The Dieselgate scandal over falsified pollutant emissions in the United States forces the German group into a massive settlement. Its revival also runs through 30 new battery-powered models.
A settlement of this scale had never been seen before. Volkswagen will pay out $15 billion (€13.6 billion) to resolve the dispute over the emissions scandal – the so-called Dieselgate – following its admission that it falsified the results of anti-pollution tests in the United States. The German group will also allocate $2.7 billion to a fund managed by the American Environmental Protection Agency (Environmental Protection Agency, EPA), as compensation for the environmental impact caused by the "tampered" vehicles.
The wind has changed. Or, at least, Volkswagen is doing everything in its power to steer the ship back on course. After damaging its image and suffering a severe blow on the stock market as a result of the turbodiesel vehicle affair involving irregular software capable of manipulating emissions test results, the German giant is attempting to shake off its villainous image, on one hand by investing in "clean" models as never before – it has also committed to spending two billion dollars over ten years on new alternative energy projects – and on the other by reaching an agreement with the US federal government and the lawyers representing the owners of around 475,000 vehicles for an unprecedented settlement.
The first building block of Volkswagen's revival is called "Strategy 2025" and consists of an action plan designed to map out the future production identity of the German group. At the heart of the programming for the next ten years are the electric car – thirty new battery-powered models are expected by 2025 – and innovative transport services. Specifically, VW will begin managing lithium cells in-house and will launch its first autonomous driving platform no later than 2021. All of this while the 2015 balance sheet recorded a loss of €1.4 billion – the first time in 23 years that Volkswagen had posted a deficit – and on the horizon, as anticipated by the New York Times, are colossal outlays to draw a line under the emissions scandal.
The Wolfsburg group will offer owners of vehicles affected by Dieselgate in the United States either a buy-back of the vehicle or compensation of between $5,100 and $10,000, determined on the basis of the vehicle's value prior to last September, that is, when the German manufacturer admitted that the vehicles had been designed to circumvent emissions tests, in addition to carrying out a recall to bring the cars up to standard. So far, 8.5 million vehicles have been recalled, of which 3.7 million in Europe, although for the Old Continent the terms of any potential agreement are currently unknown. This silence, combined with news of the likely American settlement, has triggered strong reactions on the matter.
The European Commissioner for Industry, Elzbieta Bienkowska, stated that "Volkswagen should voluntarily pay European customers the equivalent of what has been recognised for American ones." "Treating Europeans differently from Americans," the Polish politician added, "simply because of a different regulatory situation, is not the best way to win back consumer trust." To date, Volkswagen has made no mention of possible compensation in Europe, only of recalls to fix vehicles through technical updates. The game is still open.