Valentine Tessier, Max Beckmann, 1929

Volkswagen is being justly pilloried for attempting to illegally evade international automobile environmental regulations. Their CEO has resigned and could face criminal charges. Eleven billion diesel vehicles are affected. VW’s very solvency is at stake. In order to evade air pollution regulations, Volkswagen installed software into their car’s computers that could recognize the regimented protocols of EPA test procedures and then command their vehicles to enter into special modes that would allow their diesel engines to pass the pollution tests. In normal operation these VW engines favored fuel economy and performance over air quality. Other German car manufacturers employed both exotic and expensive air pollution mitigation systems to meet the same air pollution goals that VW cheated on. The condemnation that Volkswagen is currently suffering is entirely justified, in part, because they have done this before. In the seventies they were caught and fined, but only on the order of a few hundred thousand dollars, a mere slap on their wrists. Coincidentally, I was working at Chrysler then, who had employed a similar stratagem to the one that VW has just been busted on. By the time I was made aware of this cheating, it had already been busted, but I was led to believe that newer techniques had replaced it. I was working as a contractor to Chrysler, then also a prospective Chrysler employee, while my fellow Chrysler engineers were bragging about their cheating prowess. This bragging ended when they learned that Anne, my then girlfriend, was a contractor for the EPA.