But if I remember right, they claim they've done nothing wrong to UK cars and aren't offering a single drop of help. Which I read as them saying they can get away with it here because our legislation isn't strong enough and they won't do anything they don't absolutely have to.
Pretty much.Originally Posted by kalniel
EU emissions rules are bought & paid for by the biggest player in the diesel car market - VW. They're the main ones who e.g. lobbied to keep emissions testing lab-based rather than real-world.
Ars makes an interesting comment:
http://arstechnica.co.uk/cars/2016/0...-enabled-cars/One major concern is that VW Group will buy back the vehicles from consumers in the US and sell the cars in markets where emissions laws are more relaxed.
TBH I don't see what else they could be doing, scrapping the car would seem to be a crazy waste of the earth's resources as well as money and there would just have to be a way to fix them that was cheaper. Even if that required an engine swap (you could put a petrol engine in
), I would have thought setting up a factory that does nothing but those engine swaps would drive down the per unit cost.
Having been compensated, I wonder what percentage of those customers would buy VW again.
Makes complete sense from a corporate point of view - they're secondhand cars, as long as they meet the regulations criteria for the country they're imported to then there's nothing legally wrong with doing that. They could even invent a special edition name for them - the US spec is probably higher than several other countries they sell left-hand drive cars in.
A very large proportion I expect.Having been compensated, I wonder what percentage of those customers would buy VW again.
More people are worried about other factors like reliability and fuel economy.
I don't think it is reliability as such that worries people, it is more disruption and cost. If a car breaks down, you get stranded, you are without a car for the period of the repair, you have to foot the bill at the end. That is all pretty stressful so sensible to try and avoid it.
In this case people are being told their car is illegal, and they are being forced to go out and buy something else. There is disruption there, and I expect VW will have to make sure there isn't any expense as that will be what actually loses them customers forever so I am not surprised to see the big pot of cash being lined up.
I imagine VW will be trying to put together some stonking offers so that customers can drive to their VW dealer and drive away with a new VW using the old car buyback as the deposit. But if people are forced to give up their old car, they won't want to wait for delivery of another one so I can imagine if people can't just drive in and swap they will look elsewhere to avoid being carless.
As for economy, they don't pay European petrol prices so it isn't so compelling.
With diesel ownership in the US at something like only 3% I do suspect a lot of people will switch back to petrol before going electric, and this will be the end of VW's dream of getting diesel to take off in the US. Time will tell.
Well, they might not "have to" legally, but if they want to have a European sales level worth talking about, they might want to condider not being perceived by customers to have taken a humongous dump on them from a great height, by compensating US customers and not their home market.
After the rigging scandal, I can't think of anything worse for EU sales credibility than the inference of the "digitus impudicus" (see note) this appears to be hoisting.
My last three run-arounds have been VWs, none of which have even been diesel so I'm not directly affected, but if they leave EU customes high and dry, I will never, EVER buy another VW.
Note. An offensive hand gesture with the same semantic content as a V-sign, but popularised in the US, consisting of the middle figure.
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