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Largest Auto-Scandal Settlement In US History: Judge Approves $15 Billion Volkswagen Settlement (usatoday.com)
A federal just has approved the largest auto-scandal settlement in U.S. history, a $14.7 billion settlement concerning Volkswagen Group's diesel car emissions scandal. USA Today reports: U.S. District Court Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco approved the sweeping agreement between consumers, the government, California regulators and the German automaker in a written ruling a week after signaling he was likely to sign off. He said the agreement is "fair, reasonable and adequate." The settlement comes about a year after Volkswagen admitted that it rigged 11 million vehicles worldwide with software designed to dodge emissions standards. The company is still facing criminal investigations by the U.S. Justice Department and German prosecutors. The U.S. probe could lead to additional financial penalties and criminal indictments. About 475,000 Volkswagen owners in the U.S. can choose between a buyback or a free fix and compensation, if a repair becomes available. VW will begin administering the settlement immediately, having already devoted several hundred employees to handling the process. Buybacks range in value from $12,475 to $44,176, including restitution payments, and varying based on milage. People who opt for a fix approved by the Environmental Protection Agency will receive payouts ranging from $5,100 to $9,852, depending on the book value of their car. Volkswagen will also pay $2.7 billion for environmental mitigation and another $2 billion for clean-emissions infrastructure.
I'm genuinely surprised this story has been on the front page this long: a) without a comment, and b) without a comment from someone making a snarky remark about global warming being fake and how its killing businesses. Good on you Slashdot.
Do they get destroyed or re-sold? If they're re-sold, how cheap will they be?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
No, it will choke the performance. The code selectively caused the engine to run cleaner which held back performance and mpg, etc. The fix will have to cause the car to run like that all the time, lest it not pass emissions.
I own a 2014 model... Less than 40k miles. Basically, I can turn my car in, and walk away with $30. According to them anyway... No restitution for sales tax and fee's paid when I bought it, no restitution for my lost time and the anguish of having to go to a car dealership and buy something else. Hell, I'm not sure they're even going to cover the sales tax to turn it in. I've moved states since buying it, and I think this state will want to collect taxes on the buyback...
If you skip the fix, you won't pass emissions now that they know about it. You can either sell the car back to VW or accept the fix and compensation for lost performance.
Nobody is regulating anybody out of business. Go look at VW's stock performance up until this broke. There's just such a thing as too much coming from your tailpipe. If you ever lived in LA during the 60's, or hell, even up through the 90s then you'd understand.
I robbed that liquor store fair and square! What's this crap about restitution and jail time?
Presumably the fix would be to have the car always run in "cheat" mode, rather than removing the cheat. The cars are clearly capable of generating fewer emissions or the cheat wouldn't have worked in the first place.
The result will be lower performance, of course, but the vehicles will have emissions ratings in line with what everyone was led to believe.
=Smidge=
Then reflash the computer with the good code you kept a copy of, but upped the version number so future updates will leave it alone.
Remember the offending code noticed the smog check, it will continue to pass.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Or you live in a state without emission testing... Thank you Indiana, I'll be keeping mine the way good designed it. No fix for me! 750 miles/ tank TDI Passat 2013.
Note i do no live in Porter or lake counties.
And yet other companies manage to stay in business without committing fraud.
The reasons for emissions regulations are so that when consumers make the cost/performance tradeoff when buying a car, they don't externalize costs -- which is an economist's way of saying make other people pay for their choices. A car would be cheaper and perform better if it didn't have a catalytic converter (just dump your partially burned hydrocarbons on everyone else), EGRs (just dump your NOx on everyone else), PCVs (spread engine oil over everyone else) and mufflers (dump your noise on everyone else).
All of that stuff you'd be dumping on everyone else costs everyone else. You can argue about precisely how much it costs them, but it is certainly not zero.
So let's turn your little rhetorical device around: How dare you fraudulently make the public subsidize your business?
Here's the thing about markets: they're not about making everyone happy. They're about efficient distribution of resources. If costs go up producers are unhappy and some of them go out of business. That makes the owners and workers unhappy, but it is a rational response to costs going up. Dumping those costs on others and pretending they don't exist isn't rational; it's hysterical.
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Given VW almost certainly has a list of each and every buyer of each and every VIN of one of these (which can be looked up in a state DB to find new owner), it would not surprise me if the EPA ended up with the list and could use it to... encourage all such owners to comply.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
I think VW gambled that they would only get a slap on the wrist. But had that happened, then cheating by other manufacturers would be rather likely. The EPA wanted t make an example of VW so that nobody else would be tempted to do the same thing.
I would note that there are cities all over the world with serious smog problems, and most of them are not in the first world.
The car is not compliant, that's why they are offering returns & payouts. It makes no difference if people care about compliance or not, it is legally required to be compliant in order to be on the road, period.
Then, if people choose to get a fix they will be left with a car that is less powerful, because that's how the cheat mode worked. People will end up with a worse car than they bought, and that's why they are offering compensation payments.
But don't let the facts get in the way of a whinge!
Stockholders who bought VW at a market cap of $65B are not happy. Book value of VW - closer to the actual worth of the company, not worth based on assumptions of future earnings - is $54B. That leaves a company with a real worth of $4B and a very severe cash flow problem, and an overhanging threat of further "legal" action. It's time for the German government to step up and say "Fick dich" (google translation) to the US court system and negotiate a more reasonable settlement based on actual damages.
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"Make an example" is an example of injustice.
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To me this VW emissions scandal, and many others, kind of shows just how difficult if not impossible it is to set standards that apply at all time under all conditions in the real world. The only way to monitor emissions in real-world conditions is to monitor them in real time as we drive. Every car across the planet, and then relay that information to some central location. And then what I think you'll find is that most engines don't meet the strictest standards a lot of the time. And it will vary as much on people's driving habits as anything. Punch it off the light and you're going to emit a lot more particulates than cruising. Drive it hard while cold and you'll pollute regardless. And even gasoline engines likely emit much more particulate pollution than we thought before, especially with direct injection.
That's not to say pollution standards aren't good. A car that meets standards under controlled conditions is going to be a lot cleaner under any circumstances than an engine that didn't meet those standards under controlled circumstances.
Or you live in a state without emission testing... Thank you Indiana, I'll be keeping mine the way good designed it. No fix for me! 750 miles/ tank TDI Passat 2013.
Note i do no live in Porter or lake counties.
Come March of 2018, you had better have had the car fixed or have had it sold back to VW, otherwise you will likely find yourself without a vehicle and without
any compensation. Additionally, you can't legally sell the car to anyone but VW between now and then without the fix.
So far the leaked preliminary tests are supposedly showing emissions compliance with NO change in horse power or mileage.
Who gets all this free money? I will probably be collected over years, but what does it go for to reduce the deficit? Why not give it to the people to help spur the economy, or use it to find the Mars missions or something positive, instead of some layers pockets.
GM covering up and failing to recall vehicles for a known ignition switch issue that led directly to the deaths of 13 people:
$35 million
Volkswagen fiddling their emissions tests:
$14.7 billion
Hmmm......
It depends on the model. Not all can be fixed economically. Some will need extra exhaust scrubbing added. It's unclear what this will do to performance, but it certainly won't improve it.
So either trade-in or compensation+downgrade if available.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I fail to see where VW stole anything or did anything that wasn't a response to an arm-twist.
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New cars in the U.S. must meet emissions regulations or you can't drive it. So a new car that doesn't meet requirements is not drivable and so is not fit for purpose. But they represented that it was. So if you bought one, they ripped you off. Would you prefer the government say "too bad, so sad, that's an expensive paperweight you have there"?
Or perhaps you believe you're a special snowflake entitled to dump any amount of toxins you want into other people's air?
What I think is these little VW's pollute less than most any other diesel on the road and that over-regulation is keeping more reasonable and efficient vehicles off the road. I would rather see 20 of these VW's regardless of their firmware status than one Chevy Silverado Rollin' Coal. They rigged their computers because they being held to unrealistic expectations while some guy in an F350 dually who uses it to get groceries and show off doesn't have to worry about it.
I'm not pro pollution. I'm pro common sense. I know my gas powered Jetta can hit 40 MPG if I don't have the A/C on and the traffic isn't stop and go. I imagine the diesel gets better mileage. I'm against government ruining a good thing in favor of a bad one.
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The hack was to pass emissions without including a urea system. With or without the hack, nobody in the market for an F350 or similar was ever going to choose the VW. With the urea system, they could pass emissions without the cheat.
As for the trucks, I'm all for tightening up regulations there, particularly when they are used exclusively as passenger vehicles for no good reason. Rolling coal should carry a hefty fine due to the willfulness.