EPA says Volkswagen cheated on emissions with 482,000 diesel cars

Tea 1000

Interesting read here:
http://www.autocar.co.uk/blogs/industry/opinion-why-vw-group-might-need-be-broken-survive

Just a couple of days after VW admitted to falsifying diesel emissions tests in the US, Porsche Automobil Holding SE bought a 1.5% shareholding in VW from Suzuki.
This move was a leftover from 2009 when VW bought a near-20% stake in the Japanese automaker, famed for its ability to build low-cost, high quality small cars.
Moving in after the global credit crunch, VW was driven by its determination to expand on all fronts, on its way to becoming the world’s largest car maker.
One area where VW was lacking was the ability to build profitable small cars, especially for the booming Chinese and Indian markets.
According to Suzuki’s side of the story, VW wanted access to Suzuki’s engineering abilities but the Japanese claimed they were unlikely to get similar access to VW tech. VW and family-owned Suzuki fell out in 2011. Suzuki’s demand that it should be able to buy back VW’s 20% shareholding went to international arbitration.
Just days before ‘dieselgate’ Suzuki spent £2.4 billion buying VW’s shareholding back, after the judgement went the Japanese company’s way.
That reversal of VW’s global expansion was very minor compared with what happened over the following fortnight. The mighty German company is now completely on the back foot, and facing years of massively expensive fines and litigation.
In fact, so bad is VW’s potential situation, that one betting company is offering odds of 20 to 1 that VW Group will not be trading by the end of 2016.
While the situation is probably not quite that bad, the open-ended nature of VW’s potential liabilities means that its share price will be depressed for years, borrowing costs will rise, and the company’s huge research and development budget will have to be radically trimmed.
And that’s on top of the costs of the recall work and owner compensation. The manufacturing and fitting of around 11 million engine ECUs is the bare minimum needed. Hardware modifications would add another whole level of cost and complexity.
Officially, VW has set aside around £5bn for the ‘dieselgate' costs but analysts are betting on the final bill being around £18bn - a sum that could be enough to pay for the next 10 generations of the Golf.
In circumstances as dire as these, a company like VW would be at risk of being bought up by hostile bidders and then broken up. Luckily for VW Group, the vast majority of the company is owned by ‘close family’.
After buying 1.5% of VW from Suzuki, the founding Porsche and Piech clan - via its Porsche SE holding company - own just over 52% of VW. Another 20% is owned by the German state of Lower Saxony. Neither of these shareholders is going to sell up, so VW is safe from a hostile takeover.
What’s more likely is that VW Group might have to consider breaking itself up, partly to raise cash and partly to help bolster its share price.
Firstly, Porsche and Audi are by far the big profit engines in the group, so those brands are going nowhere. In 2014 Porsche made £2bn profit from 204,000 cars and Audi £3.75bn from 1.8m cars. In contrast, VW made around £2bn from its massive 6.1m sales.
The commercial truck division is the outlier for VW. Both Scania and Man make money (the former, £700m and the latter, £282m). Right now, they are good news for VW’s financial performance but, if the company’s financial situation deteriorates, these two brands could be put up for sale to help pay for the longer term costs of dieselgate.
Elsewhere, Skoda makes a good margin (£600m in 2014), but it is so integrated into the Group through the use of the MQB architecture, there’s zero chance of it being sold off.
SEAT looks vulnerable because it has struggled to turn a profit for some years and its volumes remain lowish at 394,000 in 2014. Its low-cost Spanish factories are useful to the group (SEAT already builds Audi Q3s) so a further slowdown in SEAT investment looks highly likely.
The newly formed Porsche-Bentley-Bugatti brand group could also see Bentley investment slowed and Bugatti’s promised new mega-car looks likely to be halted altogether.
The Audi-Lamborghini-Ducati brand group could also see investment radically slowed in Lamborghini. The Italian maker builds three distinct models but sales last year were a modest 2650. Will the Urus be a high-profile victim of the cuts?
But the real cost saving will be at the oversized and bloated VW brand. VW sold 6.1m cars in 2014, but turned a margin of just 2.5%. The real cost cutting will have to come here, where margins should be around the same 7% Skoda achieved.
VW’s powerful unions won’t like it, but jobs will be cut and wilder investments - such as the next Phaeton - cut back because the company needs to plough on with its global investment in the all-new MQB factories. This is very costly, but necessary to ensure the economies of scale promised by the mega platform.
VW is in a mess, but not so much a mess that a fire sale is imminent. But the days of VW’s wild innovation are over for the next few years and new models will have to be solidly profitable.
But if VW ends up being hit financially very hard, as BP was in the wake of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, selling some of the family sliver might be unavoidable.

mickdw

Deedsie wrote: »

I think DiCaprio's film company produced Cowspiracy. I wonder could they incorporate it into that.

Emissions, global warming etc...

Some smart ass on the radio today give it the title.... Emission impossible!

vectra

MuppetCheck wrote: »

Talk about bora-ing bloody movie.

fixed that for you :pac:

dr.fuzzenstein

pippip wrote: »

Leonardo DiCaprio's production company has acquired the film rights to a book proposal about Volkswagen's clean diesel scandal.

Publishing rights for the as-yet-untitled book sold earlier this month for six figures to the Norton publishing house, New York literary agency Marly Rusoff said.

The book is expected to investigate how a "more, better, faster" ethos fuelled one of the greatest frauds in corporate history.

Brilliant! That's a lot of money being dropped on a "storm in a teacup".

http://news.sky.com/story/1568710/dicaprio-plans-to-make-volkswagen-scandal-film

Radkäppchen und der böse Golf.
Sorry, the above doesn't work in English.

Fiskar

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

You think petrol will now live on happily ever after? Everything stays as it is and happy days forever?
Emissions will simply be tightened until there is no way that standards can be achieved within the boundaries of physics and then the whole game starts again. Unless that is already happening. This whole idea of "great, diesel is dead and petrol will live on forever!" is innocent and blue eyed in the extreme. Or rather the usual lazy trolling by de pedril fanbois.
We're burning oil and if you don't like it, tough sh*t.

And I keep saying it:
So, diesel is gone. Will we have petrol powered buses, trucks, trains, plant, ships, generators, etc? Maybe petrol aircraft?
If the small percentage of diesel usage that is cars is gone (which it won't be), what about the rest?
I'm sick to death of "de pedril fanbois" spewing their ever tiresome "dem daysuls are shoite, you'd want to be gettin' rid a dem, so you would!" bollocks. Would give you cancer listening to that sh*te.
I will be driving a diesel for the foreseeable future and even if production of diesel vehicles stopped tomorrow, there would still be quite a few of them around in 20-30 years time. And the next one will be an old one of the extra smoky variety, just to piss the petrol heads off. My oilburner has done 345k km and will be smoking up a town near you for at least another 200k km.
Enjoy!

Looks like you will be alone in a short period of time in diesel world. As I expected, VW will walk away from diesel, this will surely kill off future sales of VW diesels with the comments of their UK CEO today.

http://www.irishtimes.com/business/manufacturing/vw-scandal-could-ultimately-put-diesels-out-of-business-1.2389992

colm_mcm

VW will hasten the development of electric and hybrid vehicles and will, in the future, only sell diesel models fitted with the latest and best exhaust treatment systems

.


Diesel will only die when there is a viable alternative.

dr.fuzzenstein

colm_mcm wrote: »

.


Diesel will only die when there is a viable alternative.

Exactly. And petrol is not it. One wonders what goes through peoples heads when the think one model of ICE engine will die out while the other will go on to prosper for decades to come.
After diesel, people will take a closer look what comes out of petrol exhausts and they may find it doesn't quite match with what's down on paper, achieved under theoretical lab conditions. One would have to be extremely naive, blinkered it have vested interests not to consider the above.

BoatMad

Marcusm wrote: »

You're astonishingly naive about the corporate world if you think those are being cast around like confetti. I will bet that every word of what the US and UK CEOs have stated to their respective parliaments have been vetted to the hilt and tailored for their audiences. Whether an injector fix is necessary from an engineering perspectivewill be irrelevant. Likewise the US CEO's comments about dealer margin are likewise necessary in a marketplace where dealerships are more powerful and where VW is a niche player wishing to make the mainstream.

They have been in 14 months of discussion with the EPA and Californian authorities which will have allowed them to create alternative strategies to announce depending on what the public reaction has been.

Likewise, the financial effects are immense. Leaving aside the cost per unit of the recall; VW bonds are no longer eligible ECB collateral meaning their funding will be more costly and substantially constrained. Equity funding to rebalance the balance sheet is going to be complex because of the share price falls and the unusual shareholder base. Qatar will want a lot more influence to put up more cash, Porsche/Piech families are unlikely to have the liquid resources and Lower Saxony is constrained by state aid rules. None of these will want to be diluted in a cash call so that means downsizing (hence the worry over costly German jobs) and reducing investment in niche/new products.

All in all that means a very much changed VW group in the future, effectively rules out an Audi F1 team but will probably not mean that much to a mid spec Golf, Octavia or A4 driver. Those will continue to be made, continue to operate as before but VW as a group des not have the freedom of action into the future.

I think the pressure on those VW employees in the media limelight to " say something " or " do something " is immense. Just like stupid comments " we've tasked engineering not to affect fuel ecomony " nonsense

The simple issue is that in reality in Europe no proof exists of wrong doing , no substantiated allegation of wrong doing exists. This is the direct opposite of the USA, where a series of official CARB tests have resulted in the current allegations there.

Hence solutions being " suggested " by various arms of VW make no sense. They are more in the realms of politicians comments " we will solve the homeless crisis " , then any engineering facts.

Otherwise this is all smoke and mirrors ( and I suspect it is ) VW actually dont need to fix anything in Europe , because as yet. No concrete legally based allegations have been advanced.

In europe, there's much more at stake then VW. All the Diesel engine producers could get caught up in the fact that on road emissions are many times higher then test results. This would kill the diesel industry overnight , if the regulators in Europe turned the screws on. They will not.

VW will take 10 years to resolve all these issues, so the costs will be spread out over a long period. As for technical fixes. It's clear in the USA VW tried to fix the gen 2 cars and failed and the gen 1 lean NOX traps are even worse. In fact the tech solution for gen 1 may be in practice impossible to engineer , especially without radically altering engine performance.

The long term financial future of VW may take a hit , how big remains to be seen, VW is an extremely resilient company, resurrected from the ashes of ww2 , and saved again in the 80 by the introduction of the golf.

What's required to fix the cars in Europe , is a smokescreen, firstly no evidence of wrong doing , other then admitting certain software is present , which under europes much less stringent laws, may not be illegal , has been advanced.

Without a clear ruling on what European tests or laws VW is breaking , how can a fix be advanced. All we are seeing is " politics " , the promise of " fixes ".

In the USA it's different VW will be repeatedly subject to EPA tests , evidence suggests gen 1 cars will never pass , despite what fixes mr horn goes on about or " tasked engineering "

The next thing is as the situation moves out of the media limelight , will be VW playing hardball in Europe. Expect very minimal action in reality. I'll beleive " injector upgrades " when I see it.

In the US I suspect VW will withdraw from the small diesel market , it's a loss making activity anyway and represents a small proportion of VWs global business and a tiny percentage of the overall us car market.

dr.fuzzenstein

Fiskar wrote: »

Looks like you will be alone in a short period of time in diesel world. As I expected, VW will walk away from diesel, this will surely kill off future sales of VW diesels with the comments of their UK CEO today.

http://www.irishtimes.com/business/manufacturing/vw-scandal-could-ultimately-put-diesels-out-of-business-1.2389992

Industry analysts LMC Automotive has suggested this week that diesel sales in Europe could plummet from 53 per cent of all cars sold today to 35 per cent by 2022.

So not dead, more of a readjustment in sales figures, i.e. Mary not buying a diesel for her weekly trip to the shop. And that makes sense, too many people were pushed into buying diesel when they had no need for it.
Petrol cannot be viable for the long distance commuter, the company fleet, the van man or taxis. Doesn't look dead by a long, long way. Even if there was a sudden drop to zero diesels ten years later, a lot if those cars will be going for 15 years, so there will be oilburners clattering away until at least 2042 and beyond.
And diesel hybrids could outperform petrol hybrids by quite a bit. Totgesagte leben länger.

BoatMad

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

So not dead, more of a readjustment in sales figures, i.e. Mary not buying a diesel for her weekly trip to the shop. And that makes sense, too many people were pushed into buying diesel when they had no need for it.
Petrol cannot be viable for the long distance commuter, the company fleet, the van man or taxis. Doesn't look dead by a long, long way. Even if there was a sudden drop to zero diesels ten years later, a lot if those cars will be going for 15 years, so there will be oilburners clattering away until at least 2042 and beyond.
And diesel hybrids could outperform petrol hybrids by quite a bit. Totgesagte leben länger.

The drop in diesel sales was going to happen anyway. Outside Ireland Portugal and France diesels do not represent a majority of purchases. Euro 6 , and WLVTP both with on -road like testing is going to make compliance extraordinary difficult resulting in larger Diesel engine capacity and reduced fuel ecomony , negating many of the advantages of diesels. Truely the day of the less them 2l litres diesel is over.

This was coming anyway

dr.fuzzenstein

BoatMad wrote: »

The drop in diesel sales was going to happen anyway. Outside Ireland Portugal and France diesels do not represent a majority of purchases. Euro 6 , and WLVTP both with on -road like testing is going to make compliance extraordinary difficult resulting in larger Diesel engine capacity and reduced fuel ecomony , negating many of the advantages of diesels. Truely the day of the less them 2l litres diesel is over.

This was coming anyway

I always wanted an old X5.

Marcusm

BoatMad wrote: »

I think the pressure on those VW employees in the media limelight to " say something " or " do something " is immense. Just like stupid comments " we've tasked engineering not to affect fuel ecomony " nonsense

The simple issue is that in reality in Europe no proof exists of wrong doing , no substantiated allegation of wrong doing exists. This is the direct opposite of the USA, where a series of official CARB tests have resulted in the current allegations there.

Hence solutions being " suggested " by various arms of VW make no sense. They are more in the realms of politicians comments " we will solve the homeless crisis " , then any engineering facts.

Otherwise this is all smoke and mirrors ( and I suspect it is ) VW actually dont need to fix anything in Europe , because as yet. No concrete legally based allegations have been advanced.

In europe, there's much more at stake then VW. All the Diesel engine producers could get caught up in the fact that on road emissions are many times higher then test results. This would kill the diesel industry overnight , if the regulators in Europe turned the screws on. They will not.

VW will take 10 years to resolve all these issues, so the costs will be spread out over a long period. As for technical fixes. It's clear in the USA VW tried to fix the gen 2 cars and failed and the gen 1 lean NOX traps are even worse. In fact the tech solution for gen 1 may be in practice impossible to engineer , especially without radically altering engine performance.

The long term financial future of VW may take a hit , how big remains to be seen, VW is an extremely resilient company, resurrected from the ashes of ww2 , and saved again in the 80 by the introduction of the golf.

What's required to fix the cars in Europe , is a smokescreen, firstly no evidence of wrong doing , other then admitting certain software is present , which under europes much less stringent laws, may not be illegal , has been advanced.

Without a clear ruling on what European tests or laws VW is breaking , how can a fix be advanced. All we are seeing is " politics " , the promise of " fixes ".

In the USA it's different VW will be repeatedly subject to EPA tests , evidence suggests gen 1 cars will never pass , despite what fixes mr horn goes on about or " tasked engineering "

The next thing is as the situation moves out of the media limelight , will be VW playing hardball in Europe. Expect very minimal action in reality. I'll beleive " injector upgrades " when I see it.

In the US I suspect VW will withdraw from the small diesel market , it's a loss making activity anyway and represents a small proportion of VWs global business and a tiny percentage of the overall us car market.

I think you're missing some of the points; the actual quality, emissions etc of the engine are irrelevant. The corporate culture which allowed them to, in US terms, perpetrate a fraud on the state, means that they are in a large quandary. Whether action is needed in respect of the individual cars is secondary to the need to be perceived ot be getting to grips with th problem and eliminating the cultural deficiencies which allowed them to lie to a governmental agency. The mooted $18bn may or may not come about (California has a massive budget deficit and can play brinksmanship with impunity to demand a ransom) but in the meantime, they are suffering short term not long term financial pressures. How they handle this and get to grips with it over the coming months - which may include proposing a solution which is not actually needed - is likely to be critical in ensuring that they survive as an entity. Breaking up VAG would be difficult because of the integration of the various brands but is not impossible. It would be quite conceivable, for example, for political pressure to be put on Siemens and Bosch to acquire all engine and drive train plants and become captive supplies to VW and its subbrands as a means to inject further cash to stabilise the business.

This would be a climbdown from the industrial champion of the Porsche/Piech families and the government of Lower Saxony but better than an enforced break up.

It's not about reality, it's about perception and confidence.

Leonard Hofstadter

captainspeed wrote: »

Exactly, VW withdrawing diesels from sale in the US shows that even the latest supposedly "clean" diesels with all these NOx reducing technologies such as SCR (how much does it cost to get the AdBlue topped up during a service?) are still not clean enough for the US standards, meanwhile petrol engines are still passing without problems. Just goes to show how easy Euro 6 still is for diesel by comparison (and of course this is no surprise as the Euro 6 requirement for NOx emissions on diesels is the same as it was for Euro 4 with petrols).

So it turns out that the latest VW diesels STILL have something funny going on with the emissions, despite them claiming that the latest cars (anything with a Euro 6 engine) are not affected.

No wonder they were withdrawn from sale in the US.

http://www.irishtimes.com/business/manufacturing/volkswagen-confirm-2016-models-have-new-suspect-software-1.2392273

corkgsxr

captainspeed wrote: »

So it turns out that the latest VW diesels STILL have something funny going on with the emissions, despite them claiming that the latest cars (anything with a Euro 6 engine) are not affected.

No wonder they were withdrawn from sale in the US.

http://www.irishtimes.com/business/manufacturing/volkswagen-confirm-2016-models-have-new-suspect-software-1.2392273

How if the last model cant pass would the newer more powerful less emissions engine pass?

Special Circumstances

captainspeed wrote: »

So it turns out that the latest VW diesels STILL have something funny going on with the emissions, despite them claiming that the latest cars (anything with a Euro 6 engine) are not affected.

No wonder they were withdrawn from sale in the US.

http://www.irishtimes.com/business/manufacturing/volkswagen-confirm-2016-models-have-new-suspect-software-1.2392273

"There was at least some good news for the car giant yesterday as German officials announced plans to subsidise the purchase of electric cars, a day after VW announced plans to increase its production of electric and hybrid models."

VW throwing in the towel on small diesels? Worrying times for Irish fans of rotten sounding engines!

BoatMad

Marcusm wrote: »

I think you're missing some of the points; the actual quality, emissions etc of the engine are irrelevant. The corporate culture which allowed them to, in US terms, perpetrate a fraud on the state, means that they are in a large quandary. Whether action is needed in respect of the individual cars is secondary to the need to be perceived ot be getting to grips with th problem and eliminating the cultural deficiencies which allowed them to lie to a governmental agency. The mooted $18bn may or may not come about (California has a massive budget deficit and can play brinksmanship with impunity to demand a ransom) but in the meantime, they are suffering short term not long term financial pressures. How they handle this and get to grips with it over the coming months - which may include proposing a solution which is not actually needed - is likely to be critical in ensuring that they survive as an entity. Breaking up VAG would be difficult because of the integration of the various brands but is not impossible. It would be quite conceivable, for example, for political pressure to be put on Siemens and Bosch to acquire all engine and drive train plants and become captive supplies to VW and its subbrands as a means to inject further cash to stabilise the business.

This would be a climbdown from the industrial champion of the Porsche/Piech families and the government of Lower Saxony but better than an enforced break up.

It's not about reality, it's about perception and confidence.

Talk of the breakup of VW is speculative nonsense. VW diesel sales in NA is a pinprick. It could give everyone BMWs instead, if it wanted too

BoatMad

corkgsxr wrote: »

How if the last model cant pass would the newer more powerful less emissions engine pass?

The existence of the software doesn't mean the car did or didn't pass compliance.

RandomAccess

The KBA have ordered a recall.
I think this is going to escalate as the various EU regulators react. It's far from over.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-34536573

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/10/15/uk-volkswagen-emissions-recall-idUKKCN0S90H720151015

BoatMad

RandomAccess wrote: »

The KBA have ordered a recall.
I think this is going to escalate as the various EU regulators react. It's far from over.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-34536573

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/10/15/uk-volkswagen-emissions-recall-idUKKCN0S90H720151015

It's all so much political bull sh1ttery , how can you order a recall when the manufacture hasn't even worked out what to do or exactly what it's fixing !

Smells like cover up to me.

gctest50

BoatMad wrote: »

It's all so much political bull sh1ttery , how can you order a recall when the manufacture hasn't even worked out what to do or exactly what it's fixing !

Smells like cover up to me.

they have until the start of 2016 - about 70 days to come up with something

seems the recall is mandatory - makes affected ones worthless until then

“The recall will begin at the start of 2016. The KBA will monitor the start of the recall action and its progress,” Dobrindt told reporters in Berlin.

German transport minister Alexander Dobrindt said on Thursday that the country’s automotive regulator has ordered Volkswagen Group to start a mandatory recall of 2.4 million affected cars currently on the road in Germany by the start of 2016.

The Federal Motor Transport Authority rejected a Volkswagen proposal for a voluntary recall.


http://www.irishtimes.com/business/transport-and-tourism/germany-orders-volkswagen-to-recall-2-4m-cars-1.2392919

mickdw

Very interesting this.
It's only getting started imo.

vectra

gctest50 wrote: »

they have until the start of 2016 - about 70 days to come up with something

seems the recall is mandatory - makes affected ones worthless until then

How did you come up with that?
it's not as if they are going to start breaking down or suddenly be doing 20mpg.
How can they be worthless? They are still perfectly good and serviceable cars.
They are not going to get more expensive to run.


I don't understand posts like this.

RandomAccess

vectra wrote: »

How did you come up with that?
it's not as if they are going to start breaking down or suddenly be doing 20mpg.
How can they be worthless? They are still perfectly good and serviceable cars.
They are not going to get more expensive to run.


I don't understand posts like this.

While saying they are worthless is a step too far, they are a bit of an unknown quantity for the moment.
If the recall is truly mandatory it would draw the ire of those people on threads like this who have been saying they won't bother getting their car 'fixed' because they are happy with it as it is.

Those people do expect some negative effects from the changes, or maybe just irritation at having their car stuck in a garage for a day or more while it gets modified.

If there was a hypothetical fleet owner who bought used cars they might just not bother with VWs that needed a mandatory fix applied.

If any car should be valueless before a recall it should be those with Takata airbags.

Marcusm

BoatMad wrote: »

Talk of the breakup of VW is speculative nonsense. VW diesel sales in NA is a pinprick. It could give everyone BMWs instead, if it wanted too

You really don't get it; the size of the US sales is irrelevant. Their exposure is a fine of up to $37,500 per car sold in the US. The maximum amount is thus $18bn. THey won't have to pay that although their actions in seeking to deny its existence for 14 months will be held very strongly against them. You may be familiar with "BP Deepwater Horizon" which has cost bP $54bn to date. Did you know that BP owned only half of it, was not the operator and did not create the problem?

Solutions to US litigiousness and corporate bad actions lead to very high costs and these are effectively unlimited because of the large number of tort lawyers who will launch actions asserting the issues. Whether other engines were similarly polluting is irrelevant if they did not engage in fraudulent techniques to hide them.

So far, VW has set aside $7.27bn which is 70% of last years profit. THis is the LOWEST amount which it thinks it will more than likely settle for (the requirement under international accounting standards). The actual costs will be much higher. This is a gamechanger for VW group whether you see it as an engineering problem or not.

BoatMad

Marcusm wrote: »

You really don't get it; the size of the US sales is irrelevant. Their exposure is a fine of up to $37,500 per car sold in the US. The maximum amount is thus $18bn. THey won't have to pay that although their actions in seeking to deny its existence for 14 months will be held very strongly against them. You may be familiar with "BP Deepwater Horizon" which has cost bP $54bn to date. Did you know that BP owned only half of it, was not the operator and did not create the problem?

Solutions to US litigiousness and corporate bad actions lead to very high costs and these are effectively unlimited because of the large number of tort lawyers who will launch actions asserting the issues. Whether other engines were similarly polluting is irrelevant if they did not engage in fraudulent techniques to hide them.

So far, VW has set aside $7.27bn which is 70% of last years profit. THis is the LOWEST amount which it thinks it will more than likely settle for (the requirement under international accounting standards). The actual costs will be much higher. This is a gamechanger for VW group whether you see it as an engineering problem or not.

This is all highly speculative. The EPA has no history of extracting maximum fines even for serious safety violations , which this is not. As for tort lawyers it remains to be seen if VW are in breach of contracts to their customers and if that breach is material.

Marcusm

BoatMad wrote: »

This is all highly speculative. The EPA has no history of extracting maximum fines even for serious safety violations , which this is not. As for tort lawyers it remains to be seen if VW are in breach of contracts to their customers and if that breach is material.

No history ? Does the $14.3bn the EPA extracted from BP as part of the overall settlement count for nothing. I would regard that as a significant sum.

It's true that the Koreans (Hyundai and Kia) were only fined $100m for 1m cars but they understated emissions, they did not install a so called defeat device. You can guarantee that the US govt has seen the 7bn provision and will scale it's fine accordingly. They have nothing to fear in raining hell on a niche manufacturer of cars they never want to see on their roads.

Of course my comments are speculative; what else could they be.

colm_mcm

1 month in now.

No sign of any bargain used VWs.

Disappointing.

BoatMad

Marcusm wrote: »

No history ? Does the $14.3bn the EPA extracted from BP as part of the overall settlement count for nothing. I would regard that as a significant sum.

Very different situation in my view. Enormous damage to environment , not the same situation with VW.

Amprodude

Hope VW get what they deserve. Thief's.

BoatMad

Amprodude wrote: »

Hope VW get what they deserve. Thief's.

What did they steal ?