Have you looked at the costs to VW or are you just assuming there were none? Last I heard there were arrests both here and and Germany. And the last dollar value I saw was that it was costing them over $30 billion.
Destroying companies does no good. They are one of the biggest employers in Germany. Contrast that to what our auto policies (CAFE) did to GM, Ford, and Chrysler about 50 years ago. For the ramifications check out Flint, Detroit, and who knows how many other American cities.
Again, I personally feel that they should be penalized, but even without a penalization component, the costs to mitigate and compensate everyone that was negatively affected by the scandal would've easily bankrupted them. So, whether I think they should be "destroyed" or not would not have been relevant.
They are not a "good company..." (as was mentioned here) Geez, can't believe I need to spell this out. (I'm not directing this to you personally. I'm just a bit frustrated that there is such a lack of understanding of the scale, the recklessness, and the boldness of VW.) And their size and importance to the German economy and the German government is EXACTLY the problem. It gave VW executives comfort in knowing that they could do whatever they wanted and there would be little to no consequences. How else could we explain it?
VW very intentionally developed and sold products globally that were designed to cheat on emissions tests. They designed them to emit dangerous levels of nitrogen oxides. They knew the adverse environmental consequences. They knew the adverse health consequences. They knew the economic consequences of their unfair practices. They knew. And they had the gall to call it "clean diesel" not only with a straight face, but with an entire multi-year ad campaign that boasted their achievement while touting it as an alternative to hybrid and electric vehicles. They boasted that their Audi A3 TDI won the "green car of the year" award. Look at and watch those old ads -- it makes me sick.
They did this for over half a decade! And then, when they were caught cheating, they were bold enough to completely stonewall investigations, block inquiries, and mislead regulators... effectively stalling for years. All the while, they kept selling these vehicles. What gives them the brazenness to not only cheat despite actual harm to actual human beings, but to stall investigations when they were caught? This is not
just financial fraud (which it is) like the Wirecard scandal, but actual harm to human health.
They have spent $30B+ so far on this. These are basically fees & fines, and lawsuits settlements. But there have been little to no spending to compensate all of the deaths and human-years of suffering due to illness that they have caused. As real as the damage and suffering are, these will only be seen in aggregate statistically, so it's easy for them to ignore. Nor was there any spending for the environmental damage caused not only from the vehicle emissions themselves, but the after-effects of the recall and early disposal of vehicles, or loss of sales to actual "cleaner/greener" vehicles. What have they done to right the wrongs? They haven't even ensured that every affected vehicle is taken off the road or fixed. It's going to take a LOT more than $30B to even come close to fixing this in a fair way. After the scandal was exposed, the entire VW group had a market cap of only ~$50B... Damn right that should've been the end of the company right there and then. Instead, they were basically given a clean slate as a leading EV manufacturer. Even their stupid initiative in Electrify America is an unreliable mess that's bringing shame to EV charging infrastructure and makes EVs look bad -- inconvenient & unreliable on road trips. And other manufacturers were guilty of this too... but to a much lesser degree (lesser in terms of the the degree of cheating, the number of vehicles involved, and the boldness of their lies).. These other companies were also essentially given a free pass.
And their executives? Sure, some executives were sentenced and fined. But Winterkorn? He's still a fugitive.
VW's ties to the German government, and the German auto industry's importance to the German economy basically ensured from the start that VW would not see the proper consequences when this blew over. They knew that. That's why they were so bold. Remember this all started right after the American government proved to the world that "too big to fail" is a thing in 2008. VW announced "Clean Diesel" in 2008. I suspect that they looked at themselves and saw their connections and importance to Germany and thought it was a no-lose situation. Probably just a conspiracy theory, but it's really hard to simply dismiss knowing all of the crazy things that have surfaced in the last few years globally.
And let's look at another case: Takata went completely bankrupt. I know it's about 20 times smaller by market cap. But their airbags had an
unintentional defect... Some of their executives were arrested, charged, and imprisoned for falsifying test data to hide the airbag defect after the fact. But the company didn't go out of their way to design an airbag to kill its end-customers from the outset... VW essentially did just that.
