkswagen se hace un poco aburrida porque uno espera leer defrente los por menores del escándalo. Yo sé que es para poner en contexto y dar a conocer como se fundó volkswagen. (luego se torna interesante).
Cito algunas frases resaltadas del libro:
Ferdinand Porsche (1875-1951) y Ferdinand Piech (1937 - ) " Pero los dos tenían mucho en común, como una intrépida determinación, una fascinación por la tecnología y un talento para la ingeniería."
"Ferdinand Piëch estaba muy ocupado demostrando que no era sólo el nieto de Ferdinand Porsche, sino también un ingeniero fantástico y directivo por derecho propio."
"mejor despedir a un ejecutivo incompetente que dejar que la persona ponga en peligro el puesto de trabajadores inocentes de la cadena de montaje."
"Además, era un ingeniero, con una obsesión por los automóviles y por la fabricación que formaba parte de su naturaleza desde niño, (Ferdinand Piech)"
"Cuando Piëch llegó al cargo, Volkswagen ocupaba un humillante decimoquinto puesto entre los importadores a Estados Unidos, el mayor mercado automovilístico del mundo, uno que ningún fabricante de coches puede ignorar."
"Cuando Piëch llegó al cargo, Volkswagen ocupaba un humillante decimoquinto puesto entre los importadores a Estados Unidos, el mayor mercado automovilístico del mundo, uno que ningún fabricante de coches puede ignorar."
"A Piëch le interesaban más los coches que el dinero; prefería invertir los beneficios en investigación y desarrollo en lugar de pagar dividendos."
Lo leí en 21h 27min.

[Graham Brownett · Rating 5 out of 5]

I decided to read this book because I bought a Volkswagen Passat TDI in 2014 and wanted to find out how I and millions like me were conned by what was once the largest automobile manufacturer in the world.

Jack Ewing is a motoring journalist based in Europe and this book is about the history of Volkswagen (people’s car), the part it played in Hitler’s Nazi war machine, the Porsche and Piech families that built and controlled it until very recently, its rise to diesel dominance in Europe, how it manipulated the American market into believing the myth that is clean diesel, how it was caught deceiving the emissions testing authorities in the US, how it denied and lied about the defeat device software it installed in its cars and the financial repercussions for the company and the damage to its worldwide reputation.

The story of how the fraud unfolded, the lack of understanding of how an incredible x40 emissions discrepancy between lab testing and road conditions had technicians scratching their heads and how the directors of Volkswagen deflected responsibilities on to rogue engineers, leaves the reader dumfounded how no individual has ever been held accountable.

In the US deceiving the emissions testing authorities is deemed corporate fraud whereas in the German dominated European Union it is considered a misdemeanour, hence the $22 billion payout in fines and compensation to American authorities and consumers and their refusal to pay out in Europe.

Ewing’s thorough research of background information and his grasp of the technical issues has resulted in an absorbing and well written account of one of the largest corporate fraud cases in history. A must read for all those who purchased a diesel vehicle from Volkswagen, Audi, Seat or Skoda between 2008 and 2016, especially in Europe where the wait for compensation goes on.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Our first VW van, a 1969, had flowery curtains and jangling bronze bells and a thick foam bed in the back. It was followed over the years by three more vans as our kids were born, grew up, saw much of the country and learned to drive the stick shift and watch the faster, low slung cars go zooming past. So the story of the company's clean diesel default device was something that interested me because it seemed to fit with the take-it-or-leave-it VW philosophy. The author's fine and thoroughly researched story was of most interest to me for what the company did and how much they paid for their brazen crime. The surprisingly detailed history of the VW brand and the close families behind it was well worth the time I invested to read these parts as I moved along gathering more information about the crime and cover up and come to Jesus ending. It is a very good story with bright and good and selfish and dumb people who aren't as clever as they think.

[Mark Baines · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting, well written coverage of a massive fraud initiated and maintained by Volkswagen relating to the alleged superior level of toxic emission control of their diesel vehicles (specifically cars). This is the story behind the headlines.

The massive fines imposed by US legislators and continuing obfuscation by VW are staggering and is something that needs re-exposing in the public arena again. It seems that VW main board executives continue to deny any wrongdoing for something that affects everyone’s health. US legislators should be congratulated for their tenacity and EU/`European legislators need to step up their game; remember car building is a major employment stream in Europe.

Minor annoyance and distraction was the displaying figures in both EURO and USD when a single currency would have sufficed - the numbers are so big (and exchange rate almost 1:1) that this was superfluous and interruptive.

[Manobhav Jain · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting take on the seeds of the corporate culture which ultimately led to the massive scandal. Overall an enjoyable read, however felt that there was too much focus on the biographical aspect of Peich and less on the events regarding the actual fraud. Some details regarding the rationale behind VW betting on diesel vehicles and the historical context on development of automobile industry as a whole on the fuel would have helped answering some important questions regarding the need of VW to bet on the fuel knowing that they havent been able to solve the emission problem.
I would recommend to read the review of Athan Tolis for the diesel history.
The review of Leo Breton is also interesting as it explores the development of Portable Emission Testing mechanism which actually led to the nail in coffin

[Mark Andrew Roberts · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great study of how a multinational corporation struggled to meet ever harder emissions results for their diesel vehicles, and this led to software code acting as a “defeat device” to enable cars to cheat when recognizing they’re being set on rollers to carry out testing of what comes out of the exhaust. Interesting to hear about the ownership of VW and how it’s essentially been down to 2 families along with state ownership owing to business law in Germany. And the damage it’s all caused to the firms reputation, along with the severe financial penalties incurred when upper management encouraged plausible deniability regarding the cheating test results. An example of how not to lead a business

[Samuel Premkumar · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gripping thriller on corporate arrogance . The book covers the history of VW from the birth to the latest emission Scandal. VW has gone through many scandals staring with the Beetle settlement with Tatra to the bribery Scandal in India.
The boldness with which defeat devices(software) were installed in US bound cars is remarkably bold, knowing the US enforcement system on clean air. Inspite of all these, the management board feigning ignorance is also bold.
A typical example of an organisation trampling over everything in their focus to become world no 1, and they achieved it 3 years before target.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad, gives a nice over view history of the actions which left to the Volkswagen scandal. Probably not the book for me, since a least a third is devoted to the history of Volkswagen, and I'm more interested in the politics than the cars.
This is more of a broad overview rather than any major investigative piece, in my opinion. They even say near the end that "It is not yet clear what the ultimate consequences for Volkswagen will be." The issue is still ongoing, and this is more to whet your appetite.
There is some repetition in the book. I'm pretty sure they described four different times the role that Nitrogen Oxide has in the role of smog creation.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating, horrifying, well-written, does a good job explaining the technical stuff, and substantiated my prejudices against an element of the corporate class - that portion of it where greed trumps sense and slavish devotion to corporate goals above all else is rewarded. Yes, they were caught but who has really paid the price for that? Their shareholders and workers. The decision makers are less rich but they are not poor and not in jail. Jail is where they belong - I'd think the risk of an actual long prison sentence, in a stock-standard prison (not some soft white collar criminals' one) might actually shape decision making. Maybe. But maybe not. Greed and arrogance are hard to check.