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Comment by DasIch | Hacker News Reader

It's not at all clear that they would win. There is an article by a German lawyer on the topic[1]. The tl;dr of it is, that given that the car works mostly as intended and that any damage to individual customers is little (if it even exists) customers won't get back the full purchase price and probably not even any money, especially if VW were to provide a fix.

[1]: http://www.ferner-alsdorf.de/rechtsanwalt/zivilrecht/vertrag...

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Seems to me that any 'fix' that lowers fuel economy would have a real and measurable damage on the owners in the way of increased fuel costs. Wouldn't this just be deflecting the problem from one area to another?

If I was VW I'd calculate the fuel economy difference between with fix and without fix, factor oil prices and inflation over life of the car and just offer drivers the difference.

It's be cheaper than a refund (which is unlikely) and would allow them to bring the cars back into compliance.

Note that this is what Hyundai did in the US a few years ago when they were found to have overstated their efficiency numbers. They simply reimburse you the difference in fuel costs, plus a little extra as their way of saying "sorry" or something like that.

https://hyundaimpginfo.com/customerinfo/compensation-informa...

It would only lower the fuel economy (as advertised), if they didn't apply the cheat during those tests. If they did, the cars fuel economy right now is higher than advertised.

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.

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