文字訂正を兼ね再報告させていただきます。
Meeting on November 12 今月のリーダー： 三浦一男
We enjoyed singing Oldies with the best efforts made by everyone to accurately pronounce all the lyrics. Then, we moved to Lambuth Hall for today’s discussion on Volkswagen scandal.
The editorial covered (1) a rough sketch of the scandal, (2) details of cheating emissions tests, (3) damage and loss by the scandal, (4) how the scandal influence world market.
(1) & (2) Most impressive discussion was about the background as to why mileage of an automobile is so important in Europe. One of the members mentioned, from his living experience in Europe, that people in Europe tend to drive at high speed and enjoy competition on highways; they prefer powerful and high mileage cars, compared with us here in Japan. The strong desire for speed and mileage triggered the company’s succumbing to temptation and eventually snared VW to disguise high mileage performance by installing special software to stop the emission equipment on open roads, which one of US NPO revealed. It is our unanimous surprise that “all” automobile manufacturers are reported as cheating in the area of emissions tests. Also, we all recognized that NPO activities in US are far more advanced than those here in Japan.
(3) More shocking is the report on the estimation on its scale of damage and loss by the scandal. Total loss is anticipated to be 3～14 trillion yen while their net asset is 10 trillion yen according to the member’s information.
(4) Some of the members added besides the article the possible necessity for automobile manufacturers to change their development strategy (from diesel to electric: denial of present strategy of European car manufacturers). and also the probable future of more serious economic problem for EU policy and operation, by lowering of Germany’s economic growth rate caused by the scandal. It may even surpass Greek financial problem.
Our discussion went on further to find out why and how VW misled their management. The company policy set up in 2011 was to become No. one auto-manufacturer in 2018 with production of more than 10 million cars. It is said that company policy decisions were so strong that nobody inside could say “no,” because two families dominated shares of VW. Human egoism is in the background of crucial cause for failure of corporate governance. Virtue of capitalism is to be questioned after all. Germany is a advanced and traditionally a fair nation and has produced a number of great philosophers. Germany will overcome difficult situations and remain a leading nation in the long run.
