Volkswagen vs. General Motors and Toyota: What Gives?

"shpuker" (shpuker) 06/30/2016 at 16:58 • Filed to: None

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As pointed out in the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! Volkswagen’s settlement in Dieselgate is significantly higher than those of both Toyota and General Motors in their respective settlements. Yet VW’s case didn’t directly result in any deaths, while the others claimed upwards of 200 lives combined (depends where you get figures from Toyota). So what gives?

Lets start off with politics. How much do these companies spend on lobbying and campaign funding?

All numbers are from !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , 2014 election cycle

General Motors

Contributions: $1,123,600

Lobbying: $8,510,000

Total: $9.63 million

Toyota

Contributions: $333,464

Lobbying: $4,713,000

Total: $5.05 million

Volkswagen

Contributions: $500

Lobbying: $1,210,000

Total: $1.21 million

Oh...

To me the contributions stand out the most. Volkswagen has essentially no direct financial ties to the Congress and I don’t imagine that did them any favors when trying to explain themselves at their congressional hearing. GM and Toyota on the other hand are both heavily involved.

Lets look at GM’s political spending a little more closely.

GM’s scandal broke right at the end of 2013, conveniently after the US government finished selling off their stake in GM when their stock prices were at an all time high of $40 a share. Within 4 months GM stock dropped over 20% as the scandal broke. Considering the scale of the investment, here that’s a huge difference in buyout. Considering the fact that the government knew about the defect as far back as 2007, when the NHTSA first recommended an investigation, this can’t help but seem planned. If it were however it would also speak wonders as to why GM got off as easily as they did with the settlement.

Oh and what about the members present at GM’s hearing? Did any of them receive contributions? Lets look, all numbers are 2014 cycle.

Joe Barton: $4,500

Marsha Blackburn: $5,000

Bruce Braley: None

Michael Burgess: None

Cathy Castor: None

Diana DeGette: None (If you want a good laugh watch her tear Barra a new one)

John Dingell: $5,000 (His wife Debbie Dingell received $12,000)

Phil Gingrey: None

Gene Green: $6,000

Morgan Griffith: None

Greg Harper: None

Billy Long: $3,000

Time Murphy: None

Steve Scalise: $3,500

Jan Schakowski: None

Lee Terry: $10,500

Paul Tonko: None

Fred Upton: $12,000 (Sat as the Chairman of the full committee...)

Henry Waxman: None

Peter Welch: None

John Yarmuth: None

If you’ve got a spare 4 hours and want to watch the whole thing you can here: !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!!

If you want to get a good idea of the kind of soft questioning $12,000 buys you watch from the 37 min mark to the 47min mark. (DeGette vs. Upton’s questioning)

Anyways, I’m tired of looking at government documents and videos. What are your thoughts?

Sir_Stig: and toxic masculinity ruins the party again. > shpuker 06/30/2016 at 17:07

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I think the biggest deal is that they intentionally went out of their way to cheat the system, as opposed to doing what every car maker does: let an unintentional mistake continue until the cost of not fixing it outweighs the cost of fixing it.

shpuker > Sir_Stig: and toxic masculinity ruins the party again. 06/30/2016 at 17:14

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GM knowingly hid the defect citing cost as reason to put a potentially deadly defect into production.

Toyota blatantly lied about the issue multiple times, but didn’t know about the issue in advance. So not nearly as severe, I would agree.

Toyota paid out $300 million more in its settlement than GM... I haven’t looked through Toyota’s hearing roster to see who all was involved in their but I’d be willing to bet they had far fewer members on their payroll.

My speed3 is happy > Sir_Stig: and toxic masculinity ruins the party again. 06/30/2016 at 17:16

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This. They didn’t goof up and forget about it. They did it knowingly.

But I am sure lobbying money also would have helped VW.

-this space for rent- > shpuker 06/30/2016 at 17:30

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Killing a few meat sacks is nothing vs killing teh planet!

Sir_Stig: and toxic masculinity ruins the party again. > shpuker 06/30/2016 at 17:35

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Hiding a defect and designing in a defect are totally different and should be treated differently.

Jordan and the Slowrunner, Boomer Intensifies > shpuker 06/30/2016 at 17:37

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To be fair, Toyota’s “defect” were the owners. If they just looked down and thought, “hmm, better not block thus gas pedal with a cheap floor mat” it would have been a non-issue.

e36Jeff now drives a ZHP > shpuker 06/30/2016 at 18:03

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Not speaking towards the GM issue, but the Toyota issue should have resulted in zero deaths, but a large number of people are terrible drivers in a panic situation.

C&D did some testing and found that, in a V6 Camry with the throttle pinned to the floor, it took an extra 16 ft to reach a full stop, which was a better braking distance than a contemporary Ford Taurus with no throttle issues. From 100mph it added 88 ft. From 120mph, they couldn’t get the car to stop, but it did go down to 10mph and stay there, which is a fully survivable crash speed. Additionally, there was nothing stopping the drivers from putting the car into park, reverse, or neutral, which, for Toyota, puts them in neutral while moving forward. Or holding the start stop button, but it took 3+ seconds for that to shut the car off, so I don’t really see that as a viable method.

Furthermore, when tested by the DOT, aside from cars with floormat issues, exactly zero cars which crashed due to claims of runaway acceleration actually displayed any signs of braking, and in most cases, there was damage under the gas pedal, indicating the driver had their foot on the gas pedal at the time of impact.

Had these drivers simply smashed the brakes to the floor, they would have survived. Had they shifted to neutral, then braked, they would have survived. Did it create a hazard, absolutely. But in almost all cases, your first reaction, which should have been smash the brake pedal to the floor and leave it there, would have been enough to stop anything from happening.

I don’t really like Toyota, I think that, aside from the FR-S, they sell some of the most boring cars in the world(although I am looking forward to the return of the Supra), but I don’t feel that their fine was appropriate. The majority of the blame in most of the accidents attributed to the gas pedal issues rests on the shoulders of the drivers of the cars. The only cases where they had a legit grievance against Toyota are the ones where they used the incorrect floormats, but even those shouldn’t have killed anyone, and those are the failure of the dealers for installing the wrong floormats in the cars, not Toyota as a whole.

shpuker > e36Jeff now drives a ZHP 06/30/2016 at 18:07

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Keeping that in mind, think about the fact that they still paid out significantly more than GM...

shpuker > Sir_Stig: and toxic masculinity ruins the party again. 06/30/2016 at 18:10

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I would agree, but hiding a defect that results in zero deaths and hiding a defect that causes 120 deaths would also be very different things. I’m not arguing that VW should’ve gotten off easier, I’m just pointing back to how absolutely ridiculous the GM settlement was.

shpuker > Jordan and the Slowrunner, Boomer Intensifies 06/30/2016 at 18:11

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One of the big issues with the Toyota issue was the fact that Toyota passed the issue off as being strictly a floormat issue until it became painfully obvious that it wasn’t, despite the fact that they knew damn well it wasn’t.

e36Jeff now drives a ZHP > shpuker 06/30/2016 at 18:27

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I also have serious issues with their payout being worse than GM’s. The GM ignition switch left you with an uncontrollable car with a locked steering wheel, basically zero brakes, and no real clear method of fixing it before you hit something. To me that is far, far more dangerous.

e36Jeff now drives a ZHP > e36Jeff now drives a ZHP 06/30/2016 at 18:29

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I realized I forgot to quote sources to back up the braking distance and DOT claims, so here they are: C & D braking tests , DOT testing .

Tekamul > shpuker 06/30/2016 at 18:36

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You’re missing the obvious difference here, which goes directly to the dollar amounts. Different screw ups fall under different government agencies. Some agencies have much stiffer penalties associated with violations.

In VWs case, the EPA can issue a per vehicle fine, and all violating cars are subject to the fine. In the safety cases, it’s a per incident fine, as long as the manufacturers work to remedy the problem.

The only reason the safety settlements were as big as they were was to avoid future lawsuits.

Also, in both safety examples, it involved negligence on the operator’s part. Either with wrong floor mats or not knowing how neutral works, or carrying around a set of dungeon master keys.

AMC/Renauledge > shpuker 06/30/2016 at 18:43

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It’s the difference between intentional fraud and unintentional engineering mistakes. Easy as that.

fintail > shpuker 07/13/2016 at 12:04

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They almost fooled some self-important people - being personally offended is probably part of it too. Regulators are known to take themselves very seriously.