[dsuth]

Not sure why you are equivocating in this instance. It's clearly an intentional breach of regulations, which the CEO has fessed up to. NOx emissions are a serious concern, whether they 'are' 40x too high, or 'up to' 40x too high is not a valid point of contention. Anything over the mandated limit is a health risk, and equivocating over how much is like asking whether you'd want 3 years, or 10 years shaved off your life expectancy.

[vonmoltke]

There is no equivocation in my post whatsoever. I was responding to what I saw as a lazy "sound bite" post that was using incorrect information to make a stronger point than it had. There was no judgement about the actions of VW, no downplaying of the seriousness of NOx pollution. Those issues are not relevant to the question of whether the facts presented are materially correct, which they were not.

I will address one thing, though:

> Anything over the mandated limit is a health risk, and equivocating over how much is like asking whether you'd want 3 years, or 10 years shaved off your life expectancy.

That is not equivocating. Also, pollution exists on a continuous scale. Saying everything over the limit is equivalently "bad" and everything under the limit is equivalently "good" is ignoring that. There is a big difference in effect between, say, twice the limit and 40 times the limit.