Volkswagen cheatd on diesel emissions, faces $ 18 billion fine

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

What's more amazing is how little they had to gain from it, it was all about rather marginal gain in engine performance in a small subset of vehicles they produced.  This is just the first of many hits, and it's already worth a couple of years of profits.  I guess the good thing is that this story gave the business world an example of how dangerous Josef Stalin school of management can be for the company.

My understanding, from trying to parse multiple, various-colored, rumor-filled accounts, is that VW's gain depends on the vehicle in question.  On my car (2014 Passat) it seems to center on the rate the car uses DEF.  The fix will cause my car to consume DEF much faster but would have little, if any, impact on the actual performance.  The issue is the EPA has an arguably protectionist requirement that DEF tanks hold no less than 10,000 miles worth of fluid.  As a result, either my car needs a much larger tank or the EPA needs to accept a less than 10,000-mile service interval.

On other cars, it was about fuel economy.  This has triggered many debates about whether the complaint or the cheating mode is actually better for the environment (cue debates on regulatory capture and EPA protectionism again).

[Zanza]

Volkswagen's 1H 2016 report was published. They had the highest sales volume in the world of all automotive companies ahead of Toyota. Their only really bad market was North America. Consumers elsewhere don't seem to care much.
Their operational earnings for the first half of the year are about half of this settlement. So with the fines and penalities elsewhere they look like they will lose like one-and-a-half years of earnings. Really painful, but it won't kill the company.