The IT Nerd

Volkswagen Canada has officially announced three years of unlimited, complimentary charging for all new owners of Volkswagen’s all-electric 2021 VW ID.4, in partnership with Electrify Canada. 

Awarded the 2021 World Car of the Year at the 2021 World Car Awards, the new electric addition to the Volkswagen line-up features all-wheel drive, compact cargo space and a new sleek, aerodynamic style for a striking silhouette. Highlighting innovation and sustainability for car lovers everywhere, Volkswagen has made electric accessible for everyone.

From the date of purchase, new ID.4 owners will be able to charge their vehicles at no cost across several Electrify Canada stations in the country. Using the 150kW and 350kW chargers, these charging stations provide compatible electric vehicles some of the fastest charging in the country, going from 5 percent to 80 percent in about 38 minutes.

This news comes at the heels of Electrify Canada’s recent announcement that the network will be expanding their existing 27 stations to more than 100 stations comprising of 500 individual chargers across Canada by 2025. 

Together, Volkswagen Canada and Electrify Canada aim to provide Canadians with a safe, fast and reliable travel from coast to coast.

For further information, visit vw.ca and to learn more about Electrify Canada, locate a charging station or view upcoming locations, visit https://www.electrify-canada.ca/locate-charger.

It looks like the US is really lowering the boom on Volkswagen as the news is out that ex-CEO of the company Martin Winterkorn has been charged by the US with conspiracy and wire fraud over the fact that 11 million or so diesel cars were set up to cheat on emissions tests.

Winterkorn is the highest ranking VW official to be nailed by the US after the guy who ran VW USA got sent to the clink for seven years, and an engineer got sent to the clink for 40 months. It should also be noted that VW cut a pretty big cheque to the US Government to make this go away and they pled guilty as a company to a variety of criminal charges too. This latest bit of news will make life somewhat difficult for the new CEO of Volkswagen Herbert Diess who promises a culture cleanup.

Good luck to him.

UPDATE: Steven Howard who wrote the book Leadership Lessons from the Volkswagen Saga just Tweeted this:

Here's the official U.S. Dept of Justice announcement on the charges laid out against former #Volkswagen CEO Winterkorn: https://t.co/JxWDxgqBkn #Dieselgate #VWScandal #ethics #accountability

— Steven Howard (@stevenbhoward) May 4, 2018

It makes for very interesting reading. I encourage you to take a look.

Oliver Schmidt who pretty much ran VW USA got sentenced to 7 years in prison for his role in the DieselGate scandal. Why so long of a sentence? Well, his lawyers tried to minimize his role in the scandal saying that he’s only been a real factor since 2015…. But the judge saw things differently:

Lawyers spent roughly 90 minutes giving different views about Schmidt’s culpability in the scandal in Detroit federal court on Wednesday.

But Judge Sean Cox sided with prosecutors, calling Schmidt a “key conspirator” who viewed the coverup as an opportunity to “shine” and “climb the corporate ladder.”

I guess his days of climbing the corporate ladder are over. Given the 7 year sentence, and criminal record, the only job he’s going to get once he’s out of prison is one that includes the words “would you like fries with that?”

Hopefully more people who were responsible for DieselGate end up inside a courtroom and face the punishment that they deserve. I say that because this is something that those who orchestrated and directed this scandal need to pay for.

If you thought dieselgate was done. Think again. The offices of Volkswagen Canada which are just east of Toronto were raided by Ontario’s Ministry Of The Environment because of their emissions cheating activities:

A team of 24 officers, including computer experts from the Ministry of Finance, arrived at the Volkswagen Canada campus in Toronto’s eastern suburbs at 9:30 a.m., seeking evidence to support a newly laid charge against Volkswagen AG, the automaker’s German parent company, for violating Ontario’s Environmental Protection Act.

When asked if the company was co-operating with the warrant, ministry investigator Warren Korol said: “I’m not certain yet, we’re still searching.”

As of noon, they had not removed anything, but an agent could be seen carrying a large cooler into the building, and a ministry van was parked by the reception door.

“In any search warrant, there’s always a list of things we’re searching for, and if we find those things, yes, we’ll be seizing them,” Korol said.

The information to obtain the search warrant, which includes details of what the investigators were seeking, is sealed to the public until it has been fully executed. The raid was not co-ordinated with other jurisdictions, nor were there simultaneous raids, Korol said.

The timing sucks if you’re Volkswagen. For any car company you’re aggressively trying to move any 2017 models that are on dealer lots. Plus you’re bringing in 2018 models to sell. Volkswagen is trying to do this while trying to make sure that potential customers don’t think of the dieselgate scandal. However, this news puts dieselgate back in the public eye. Which in turn is sure to affect to affect sales in the short term. Sucks to be them. Now no charges have been laid, but even just being raided is not good news for a company that’s desperately trying to change the channel from this scandal.

Volkswagen engineer James Liang apparently co-operated with the feds when it came to his role in the DieselGate scandal as well as having admitted his guilt when it came to his role in the scandal. His “reward” for that? It according to Reuters is 40 months in jail and a $200K fine. The latter being more than what prosecutors asked for. Why so harsh? Try this reason on for size:

[U.S. District Court Judge Sean] Cox said he hoped the prison sentence and fine would deter other auto industry engineers and executives from similar schemes to deceive regulators and consumers.

Liang was part of a long-term conspiracy that perpetrated a “stunning fraud on the American consumer,” Cox said, as the defendant’s family looked on in the courtroom. “This is a very serious and troubling crime against our economic system.”

I think you can safely say that the book has been thrown at this guy. Though he was facing five years in jail which makes this result a bit of a discount. But he was not the mastermind behind this mess. A guy by the Oliver Schmidt is next up to be sentenced. He’s a VW exec who was much further up the food chain. Thus if this guy got 40 months, Schmidt could get that or more.

On Friday Volkswagen admitted in a US court that they’d committed fraud in their diesel emissions tests, also pleading guilty to falsifying statements and obstruction of justice. Here’s the details from CNET:

It marks the first time VW admitted guilt in any court in the world, according to a VW spokesman speaking to Reuters. The judge overseeing the case in the U.S. District Court in Detroit accepted the plea and will issue a sentence at a hearing on April 21. “The agreements that we have reached with the US government reflect our determination to address misconduct that went against all of the values Volkswagen holds so dear,” Volkswagen said in an emailed statement… The road to Dieselgate’s conclusion still has plenty of pavement, though. The company is still under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission and Internal Revenue Service. And that’s in the US alone.

What’s interesting about this is the fact that VW as a company might have admitted guilt. However the management, from the top down to the bottom have not. For example, the CEO tried to blame it on “a couple of rogue programmers.” That really sounds like a version of the Sergeant Schultz defense to me. The thing is, there’s zero chance that this got the green light without some exec in Germany being involved. Thus I hope that those investigating this continue to dig to get to those who were truly responsible for this fiasco so that they can be brought to justice.

It looks like VW is going to be paying up to the tune of $4.3 billion to the US government to resolve the government’s civil and criminal investigations into dieselgate. The formal announcement is likely to come this afternoon. From the CBC:

The world’s second largest automaker confirmed Tuesday it has negotiated a $4.3-billion concrete draft settlement with U.S. regulators to resolve its diesel emissions issues and plans to plead guilty to criminal misconduct as part of the civil and criminal settlement.

The settlement doesn’t impact the government’s ongoing investigation into individual misconduct by current and former VW employees.

Keep in mind that this is on top of VW paying $15 billion to the feds not too long ago, and one of their execs getting arrested just in the last few days. Clearly they are trying to make dieselgate go away sooner rather than later.

According to CNET, the FBI has arrested Volkswagen executive Oliver Schmidt this past weekend on charges of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. relating to Dieselgate. From the report:

Schmidt headed VW’s regulatory compliance office in the U.S. from 2014 to March 2015. The FBI’s official Criminal Complaint states that during that time VW employees — Schmidt included — knowingly installed secret “defeat device” software in 475,000 diesel cars in the U.S., hiding during emissions testing the fact that those cars emitted up to 40 times the legally allowable pollution levels when on the road. The complaint asserts that by knowingly installing this secret cheat software, Schmidt and VW conspired to defraud the U.S. by impairing and impeding the Environmental Protection Agency and violating the Clean Air Act, leading to the arrest on Saturday. Schmidt is due to appear before a Federal Court in Miami on Monday.

Sucks to be him. And the timing couldn’t be worse. Today VW announced a new electric minibus concept at the International Auto Show in Detroit that was supposed to help to change the channel from Dieselgate. Now people won’t be focused on that. Too bad for VW.

The news is breaking at the moment that Volkswagen Canada has reached a settlement in an Ontario court hearing today that will see $2.1 billion set aside for owners of affected VW cars. They will have the option to sell the cars back to VW, trade them in, or have them repaired. Payments will range from $5,100 to $8,000 for the 104,000 Canadian owners who are affected. Now all of this needs approvals from the courts and the people who filed the class action lawsuit related to this, but it looks like there’s an end to this saga for Canadian VW owners in sight.

UPDATE: These Tweets just appeared from VW Canada’s Twitter feed:

2.0L TDI SETTLEMENT: Please visit https://t.co/AOQXyhJXkM for information about the proposed 2.0L TDI settlement in Canada.

— Volkswagen CA TDI (@VWCanadaTDI) December 19, 2016

The proposed settlement is subject to court approval. The period to
submit a claim will not begin until after the settlement is approved.

— Volkswagen CA TDI (@VWCanadaTDI) December 19, 2016

Approval hearings will take place around the end of March 2017 in Toronto and Montreal. Learn more at https://t.co/AOQXyhJXkM.

— Volkswagen CA TDI (@VWCanadaTDI) December 19, 2016

The European Union is apparently coordinating penalties in up to 20 EU states for #DieselGate. The Commission is working with member states to launch class-action lawsuits against the automaker, in an effort to get compensation for car owners affected by the scandal. Though Volkswagen recently reached a $14.7 billion settlement in the US — which will cover fines as well as compensation for the owners of 475,000 affected VW owners — the company says the EU lacks similar legal structures for compensation claims. Thus they’ve taken this course of action. Seeing as diesel is used in a lot of places in Europe, I do not expect the penalty to be minor. But we will have to see what the EU comes up with.