The strange part of this is that a very large part of VW is government owned. Originally the state of Lower Saxony owned all of it. With this in mind, VW won’t be allowed to fail, but will certainly be on probation in the future.
The North American units will need a $300 retrofit and may also be subject to both criminal fines by the US gov’t as well as a class action lawsuit in Canada and the US for reduced vehicle value. These last 2 will be very significant, rumored to be $13,000 per car or so. That is about $6,500,000,000 for the US alone. The $7.5 billion set aside by VW will not be enough to cover all these charges.
In the rest of the world, correctional software will likely do the job and I can’t see the Brazil government taking VW to court on criminal charges.
I also can’t see the driver/owner of the Jetta diesel who took me around Rio de Janeiro insisting on a modification that both reduces fuel mileage and reduces performance.
The upshot of all this will be more real world testing and certification (for both diesel and gas vehicles) and a definitely reduced diesel market for cars, since many of the advantages will be lost with strict compliance.
It has to be cheaper then what Toyota paid for the thousands of rusted out frames on their Tacoma trucks they replaced for FREE. That’s a major job. This fix by VW is child’s play compared to that.
I heard on the radio that the newer diesels I the US have some of the AdBlue hardware installed at the factory. VW didn’t want to tell customers about it because they might have assumed (rightly, it appears) that they would have had to bring the car in more often for AdBlue additions. I guess we will find out how much truth the is to that report.
If you heard right, that wouldn’t really make sense
A vehicle with adblue . . . urea, I believe . . . will not let you drive indefinitely once you start running low or run out of the stuff
You will get a warning. Then you’ll get reduced power. Then the engine will no longer start.
There is no reason to go to the dealer. Every napa store in my neck of the woods stocks that stuff. And they display it very prominently. Because their commercial customers with diesel engines also use that stuff. I’m pretty sure the other major parts stores also stock plenty of that stuff
Why would you not tell the customer about it . . . ?
The customer is going to see that warning message(s) sooner or later. It’s better if you tell them at the time of sale, versus they come back and they’re in a bad mood, because you DIDN’T tell them and they saw a warning message to top off that fluid
That would be interesting if they put some of the hardware in place that would be difficult to retrofit and yet cheap to install in the factory. On Audi or MB the Adblue tank needs to be filled about every 10,000 miles at something like $37 a gallon or average 2 cents per mile additional cost.
If thats the case, VW may be able to reflash the software, add the blue tanks and other parts quickly and be done with the retrofit. Yeah owners won’t be happy with the lowered mpg and increased 2 cent per mile blue cost, but maybe some sharp managers were hedging their bets.
It wasn’t presented as a secret, just not advertised. I considered a diesel when looking for a car for my children. Urea additives were just becoming available, and it was a turn-off for me. Since urea wasn’t available at the time, I wondered if only the dealers would carry it, and how long that would continue. If it pushed me to other cars, it probably would have done the same to other people if it was required.
They had a class action for my diesel Olds back then. By the time they got it all done, they had extended the warranty to 100K but I already had over 200K on it. I didn’t even get a free oil change out of it but good luck.
As part of the class action lawsuit for the Toyota unintended acceleration, car depreciation etc, I got a check for $23. I held on to it until I had to go to the bank for some other reason, otherwise I had to deduct the gas/mileage and the value of my time from the check.
^Class-action lawsuits are the “lawyer lotto”: pick a cause, file for CA status…and who knows, you might hit big! Probably the most compromised part of a flawed (if necessary) system.