uVW Fix Could Take Two Years Or More; Dealer Profitability Is Main Focusr

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  Executives for Volkswagen’s U.S. operations told lawmakers during a hearing on the company’s deceptive emission systems, that he’s confident the 500,000 so-called “clean diesel” vehicles secretly set up to cheat on emissions tests can be fixed with little disruption for owners.

  Michael Horn, CEO of Volkswagen’s U.S. operations, told the Oversight & Investigations Subcommittee of the House Energy & Commerce Committee on Thursday that while the carmaker previously said it could fix the issue by the end of 2016, it would likely take much longer.

  “The repairs will take five to 10 hours,” Horn said. “If you look at recall history in this market, then these actions can take one to two years minimum when the fix and parts are available.”

  So exactly what will the remedy entail? That, Horn says, is still up for debate.

  That’s because the affected U.S. vehicles cover three generations. About 430,000 cars are considered generation one, made as early as 2009. Another 90,000 are Passat vehicles in generation two, while about 70,000 model year 2015-16 cars are considered generation three.

  Horn says the biggest hurdle for the company will be fixing cars included in the first generation, as those vehicles likely can’t be fixed with a simple software upgrade.

  Those vehicles currently don’t include an after treatment system – such as a urea tank, which injects fluid into the exhaust pipeline in order to reduce the amount of NOx (nitrogen oxides) emitted into the environment.

  The EPA estimates that VW’s affected vehicles spew NOx into the atmosphere at 40 times the allowable rates.

  Horn says that the company is discussing several scenarios, one of which would include adding a urea tank or a specific catalytic converter to ensure the cars have systems to reduce harmful emissions.

  The two later generations could be fixed by software updates in the firs half of 2016, while there currently isn’t a timeline for the first generation cars.

  While it’s too early to say when the vehicles will be fixed, Horn say he’s confident that the remedy will not affect the cars’ promised fuel efficiency – something that likely drew customers to the vehicles to begin with.

  “If we fix them, they will get the promised MPG, that’s my understanding,” Horn said. “Here might be one or two miles missing, but we will share that with the agency. If there’s a significant difference, then compensation would be discussed.”

  As for VW dealers who have been prohibited from selling affected clean diesel vehicles since the scandal first broke in late Sept., Horn says the issue “troubles him the most.”

  Diesel cars represent around a quarter of the business at the company’s 650 VW dealers and 350 Audi dealers.

  Horn told the Committee that the carmaker provided dealers with “bonuses” of up to $1,500 per car, and wired money to give them flexibility to handle the crisis.

  Another program providing a cash flow to dealers is expected to take place Friday, Horn said, noting that “dealer profitability is my main focus.”

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uGoogle Buys Domain Name That’s All 26 Letters Of The Alphabetr

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  What’s a technology giant to do when it can’t get its first choice of domain name? Go big: Alphabet, the new name of what used to be just Google, couldn’t buy alphabet.com (BMW owns it), or even abc.com (American Broadcasting Company, owned by Walt Disney Co.), so it’s gone and snagged abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz.com. Might as well be thorough.

  When Google announced Alphabet, the company’s homepage was abc.xyz. But that just wasn’t enough, it seems: only days after Google was officially reorganized under the Alphabet umbrella, the company confirmed to the Wall Street Journal that it bought abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz.com.

  “We realized we missed a few letters in abc.xyz, so we’re just being thorough,” an Alphabet spokesman said. Alphabet declined to say how it plans to use the domain name.

  The domain name has been around since 1999, according to domain-registration directory Whois. It’s unclear whether Alphabet will use it for anything or just keep ownership of the domain to prevent others from buying it. As of Thursday morning, that page wasn’t loading.

  Now Alphabet Has All 26 Letters [Wall Street Journal]

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

uReport: VW May Have Underreported Deaths, Injuries Related To Vehicle Accidentsr

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  Car manufacturers are required under law to report death and injury claims to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Those figures allow the regulatory agency to identify potentially fatal and dangerous defects. In the last year, the federal agency has investigated reporting inaccuracies related to Honda and Fiat Chrysler. Now, a new report shows that Volkswagen – in the midst of an emissions scandal – may have underreported deaths and injuries relate to its vehicles. 

  Bloomberg, citing an analysis of government data, reports that over the last decade VW has consistently reported death and injury claims at a rate of nine times lower than the average rate for the 11 biggest automakers.

  In fact, the company’s reporting rate even fell below that of both Honda and Fiat Chrysler’s underreported claims.

  Financial advisory firm Stout Risius Ross Inc. analyzed the government data and created a ratio of death and injury reports per million vehicles on the road for each automaker.

  According to that analysis, the average incident reporting rate among all 11 manufacturers came out to about 301 deaths and injuries per million vehicles.

  On the far low end was VW, which reported just 34 incidents per million vehicles. In contrast, General Motors reported 524 incidents per million vehicles.

  The underreported rate for Honda and Fiat Chrysler had rates of 101 and 78 incidents per million vehicles on the road, respectively.

  As a result of its underreporting, Honda was fined $70 million by NHTSA, while regulators have yet to determine if Fiat Chrysler will face additional fines on top of its recent $105 million penalty related to a failure to address recalls.

  “The data demonstrates that even on a fleet-adjusted basis, the number of reported incidents by Volkswagen is significantly below what one would expect based on those reported by other automakers,” Neil Steinkamp, a Stout Risius managing director, tells Bloomberg. “They are also significantly below the reporting of automakers that have already been cited for non-compliance.”

  While it’s possible that the reporting rate for VW just means the company’s cars are the safest on the market, consumer advocacy groups say that likely isn’t the case.

  Clarence Ditlow, executive director of the Washington-based watchdog Center for Auto Safety, tells Bloomberg that Volkswagen’s numbers are so low that he questions how they were compiled.

  “NHTSA doesn’t have the resources to police all of this, but now they’re asking the automakers to tell them whether they’re in compliance,” Ditlow said. “For the automakers, it’s a time of reckoning.”

  For Volkswagen, New Questions Arise on U.S. Injury Reporting [Bloomberg]

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uVirgin Mobile Offering Free Streaming Music That Won’t Count Against Customers’ Data Plansr

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• Virgin Mobile USA is taking a page out of T-Mobile’s book, and handing out free, unlimited streaming music from various partner services — that won’t count against customers’ monthly data allotments.

  The Sprint-owned company will support free streaming from partners including iHeartRadio, Pandora and Slacker Radio starting Oct. 9. It’ll be available to any Virgin Mobile customers on rate plans that include cellular data access, which start at $35 per month.

  Customers will have to be connected to the Sprint-provided 3G or LTE network to access the streaming music service, Virgin notes, and you should be ready to listen to commercials, as the service doesn’t include premium subscriptions to the streaming content providers.

  Last year, T-Mobile launched Music Freedom, which includes 33 different music services and also lets customers stream music for free without having it deplete their data buckets.

  (via CNET)

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

uJohnny Rockets Going Ahead With Kiosk-Powered Fast-Casual Restaurantsr

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  Do you enjoy the pseudo-diner experience of the chain Johnny Rockets, but want your food faster? Last year, we learned that the chain was working on a fast-casual concept that would expand the brand away from standalone restaurants with waitstaff. The first of those restaurants is here: It’s called the Johnny Rockets Burger Factory, and it’s in Buffalo, NY.

  Why is it a burger factory? The plan is to compete with the slightly-classier fast food chains that have been taking business from Johnny Rockets, like Five Guys and Smashburger. Those restaurants serve burgers more quickly, but the food is slightly better than a typical fast-food burger.

  The Burger Factory, which the chain is calling an “offshoot,” is able to cook burgers faster than at a standard Johnny Rockets restaurant. It takes about fifty seconds instead of five whole minutes. Customers can order by kiosk instead of traditional table service, and presumably there is a lot less singing. (This may or may not be a selling point for you.)

  The Buffalo restaurant is at the Walden Galleria, and it will soon have a sibling relatively nearby in Syracuse.

  Johnny Rockets Seeks New Orbit [QSR]

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uFacebook Reveals New Set Of 6 Emoji “Reactions” To Go Along With The “Like” Buttonr

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• At long last, Facebook has removed the veil from its highly anticipated “Dislike” button — only it’s not quite that simple. The social network revealed a set of six emojis to go along with the traditional thumbs-up: a heart for “love,” then emoticons for “Haha,” “Yay,” “Wow,” “Sad” and “Angry.”

  According to TechCrunch, the pop-up feature will start out as a test in only Spain and Ireland before Facebook makes the final decision on whether the new buttons should be launched elsewhere.

  The move is in line with comments head cheese Mark Zuckerberg made in the past that there needed to be a way to express an emotion other than liking something, though he never called it a “dislike” button.

  “I do think it’s important to give people more options than just like,” he said last month, according to the New York Times.

  The emoji reactions will be available on both mobile and desktop versions of the Facebook app and on posts the News Feed, and apply to friends’ statuses as well as pages, accounts and advertisers.

  “People come to Facebook to share all kinds of things — whether that’s updates that are happy, sad, funny or thought-provoking,” a Facebook spokesperson told VentureBeat. “And we’ve heard you’d like more ways to celebrate, commiserate or laugh together. That’s why we are testing Reactions, an extension of the Like button, to give you more ways to share your reaction to a Facebook post in a quick and easy way.”

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

uTech Company Central To Samsung Pay’s System Breached, Consumer Info Not Targetedr

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  Mobile payment software company LoopPay – which provides much of the nuts and bolts for Samsung Pay – announced Wednesday that it became the victim of a hack attack back in March. Despite the breach, Samsung and its smaller subsidiary assured users of its mobile payment system their information was never at risk. 

  The breach, which occurred just a month after Samsung acquired the Massachusetts-based tech company, focused on LoopPay’s corporate computer network and technology known as magnetic secure transmission (MST) – a key component of the Samsung Pay wallet, the New York Times reports.

  “Samsung Pay was not impacted and at no point was any personal payment information at risk,” Darlene Cedres, Samsung’s chief privacy officer, said in a statement. “This was an isolated incident that targeted the LoopPay corporate network, which is a physically separate network.”

  LoopPay’s chief executive and co-general manager of Samsung Pay, Will Graylin, reiterated to the Times that the breach failed to come into contact with any production system that actually manages payments.

  The hack was first discovered in late August when LoopPay’s data was found during a separate investigation into a Chinese hacking group known as Codoso Group.

  While the investigation into the breach is ongoing, both Samsung and LoopPay executives tell the Times they are confident infected machines were removed.

  Still, security experts tell the Times that it may be premature to say the hackers had been eradicated from the system.

  Because they were inside LoopPay’s network undetected for five months and the sophisticated nature of the hacker group, the experts say it’s possible that they planted hidden back doors across the network to continue infiltrations after the initial breach.

  Chinese Hackers Breached LoopPay, Whose Tech Is Central to Samsung Pay [The New York Times]

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist