What would happen if all the affected consumers demanded the full purchase price returned to them and returned their used cars? It seems clear that they would win, because they were fraudulent sales. But that would bankrupt VW, right?
[1]: http://www.ferner-alsdorf.de/rechtsanwalt/zivilrecht/vertrag...
It's be cheaper than a refund (which is unlikely) and would allow them to bring the cars back into compliance.
https://hyundaimpginfo.com/customerinfo/compensation-informa...
Besides fuel economy heavily depends on load, driving style, trip length, conditions, where you are driving (city, autobahn, ...), how fast you are driving, which tires you're using and so on.
Even if there is a measurable change I think it would still be difficult to convince a court that this is a damage, a customer deserves to be compensated for.
Really the car the consumer got was better (to them) than the product ordered. It had better gas mileage, and better performance than it should have had.
The net loser in the trick was the environment (/ the world). If a company does a trick to make money and hurt the environment, the government should step in and make them pay, right? Like if I run a tire shop and secretly burn all my old tires in the back yard.. my customers weren't hurt (directly), but the entire environment was.
So I disagree with that interpretation (getting something better than promised; it's only in the very limited sense of average gas milage). I own a TDI and am affected, fwiw.
If the tires spewed asbestos and no law was against you driving them, then I think my argument still stands.
Two exceptions are: people who prioritize environmental impact over solely personal short-term ones ("act local, think global"); and people who will now have to waste time to get the car fixed so it will pass local smog testing.
I expected 99x and 89y, but I got 120x and 70y
vs
You lied and spewed toxins all over the environment
as the first case requires some kind of weighting. Like if a pair of shoes advertises weighing 12 ounces, but they made a silent upgrade to only weight 11 ounces.. 99.9% of people are happy for that. The .1% of people who use shoes for boat anchors are not happy.
The good news for VW is that the cars aren't worthless, so they can buy them back and sell them. For people who want to keep their car there will probably also be a cash offer.
Fiat Chrysler recently announced a buyback as part of a consent decree with the NHTSA:
http://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/fiat-chrysler-buy-back...
> As to how much money an owner might receive under the buy-back program, the consent order stated that FCA must "refund the purchase price paid by the first purchaser of the vehicle for purposes other than resale, less a reasonable allowance for depreciation, and not including the cost of modifications made to the vehicle after the first retail sale." To sweeten the deal, a 10 percent premium will be factored into the initial purchase price.
Not a bad deal actually and this was defect based, not fraud based. I think VW would be incredibly lucky to have such a settlement.
A diesel engine with an EGR operating doesn't efficiently burn off all the fuel which, in addition to loss of power, produces greater particulate matter (pm) emissions which intern need to be filtered from the exhaust. The exhaust filters can become clogged with pm soot and the way it's cleansed is by injecting and igniting fuel in the exhaust to burn off the soot. If the EGR was continuously in operation then this burn off process would happen with greater regularity increasing the operating temperature of the exhaust system which would probably require more heat shielding and cooling.
Another option is a selective catalytic reduction (SCR) system. Assuming one could be retro fit on these cars, an SCR would probably have the last impact on the vehicle's operation but would introduce new maintenance concerns for the operator (DEF fluid) and Volkswagen.
Not to mention that they are probably "too big to fail" [2].
That said, the US has bailed out the auto industry before to preserve American presence in the market. Germany may opt to do the same, but they are home to other successful automakers.
I have no idea what the intricacies of German bankruptcy laws are, but I imagine they could cut a deal with car owners, and then emerge back out of bankruptcy in whatever German equivalent manner that would occur. That scenario will never happen though, there won't be enough global coordination between vehicle owners. The only way that type of outcome occurs, is if the US Government nudges it that direction (US car owners doing that would be enough to bankrupt VW).