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THE NEW MOBILITY: Dieselgate & the aftermarket
Automotive consultant James Carter examines the motivation and price of scandal in the emissions game.
The second in a series of articles by James Carter on how mobility is changing is now available at AutoServiceWorld.
“The Impact of Dieselgate” examines the cause and fall-out of Volkswagen’s recent emissions scandal.
Carter is a prominent automotive consultant in Canada, specializing in the quickly evolving field of “new mobility.” The series of exclusive articles, sponsored by Chevron, looks at trends that will impact the automotive service and repair industry, as well as parts manufacturing and distribution.
Among other topics, Carter will also discuss how autonomous vehicles are expected to change the repair landscape, the dominance of fleet business in new mobility (taxi-bots / ground drones), how new technology will create different mobility business models for ASPs, why fuel cells may begin to show the way forward, and how connected cars and forward-thinking ASPs will impact how consumers think about maintenance?
Check out Part 2 of the NEW MOBILITY SERIES here, and look for additional articles in the weeks to come… only at AutoServiceWorld.com.
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This debacle with VW is the tip of the iceberg as regulations become harder to achieve and consumers demand more performance and fuel economy in the midst of increasing laws where the engines are all but expected to push out exhaust that is cleaner than the air going in. The task the engineers face is a burden no one wants to be harnessed with. The trouble is: the engineers design an engine that has to meet emission regulations; it has to meet performance expectations, and then it has to be cost-effective to build. Oh yes, it has to hold up for a reasonable amount of time and miles, and be somewhat affordable for the consumer. They develop and build it at an astronomical cost and manage to achieve everything but emissions. Time is running out and the sales force is demanding the car be put into production. Since it takes sales to pay the bills, the designers take a shortcut in hopes that either they can come up with a fix that they can implement as a campaign change down the road or hope that it doesn’t get detected. This COULD possibly be the course that VW opted to take, however wrong it was. But let’s not kid ourselves, VW isn’t the ONLY one who had its hand in the cookie jar; VW is the only one who got CAUGHT. All the manufacturers are trying desperately to build something that satisfies everyone, including the regulators, but it is a daunting task. What is just as frustrating is that regulations are NOT the same everyWHERE; you’ve got regions with ZERO regulations and those like North America. This really gets silly because those developing (?) nations are pushing out products with no regard for emissions and you’ve got North America trying to save the world. It’s the same sky; it’s like having a smoking section in a restaurant or a peeing section in a swimming pool.