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from the Copies-Everything-Including-Cheating dept.
The US Justice Department (DOJ) on Thursday announced a $305 million civil settlement between Fiat Chrysler and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in a lawsuit over illegal software found on certain diesel Dodge Ram models and diesel Jeep Grand Cherokee models.
[...] The settlement comes two years after the EPA accused Fiat Chrysler of installing undisclosed and illegal software on 104,000 vehicles, including 3.0L diesel Dodge Ram 1500 trucks and diesel Jeep Grand Cherokees between model years 2014 and 2016. The EPA claimed the software would sense when the vehicle was being tested under laboratory conditions and implement the full emissions control system so that the car could pass the EPA's emissions tests.
I guess the Volkswagen cheating was considered a feature by the Chrysler engineers, and they were just copying what the customers demanded?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @10:54AM
5 billion sounds about right but naturally such a paltry sum means little. It's less than half their yearly profits and a tiny fraction of their overall revenue of over 250 billion dollars. All it did was give them a nice slap on the wrist and the hardened resolve to not get caught next time. To make this shit stick, you gotta hit them on gross revenue. Make them have to fight for survival after a flagrant violation like this. Anything less is practically tacit approval and amounts to political posturing before the electorate. We can argue over the necessity of any law including this very one. Maybe it was a stupid law, maybe it was utterly unfair, I don't know the answer to that but the contents of the law is immaterial to the fact that it applies to all equally and neither VW or Fiat get special or cute enough to be the exception. In order for the system to work the laws have to apply to us all. All emissions laws that apply to Opel, Renault, Tata, etc. also apply to fucking Volkswagen and Fiat. If you decide they don't, despite your money, your power, your influence, or which politician's nephew shares a class at the local Monessori school with your own precious angel, you are not GoDDAMN special and token penalties for Real Fuckups are a slap in the face to everybody else following the rules. Guess what, the other guys aren't stupid. They see VW get away with something they're gonna start wondering how to get on the gravy train. Then your air is really and truly fucked. But who cares right? Muh fuckin' profffffitttsss