The story of how VW lied about diesel emissions has been much in the news lately so rather than rehash that story I will begin with my personal connection. For a review of the many aspects of this corporate malfeasance, the Wikipedia article on the Volkswagen emissions scandal seems good.

Last year I was thinking about buying a new car. So I spend some time visiting a number of car dealers. One of the cars that impressed me most was the Volkswagen (VW). I test drove the Jetta diesel sports wagon. I was impressed with it but then I didn’t need all that space so maybe a Golf with one of those clean diesel engines might be good.

The salesman was a diesel enthusiast. He explained that Turbocharged Direct Injection or TDI technology resulted in power, great mileage, reliability, and low emissions. Turns out the low emission part was a big lie. But I didn’t know that at the time.

He said that diesels have a bad reputation with my generation. We boomers remember the unsatisfactory diesels of the 70s and 80s. Younger folks don’t have those bad memories and so embrace the new TDI diesels. If I could get over my boomer biases, I could buy a great car.

Turns out that VW lied about their clean technology. They weren’t satisfied with just a lie. We are used to ads that stretch the truth. That was not enough. They rigged the controls of the engine so they appeared to be clean under test conditions but belched pollution under normal use.

Also I didn’t but a car but that is the least important aspect of this story.

So VW lied and people died. We don’t know how many people. Ranges of probable excess deaths are discussed in both the Wikipedia article cited above and Business Insider.

Even if we knew how many people died, we could probably not identify the specific people so a murder indictment seems unlikely. But I hope some sort of criminal prosecution results.