The Volkswagen saga

Volkswagen, currently the world's biggest automaker, is in crisis over its rigging of diesel engine emissions tests in America and Europe. The damage to its goodwill is cataclysmic. About a quarter of the company's market value was wiped out in the first week after disclosure of the fraud. In total, as many as 11 million vehicles all over the world may have been manipulated. The global car manufacturing industry, worth about 904 billion dollar, may be adversely affected by the new discovery of the deceit, which may reshape the whole industry, maybe for the better.

If you were born between 1946 and 1964 like me, you are a baby boomer. No one, except you, can perhaps derive as much pleasure from the sights, sounds, and smells we met in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Volkswagen is one of them. It is a brand name of a German car, which was then the world's third biggest automaker, after General Motors and Ford. The brand name rekindles a memory of our old salad days in the early sixties when Volkswagen was a dream car.

The cute Volkswagen logo, the most recognised car emblem with 2 white letters, a V over a W united in a circle, was and is still so attractive, yet so simple.

Toyota was not that popular. Baby Austin and Moris Minor-- the English cars --were popular too, but not as admirable as Volkswagen was. My first experience of riding in a car, when I was a little kid, was in a Volkswagen, more fondly known as Volksy. Americans call it Beetle for its shape mimicking that of the insect beetle.

Forget about riding in a car; touching the shiny body of a parked car was an exhilarating adventure in those days for street urchins. There was nothing called traffic-jam. Only horse-carts, rickshaws and a few buses used to ply here and there on the sparsely populated roads of Dhaka city. Cars were then truly rare creatures. It was so exciting to see a car running on a forlorn road leaving behind a trail of white smoke! Though toxic, even the smell of exhaust smoke of a car felt like a sweet aroma to our nostrils. Today, mystically, whenever I smell the exhaust of a car, the whiff impulsively links me to my first experience of sighting a yellow Volksy, bringing in a flood of my childhood memories.

We didn't mind inhaling smokes whatever were their sources. Our old folks were not aware that clouds of exhaust smoke spewing out from motor vehicles were full of noxious gases like carbon dioxide that injures our lungs and harms the ozone layer up in the sky. Nobody really made a fuss about climate change. Cars in Dhaka were hardly inspected by an agency for fitness or emission test. Visible smoke emitting from the exhaust pipe of a car or a truck was almost a commonplace scene. The main reason of smoky motor vehicles, now as I guess, was negligence to their regular maintenance. Car owners would skimp on replacing worn-out parts such as spark plugs or piston rings.

A car is not just a car. It has a life of its own. Your car is a part of your life. You are so attached to it! Whatever the brand, Volkswagen or Toyota or Suzuki, you love your car the way you love your cat. You adore driving your car, looking at it, cleaning and washing and shining it by your own hand. You don't want anybody leaning on your car or closing its door too hard.

Driving a car is a lot like living a life. While driving, like while living, you must keep your eyes on the road and focus on the direction you are moving, never forgetting the importance of your rear view mirror.

The world, meanwhile, has seen an amazing shift in the technological winds during the last few decades since we fell in love with the Volksy. And the world ahead, with scientists and entrepreneurs doggedly engrossed in making our life better, is going to witness spectacular achievements in terms of transportations on road, water and air on this planet and also beyond in the space. A driverless car is an option.

Scientists have discovered how pollutants, mainly carbon dioxide from fossil fuel combustion, have put our existence in great peril. Motor vehicles, that for ages have emitted dangerous gases such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, hydrocarbon and particulates, have been identified as the largest contributor to air pollution in the world.

A new battle has now been waged against those which produce pollutants. No more a car is allowed today to emit poisonous gases, let alone belch out smoke we were so used to seeing in Dhaka in the last century. New cars are fitted with anti-pollution equipment such as catalytic converters. Air quality has actually been improving in the western countries, if not in Bangladesh, because of regulators' tighter control on car emissions.

The battle is not yet over. In spite of regulators' vigil, car manufacturers have long been duping the buyers and the environmentalists by saying they are selling the greenest cars while in reality they were foisting greyish cars into the market.

One such manufacturer lately invented electronic tricks to cheat the regulators and buyers by way of selling cars that are fuel-efficient when they run on roads with lesser control on pollutant emission but are intelligent enough to hoodwink the emission inspectors into believing that the cars always impose strictest control on emissions, thanks to a cunning software called 'defeat device'. The device made the cars appear cleaner than they were when being tested. This latest cheat, tragically, is Volkswagen, the maker of our endeared Volksy. The culprit, however, is not our old Volksy that was powered by petrol. The models that cheated are those of modern diesel cars manufactured by Volkswagen.

Volkswagen has to face heavy fines. It has already set aside US Dollar 7.3 billion to cover recalls and other costs. But the bill is likely to rise. U.S. authorities could impose up to US Dollar18 billion penalties for breaching the emission limits. Employees held responsible could be prosecuted for fraud. If convicted, they would face big individual fines and could be sentenced to a maximum of 10 years in prison.

It is unfathomable why a giant automaker like Volkswagen, which spends more than 100 billion dollars annually on research and development (R&D), took such a risk given the likely consequences. The company, as some critics have pointed out, was obsessed with the idea of surpassing Toyota in some specific markets, especially in America, where Volkswagen was struggling to be number one.

Emission control of any kind decreases fuel efficiency. Therefore, Volkswagen tried, albeit at the expense of environmental costs, to win thrifty customers who opt for greater mileage. Apparently, the people at Volkswagen thought they could somehow get away with the software chicanery. In fact, other companies are reportedly using the same kind of trickery to cheat on tests on emissions and fuel efficiency in many corners of the world, especially in the developing and poor countries.

Anything stamped "Made in Germany" has traditionally offered a high level of reliability and engineering prowess. But, Volkswagen scandal is going to put a dent in the consumers' confidence and trustworthiness in things made in Germany.

Volksy lovers may find it painful when denigrators are now calling names and passing derogatory remarks about the car. Some are dubbing the company a "demon wearing a clean shirt with dirty underwear'. Volksy lovers, however, may take some strength from the history of Volkswagen to regain their confidence in their favourite brand.

The history of Volkswagen is stranger than a fiction. The company rose from the ashes of World War II to become one of the most innovative carmakers of the world. Volkswagen saga started in the early 1930s when German chancellor Adolf Hitler had a pet project to create an affordable, speedy (62 miles per hour), economical (32 miles per gallon) and practical car at a reasonable price.

Hitler charged the automotive engineer Ferdinand Porsche with designing and constructing such a vehicle. The first prototype of Volkswagen was completed in 1935 and the brand was originated in 1937. Since then, the company suffered so many false starts and survived so much hardship that it is difficult to imagine that it will fail to weather any harder hardship. "Volkswagen" is a German word and means "People's car".

Humankind is at the threshold of an unimaginable industrial revolution. A series of disruptive technologies are going to reshape the automotive sector and drive the emergence of new players like Google, Tesla, and Apple. Some automakers have already set up research centres in Silicon Valley. Companies are working day and night to develop ever-improving hybrid and electric models. Google has done its job to introduce driverless cars on busy roads and highways. If real innovation happens by disruption, conventional thinking and old business models will be annihilated and many of the current carmakers could be consigned to the history books.

Who knows Volkswagen will not shake hands with Apple to introduce a brand new "Volksy" that will retain its old shape and move absolutely driverless!

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