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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.
How about a snarky comment about how if you make useful physical good and do something illegal, you get a real penalty, whereas if you make a fortune by shuffling money around on paper and do something illegal causing a massive crisis that threatens the whole economy, you don't even get a slap on the wrist?
I'm not trying to defend Volkswagen here, or imply they were unjustly punished, just pointing out that this seems to be the only time there's any justice.
Uh, what? That has to be a typo.
I have a 2013 with 95k miles on it. I still owe about $9,000. The deal will pay me about $18,000, so I'll walk away with $9,000 in cash after paying off the loan.
I'm headed over to my dealer this weekend to see what kind of incentive he'll give me on top of that for sticking with VW. Considering new Jettas start around $15,000, I could end up with a new car (2017 model year) for almost nothing.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
They do it because the CAFE and air standards are unrealistic and stupid. It's good that we have standards, but we have raised them too high too fast and NOBODY can make those numbers without cheating in one way or another. Either through "creative accounting" "creative calculating" or straight up fudging the tests, as VW has.
The fix they propose to apply will make the cars meet those very standards you claim are impossible to meet. How do you explain that?
You guys got this all wrong.. This IS NOT a global warming issue, at least not directly. The EPA rules VW bent where about air quality.
NOx is a serious pollution problem, but it is NOT a greenhouse gas...
However, in this case, meeting the NOx standards runs counter to green house gas emissions. The likely solution for VW is to lower power output, add a urea injection system and lower fuel economy, all of which will up operating costs for the owners. This will ADD to CO2 emissions for each mile these cars drive, but it will also make the air we inhale cleaner in areas where lots of these cars drive....
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I assume you mean $30,000, not $30.
No... I mean $30. They've switched valuation sources since I last checked on the suit. It's no longer KBB, it's now some national dealer's valuation system that apparently deprecates much more on mileage. So it takes both their estimated offer, and the compensation to cover what's left on my loan. Couple that with buying in a high cost state with sky high sales taxes and license fee's, and then moving to a lower cost state, it's just a wipe out. It doesn't even leave me with enough money to go pay the "due at signing" fee's to lease a Kia.
So I took a loss on the value of my trade in when I bought the VW thinking I'd have a solid 200k mi vehicle that would last me 10+ years, and now I'm getting shafted on the buyback valuation. The 2 years I owned the vehicle were not free. I was making payments the whole time, with the expectation that in another 2 years I'd get ~5 years of no car payments. You can call that subsidizing my lifestyle, but I call it theft.
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.
Defend volkswagen how about this. Senior executives decided to scam the public and sell more vehicles to pump up their bonuses without doing the additional work. So investors got cheated with a scam to over pay executives for a lie and then paid the fine for being victims of that scam. How the fuck about we start sending corrupt executives to jail instead of making the people who pay the wages of the corrupt executives and who got cheated, always ending up paying.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen