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Volkswagen Sued For Violating State Environmental Statutes With Dieselgate (theverge.com)
The attorneys general of New York, Massachusetts, and Maryland are suing Volkswagen for violating state environmental regulations with its diesel emissions cheating scandal. The states say that the car company has violated their air quality laws, combined with some sort of anti-fraud measure for the defeat mechanisms to bypass emissions testing. The move comes after many states agreed to a $14.7 billion settlement for violating consumer protection and EPA and California state environmental regulations. The Verge reports: "Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche defrauded thousands of Massachusetts consumers, polluted our air, and damaged our environment and then, to make matters worse, plotted a massive cover-up to mislead environmental regulators," said Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey in a statement. This was echoed by New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman, who released his own statement saying "the allegations against Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche reveal a culture of deeply-rooted corporate arrogance, combined with a conscious disregard for the rule of law and the protection of public health and the environment."
Please stop using the word "-gate" on any story that has some sort of scandal. Watergate was over 40 years ago....LET IT GO! and just use the word scandal.
It detects that it's running on the dynamometer. You'd have to somehow run it on an actual street to get the non-test-mode results.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
If VW willfully violated some states environmental laws, then why shouldn't those states seek redress?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The test mode cuts the performance about 20%. IOW, the poor bastards bought a real POS.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
In most states, including NY, the check is simply an ODBII test. This test simply asks the car for a list of components that need to work to meet emissions and a yes/no/maybe answer for if it's working. If all things work then the car must pass emissions. This is known to be true because the EPA requires that the manufacturer write up a report that proves they tested the emissions and it meets the standards when the emissions components are working and that the computer detects and reports when the emissions components don't work.
VW's problem is they lied on the report which and actual emissions are not tested for each car.
But now we are getting into the "obligitory" cash grab, none of these law suites will result in resources to address "climate change" or give VW owners more than a cupon for a Big Mac.
Well, if you'd been following this story you'd know that owners' claims have already been dealt with as part of a fifteen billion (or put another way 6% of the company's annual revenues) settlement. So VW owners' interests are no longer at issue. The same settlement included 2 dollars for clean car research -- although technically that's not a fine, since the products of that research would belong to VW. It also included 2.7 million dollars to the EPA for violating US Federal law. That does NOT settle claims by US States for violating their laws.
Before I continue, let's put these numbers in context: 10.2 in owner compensation + 2.7 in Federal fines. The context is this: Volkwagen Group has annual revenues of 234 billion dollars and normally keeps over twenty billion dollars in cash on hand. It's enough money to hurt, but it's still pocket change.
Now in the US states are separate legal entities who can make and enforce their own laws. And this wasn't just a case of the company acting sloppily, or an individual rogue actor, or some weird arcane rule that could be easily overlooked. It was clearly a deliberate company strategy to commit consumer and regulatory fraud in order to gain a market advantage over its law-abiding competitors. It got caught, so now the company has to run the gantlet and take it's wrist slaps from every jurisdiction it broke the law in. If it dies of acute wrist trauma, well it's not as if the company didn't know what it was doing. It took the risk that it could get away with it and it lost. End of story. If they go out of business it's hardly an excessive result given their baldly criminal intentions.
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