Volkswagen Emission Case Study

Volkswagen Emission Scam Buyers of vehicles put many pressures upon those in the car industry. We ask for safety features, price points that suit our budgets, and more recently we have included in our lists of “must haves” an ethical standpoint for our environment. No more do we want to see cities covered in a cloud of smog or bellowing plumes of black smoke from trucks and cars caused by diesel guzzling engines. With this pressure though there is a potential to cheat and make a huge profit at the same time. This could be a winning combination to some CEO’s, such as Volkswagen’s CEO, Martin Winterkorn, during one of the biggest scams in the auto industry history. Unfortunately, this scam brought harm to everyone on the planet, even if they

Many people feel it is their right to own a vehicle and we want them with all the bells and whistles, but also affordable. We, as consumers, want to feel safe when we are behind the wheel and we want to protect our planet from emissions. We, blindly, believe that laboratory tests are being done and that the results are accurate. Volkswagen bowed to the pressures and threw ethics out the window. It is very easy to play the armchair ethical game “If I were in charge what would I do?” To be fair, I am sure that had Mr. Winterkorn played the game, he would say the same thing I would say; “I would not conform to the pressure to give the consumers what they say they want by lying and cheating. I would not micromanage and then claim I knew nothing about it. Nor would I happily cash my paycheck and buy nice things, while knowing that I was lying and cheating.” I honestly believe I have better ethical beliefs and morals than this. However, I also honestly believe someone within this company, at some level, should have also shown their ethics and morals. Of all the people in charge of creating these defect devices and in charge of installing them, what type of environment were they working in that not even one of them spoke up? I believe that if I were able to require it, I would require “roadside emissions testing instead of the laboratory-based testing as EU countries have pledged to do” (Schmidt, par. 16). But, reality may be different from what I believe to be my moral and ethical