VW Execs Lied, Repeatedly, For 1 Year+, Re. Emissions - And Got $51 Million "Clean" Diesel Subsidy
Volkswagen executives told environmental regulators for more than a year that discrepancies between pollution tests on its diesel cars and the starkly higher levels out on the road were a technical error, not a deliberate attempt to deceive Washington officials.
But this month, the executives made a startling admission: The diesel vehicles it sold in the United States used software meant to cheat on the tests.
VW made the admission only when the Environmental Protection Agency took the extraordinary action of threatening to withhold approval for the company’s 2016 Volkswagen and Audi diesel models, according to letters sent to company officials by the E.P.A. and California regulators.
Since that deception became public on Friday, Volkswagen has scrambled to conduct damage control. The chief executive apologized and the company said it would stop selling diesel-powered cars from the 2015 and 2016 model years.
EDIT
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/22/business/it-took-epa-pressure-to-get-vw-to-admit-fault.html
The federal government paid out as much as $51 million in green car subsidies for Volkswagen diesel vehicles based on falsified pollution test results, according to a Times analysis of the federal incentives.
On Friday, federal and state regulators said the German automaker used software in 482,000 of its diesel vehicles since the 2009 model year to cheat on U.S. emissions tests. Environmental Protection Agency officials said Monday that the U.S. Department of Justice is also investigating.
The Times analysis matched Internal Revenue Service data with Volkswagen sales figures to determine the value of subsidies VW diesel buyers were eligible to collect in 2009, the first and only year the vehicles qualified. The $1,300 tax credit would have been available to buyers of about 39,500 Jetta and Jetta Sportwagen models that sold that year, according to Motor Intelligence, an industry research firm.
"It is really unfortunate," said Luke Tonachel, director of clean vehicles and fuels project at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "The government has been effective to help advance clean technologies, but it is a waste of taxpayer dollars when they aren't actually helping to clean the environment."
EDIT
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-vw-subsidies-20150922-story.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
... GM $3.5 billion and even those pale into insignificance compared
to the $13 billion that Boeing got for assorted taxpayer bilking schemes.
Not in any way a defence of Volkswagen's cheating but just putting an
element of perspective into the money side.
fill me in on what they did if you would. I've totally missed that
... so had a quick google to find some numbers. First "public" site
(as in someone I'd heard of rather than Joe's Blog or whatever)
was the WaPo so you might find better ones if you dig further:
>> Of all the state and local subsidy dollars tracked, half went to the
>> top 30 companies, led by Boeing. The aerospace giant alone has
>> received $13 billion in subsidies. Chip-maker Intel and metal giant
>> Alcoa each received nearly $6 billion. General Motors scored $3.7 billion
>> and Ford secured $2.5 billion.
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2015/03/17/the-united-states-of-subsidies-the-biggest-corporate-winners-in-each-state/)
If those figures were wrong, feel free to correct them - I was simply
looking for data to quantify the ridiculous difference in scale between
the VW scam and the "home-grown" ones to highlight the hypocrisy
in some of the more hyperbolic posters on the VW threads.
(In response to your other reply, I like the Focus too: my nephew has
one, as does a neighbour - so I have no problem with their current
"sensible car" products!)
... just not as good as you were led to believe.
As usual, the media (and many commentators on DU) are lacking a sense
of perspective about this (a problem fanned by the hypocrisy of the EPA
along with the willing compliance of the administration desperate to be seen
to be doing something positive about the environment).
You are still way ahead of all the wankers in their trucks, their Hummers,
their "macho machines" and the majority of the old crocks on the road.
Just let their schadenfreude wash over you - it will not last long as things
will suddenly go quiet when the breadth of the problem across even just
the vehicle market starts to get recognised ...
And at least your manufacturer's problems didn't kill anyone ... VW don't
have a fund set aside to pay off the families of those killed by their defects
rather than fix them ...