| "that's what the competitors in the US do" It's also what another VWAG member, Audi, does on the TDI's in America. These were also very high level engineers. I can also totally believe that, in order to not seem like a they wasted billions on engine development that they literally would not be able to sell without significant changes, that people in charge of the project would just figure out a way to make it seem like a success. Contrary to what you say, this doesn't require an entire corporate culture be rotten. It's like branches of a tree. The fact that one branch is diseased does not mean the entire tree is bad. I've seen this happen in other companies before just in my little open source licensing world. (some group head and his group lie to me about what they are doing, skirt the rules, etc. right up until i catch them. His boss then asks him what the fuck he was thinking and demotes or fires the group head) As you get higher up, one of your biggest problems is, fact, people don't want to tell you bad things. My VP used to have a sign on his desk that said "no surprises". Because he wanted to know everything, whether it was good or bad. |
Look into the VW / Porsche infinite share squeeze. These people aren't affable fools. They didn't just accidentally let engineers write code to skirt around international rules by a factor of 10-40.