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Volkswagen will not change name of U.S. operations: sources
- Ericson2314 6y agoLying as a stunt? That poor untrusted news media repeating the duplicitous press release...
- breitling 6y agoThey really are learning from Elon
- laurent92 6y agoThat’s a good point, they are learning from him how to do marketing without passing as a boomer: A bit of ecologic transition, and a joke. Add a meme and we’re complete. It is very 2020ies. Doing this in 2030 will make you pass as a millenial.
- jonplackett 6y agoThis does not do much to restore my trust in VW
- Sudophysics 6y agoCan't wait for cryptogate when we find out that all cars are mining Voltcoin/Bitcoin and depositing back into VWs bank accounts as a type of carbon payback loop "well, unless you can prove your energy is 100% renewable we're going to assume your city is powered by natural gas/coal" while 100% profiting from it e.g..
- buu700 6y agoThat's an interesting idea. I could see car companies offering discounts for ad- and/or cryptomining-supported models (similar to Amazon's model with Kindle hardware).
- ggregoire 6y agoI wonder if it was really just a joke or if they backpedaled because the public thought the name was ridiculous. In both cases, what a weird episode.
- jumelles 6y agoNo press is bad press.
- nostromo 6y agoPretty sure they'd rather have not had all that press about their emissions scandal.
- _trampeltier 6y agoMaybe it should have been an joke for april 1st.
- radium3d 6y agoI like Voltswagen, it's cool, but zero loss if they don't rename too.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ls612 6y agoIt’s the wrong day for April Fools, even in Europe
- berkut 6y agoEven in NZ! Still a day to go.
- samuell 6y agoSomeone must have pressed the wrong button ... or the right button too early ...
- PurpleFoxy 6y agoOr it was all a marketing stunt.
- Black101 6y agoMaybe they can get the true fools on this day
- mypalmike 6y agoAnd here I thought it was some difference between metric months and imperial months.
- mbg721 6y agoOr diesel months vs. gasoline months.
- toomanybeersies 6y agoIt's not even 1 April on the Julian calendar.
- yellowapple 6y agoMy money was on ANSI Standard Months v. ISO Lunar Cycles.
- PartiallyTyped 6y ago
- sn_master 6y agoSo it was another Pasta Hut moment?
- cmckn 6y agoLong live IHOB.
- adrianb 6y agoIf anything, this is an amazing insight onto how the media will report anything from a press release without a minimum of investigation. The name change was essentially breaking news everywhere. - they're changing the almost 100 years old name with... a pun on that name? Even a teenager would see it as a joke. - the announcement comes out 2 days before April 1st and is deleted from the website shortly after publishing? - the media packages it as an amazing "leak" and spins it into VW attempting to distance themselves from the diesel scandal?! I'm worried if we trust a press that can be so easily and obviously misled.
- justaguy88 6y agoI certainly didn't think it was a joke, it's seemed a perfectly reasonable thing to do * They got in trouble for diesel * They're pivoting to electric * The name sounds really similar, within the bounds of accent changes between cultures * The logo (VW) wouldn't have to change If it was a joke, then it failed because it was too realistic
- gkoberger 6y agoI don't see it as a joke, but rather a marketing gimmick. IHOP did it a year ago (IHOB to announce their new burgers), and it got them a ton of press. I bet Volkswagon saw that and wanted in.
- N8theGr8 6y agoProbably kind of both at the same time, I think. Clever puns and wordplay gimmicks seem to always stir up a bit more press and word-of-mouth than just regular business decisions. Making it interesting without being too complicated to hold the interest of the public is a fine line that a lot of marketing firms are good at walking, although unfortunately some are just terrible.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- beamatronic 6y ago
- tgaj 6y agoHow ever could anyone believed in VOLTSWAGEN?
- airhead969 6y agoQwikster. War of the Worlds.
- Rerarom 6y agoI thought it plausible since a lot of people pronounce the k as a t (I used to when I was a kid) and this would just formalize it.
- kgwgk 6y agoEven more notable is the change in the v. Volt and volk are pronounced differently in German (not just in the t/k part).
- SahAssar 6y agoSo https://www.vw.com/en/models/id-4.html https://www.vw.com/en/models/id-4.html says voltswagen and https://www.vw.com/en/models/atlas.html https://www.vw.com/en/models/atlas.html says volkswagen. Seems like it might stay around as a marketing name for the electrics.
- ldbooth 6y agoThat's a lame self serving joke, it's more like they are trolling the internet and news addicted.
- softwaredoug 6y agoIt is quite interesting from a branding perspective how hard it may be for traditional car companies to convince you to buy their electric car. Is a company like VW really investing, in the long run, in electric cars in the way Tesla is? Should I _really_ trust their one-off electric car they build to dip their toe in? You wonder what it WOULD take for VW, Chevy, Ford, Toyota etc to convince you their product and commitment was on par with Tesla
- tyingq 6y agoI see what you mean from a focus standpoint, but I feel like the traditional carmakers will likely always do better at quality, safety, and longevity for traditional stuff. Panel gaps, paint, proper automotive grade components, and so on.
- anyfoo 6y agoMe too, cars are just much more than their engines and drivetrains.
- steve_adams_86 6y agoThey are, and even so, these companies still know far more about the engineering principles that go into both. Tesla certainly has heaps of special knowledge that these companies will need to catch up on or innovate themselves, but I suspect in the scheme of things, even lower end car manufactures are better-rounded across the design/build process.
- ReptileMan 6y agoI think that Skoda CityGo and the VW 1UP second gen are probably the best town cars there are (in EU sense).
- bradstewart 6y agoFord putting the Mustang brand on an EV is a pretty big indicator to me.
- dublin 6y agoBecause lying is press releases two days before April 1 is such a good look. The most reasonable conclusion now is that no, this wasn't a joke, but it fell flat, and so they're pretending it was. That might have gone off better had they waited a day or two. Anyway, it seems to have worked about as well as their cars, which manage to cram the sky-high maintenance and repair costs of an Audi or BMW into a car that's supposed to be affordable...
- geuis 6y agoSeems like since their 4/1 joke got leaked yesterday, they're trying to lean into it. And rather being received as a punchline that missed the timing, news outlets are discrediting it and generally the intended audience is going more negative.
- abledon 6y agoI don't like the name but it begs the question... Is April fools the 'marketing dept' version of 'Staging' in a CI/CD pipeline? (or maybe blue/green deployment is better analogy !) Like, if the tests fail (the public is enraged at your tweak ex. 'volt'swagen) , rollback the change under the guise of 'April fools'
- adrianb 6y agoObituaries are prematurely published all the time. I'm surprised April's Fools aren't published early more often.
- luhn 6y ago> Obituaries are prematurely published all the time Unless you're describing Death Note I'm not sure what you mean by this.
- tikhonj 6y agoPublications have pre-written obituaries for famous people to make sure they can respond immediately when somebody famous dies. Occasionally these obituaries get published in response to incorrect rumors or simply through some kind of internal error—always a bit awkward!
- colejohnson66 6y agoThat’s actually how we got the Nobel Prizes. Nobel was famous for inventing dynamite. After his brother died, some newspapers reported his death with their prewritten obituary about how “The merchant of death is dead”. After seeing that, he changed his outlook and modified his will to create the Nobel Prizes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize
- toomanybeersies 6y agoI particularly appreciate the irony in the Nobel Peace Prize, especially as Henry Kissinger is a laureate.
- runnr_az 6y agoI keep seeing this being described as a “lie” when it’s really just an April Fools joke. I mean, I get that it’s not super funny, but man... when did we get so grumpy?
- live4everjones 6y agoSometime around March 2020
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- throwaway94792 6y agoIt's the 30th of March
- mikestew 6y agoYou want grumpy? Gonna be some real grumpy if companies start treating April 1st like Christmas: "Oh, lighten up, it's an April Fools joke." "It's fucking January."
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- redeux 6y agoYou’ll have to forgive people, many of whom are the victims of VWs emissions scandal, which by the way resulted in many premature deaths, for not finding this “prank” funny. Edited to update the death count.
- makeworld 6y agoI was curious, so I read Wikipedia. "A peer-reviewed study published in Environmental Research Letters estimated that approximately 59 premature deaths will be caused by the excess pollution produced between 2008 and 2015 by vehicles equipped with the defeat device in the United States" Not quite "thousands". Obviously still an egregious act from the company. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal#Deaths https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal#D...
- gyutrfhjj 6y agoThey registered the Voltswagen Twitter in 2019. Looks legit. And the Volts name is pretty brilliant. https://twitter.com/Voltswagen https://twitter.com/Voltswagen
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- meiraleal 6y agoGerman humour. But I bet it will be the name of a subsidiary.
- asimjalis 6y agoVolts going on here?
- tedunangst 6y agoSeems like my decision to wait until tomorrow to formulate a strong opinion on the name change will pay off.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- beefman 6y agoNow I'm not sure what to call their nonexistent electric cars!
- clouddrover 6y agoCall them market leaders in Europe. Volkswagen owns 12 automotive brands and they sold the most BEVs in Europe in 2020: https://ev-sales.blogspot.com/2021/01/europe-december-2020.html https://ev-sales.blogspot.com/2021/01/europe-december-2020.h... So far they're still leading in Europe in 2021: https://ev-sales.blogspot.com/2021/03/europe-february-2021.html https://ev-sales.blogspot.com/2021/03/europe-february-2021.h... Eventually they'll be the biggest BEV maker worldwide. It's not surprising. Volkswagen and Toyota are the world's biggest car companies and Volkswagen started its BEV push earlier than Toyota.
- blisterpeanuts 6y agoIt's interesting that despite its international leadership position, Volkswagen has a rather small share of the U.S. car market. VW captured 2.21% of U.S. car sales in 2020[1]. By contrast, Toyota was 12.53%, GM 17.30%, Ford 13.87%, etc. 1. https://www.goodcarbadcar.net/volkswagen-us-sales-figures/ https://www.goodcarbadcar.net/volkswagen-us-sales-figures/
- clouddrover 6y agoThose charts are just for the VW brand, not the entire Volkswagen group. But it's true that Volkswagen's biggest markets are Europe and China: https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/22/investing/volkswagen-earnings-2020/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/22/investing/volkswagen-earn...
- mkl95 6y agoEasily the best example ever of why you should add /s at the end when you are talking to an American audience.
- chairmanwow1 6y agoI thought the new name was funny. Apparently I’m in the minority because of the incredible amounts of vitriol present ITT.
- phatfish 6y agoYup, funny for an April fools joke, would have worked better on April 1st though. What has happened to everyone?
- jsight 6y agoOhm my, Watt is going on here?
- zeckalpha 6y agoSurprised this thread hasn’t Godwin’s lawed yet... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Völkisch_movement https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Völkisch_movement
- whatshisface 6y agoVolkswagen was a whole lot more related to the Nazi war effort than a semi-happenstance connection to a word that sounds like their name, they built military hardware[0]. The vast majority of the companies in Germany at that time assisted with the war in some way. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_K%C3%BCbelwagen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_K%C3%BCbelwagen
- rburhum 6y agoThis "marketing stunt" raised their stock price by 8.95% today because people ran to buy stock since it signaled a changed in strategy. It is not "market manipulation", but I hope somebody gets slapped in the wrist for this.
- Digory 6y agoI'd be shocked if there wasn't a shareholder class action. I'd almost think they had to price it in, but VW really seems to misunderstand regulatory risk. If a car was going to have shrimp tails in it, it'd be VW.
- subpixel 6y agoThe tail is wagging the dog here. A pretty genius marketing move proved to be too clever by half for corporate strategy-types, resulting in lost potential. They will not get this genie back in the bottle - the thrill is gone.
- stakkur 6y agoA
- javajosh 6y agoTerrans: Yes, we are social creatures. We play we joke, and this particular culture sets aside one day a year for especially silly silliness.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- e-clinton 6y agoVW lies again. Shocking.
- Black101 6y agoHow do you pronounce the W in Volkswagen?
- drusepth 6y agoI guess it's an uncommon sentiment but I'm really happy that April Fool's jokes are coming back this year after almost all tech companies cancelled theirs last year (or at least went easy on them). Hopefully 2 years to think on their jokes ups their game this year. This was a great prank on the media, albeit a day or two early.
- radium3d 6y agoVW, if you read this please do change the name, I like it!
- balozi 6y agoMaybe this is Volkswagen passive-aggressively mocking the American sustainability crowd.
- danans 6y agoI hope this doesn't cause their customers to re-volt.
- dang 6y agoSo it was just a stunt. We're in the decadent phase of the April Fool's arms race. Previous thread: Voltswagen of America - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26634857 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26634857 - March 2021 (561 comments)
- o-__-o 6y agoMoniker does hold voltswagen.com, so maybe not entirely far fetched from a marketing standpoint
- Ancapistani 6y agoI honestly thought this was a strategic rebranding to capitalize on their transition to electric vehicles and to get ahead of people shouting the down due to the involvement of Hitler in their early years.
- elzbardico 6y agoOnly in our HN bubble it could make sense folks. We've been had.