[ProfChronos]

I am really amazed by the comments I read so I am voluntarily going to "defend" VW while I would not in other circumstances. To make sure this is understood: yes VW is guilty, it has violated customers' trust, they are a shame for the entire car industry and should receive strong punishment for that.

Yet, how can everybody forget about all other car manufacturers - especially US? They pretty much all lie about their gas emissions as proven by different experts and agencies [1] [2] [3].

Why? Because we have improved our gas emission limits to a level that most car manufacturers couldn't reach over the short run. Take the example of European car makers. The European Commission started to really regulate car emissions in 2010. At that time, car makers were faced with dropping sales (double crisis 2008 and 2010), stable/slightly increasing costs (wage inflation and poor labour market flexibility - German is an exception in Europe) and stable/slightly decreasing prices (due to competition and few new vehicles). In this context, how can you expect car makers to invest in "traditional cars" to reduce gas emissions and in electric and autonomous vehicles to fight against the competition of tech car companies like Tesla or Google. That is just not possible.

So who is responsible? Of course VW and other car makers are all responsible for that mess and the disastrous consequences on environment. But WE are also responsible: we want safer, cleaner, cheaper and stronger vehicles from traditional car makers but but you can't have everything all at once. Tesla can do it because that they start from a "blank page", with no turnaround costs. For VW, GM, Toyota, that's another story. Maybe we should just keep that in mind before charged them with a "corporate death penalty"...

[1]http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/volkswagen-w... [2]https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/apr/21/all-top-sel... [3]http://www.cbsnews.com/news/do-all-automakers-cheat-on-their...

[7952]

We need transparency and clarity about the damage that individual cars cause, both for the drivers and the public. Something as simple as displaying the numbers to the driver with an obvious statement about the health impacts would help. Maybe even create taxes based on actual emission values for individual cars.

[grp]

Tesla can't do it. Electric vehicles have a lot of hidden pollution like a meat steak or a bottle of milk.

Tesla just makes cars that can't apply to gas emissions regulations, they are far from cleaner.

[7952]

Surely those toxins are much more containable than gas released into the air? A mobile phone is also horribly toxic, but I am not going to go onto the top of a skyscraper and blend it into tiny particles for the people below to breathe.