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Comment by bpodgursky | Hacker News Reader

What actually incentivizes a customer to take their car to a shop to get this fixed though? It's not causing harm to individual car owners, and it's not like they can get collections agencies to sieze them.

Seems like they're going to have trouble getting compliance here...

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In California CARB can order all of these cars to be inspected and if they aren't, the DMV won't renew the registrations.

OK, didn't know if that was something that was done or not (see my response below).

I'm in CA, just had to renew my registration and get my car smogged a couple months ago (its a 2013). It passed, of course.

I've got a 2013 Golf TDI and was thinking about this as well. If it isn't a safety related recall, I'm not sure how you get people to comply aside from some other action related to, say, their next years registration (i.e. if your VIN doesn't have this fix applied, you can't reregister your car). Not sure if that's a thing, though.

I'd personally plan to take my car in "real soon now" to get the fix.

I have a 2014 Jetta TDI, and the thing I'm wondering is what the cost of the fix will be - not to me in dollars, since it would be covered by the recall - but rather, will this affect my fuel economy or performance in some other way? I'm just trying to figure out why they don't have the cars running in this lower-emissions mode all the time.

The performance and/or lifetime of the engine will likely be compromised to meet the standards.

I wonder how you car will drive after the "fix." I suspect you won't be very happy with it.

Yup, quite possibly thinking about bailing on the car sooner rather than later. I have no idea if this kind of thing significantly affects resale value, but I'm not sure I want to wait around to find out.

There will be aftermarket kits to remove the controls. Just like there are now for all diesel engines.

That seems like a big liability for them... I'm sure some enterprising lawyers are already plotting a class action. Consumer buys car after test drive and loves performance, but it turns out performance was a lie. They may have to do a buy back.

The vast majority of consumers won't notice. Some will be upset, because They bought the car for the specs on paper just to feel cool. Similar to how the fanboi segment of consumers by video cards and computers and stereo equipment.

Epa can potentially require VW offer an incentive to owners.

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