Volkswagen's gas chamber

After having defrauded government agencies and its own consumers, we learned last week that Volkswagen paid to have monkeys inhale exhaust fumes to prove that its diesel emissions were harmless.

This weekend I saw the Netflix documentary (Dirty Money series) exposing the scheme and retracing the fraudulent emission rigging followed by the “real life” test conducted in 2014. Initially, the test was intended to expose a human pedaling an exercise bike amidst diesel fumes.

According to the documentary, researchers intended to “poke and prod that person later to determine what type of health effects they would see from this person being gassed.”

When it was judged a bit “over the top” he use of humans in the test was scrubbed and replaced by 10 monkeys, placed in airtight chambers, watching cartoons as they breathed fumes from a 2013 VW Beetle TDI compared to an older dirty diesel Ford F250 truck. 

We haven't seen the test result, but I bet the old Ford truck did better than the new “clean diesel” Beetle. Thomas Steg, head of external relations and sustainability at VW, has taken full responsibility for reviving the Hitler-era practiced and will be another “sacrificial lamb” on the altar of the Audi, Porsche, Seat, Skoda, and Volkswagen automobile empire.

Clearly, Angela Merkel prefers the annual 10,000 death no one sees from diesel pollution in Germany, to any uptick in unemployment.

I hope that, just like me, you won't ever buy any of these vehicles.