By Mark Young, SouthFloridaReporter.com Managing Editor, Sept. 24, 2015 – As the Volkswagen emissions scandal continues to grow, the South Florida Reporter was among the first to report the EPA ordering a recall of 500,000 VW diesel vehicles in the US. Our Al Sunshine wrote about VW cheating on the EPA tests the day the EPA issued the recall. (You can read the original story HERE)
Yesterday, the Chairman of Volkswagen, C.E.O. Martin Winterkorn Resigned over the scandal. At the same time VW said the number of vehicles effected was over 11-Million worldwide. That number of recalled vehicles could grow and criminal indictments may follow. Volkswagen has set aside over $7-Billion to cover fines and repairs. Individual owner lawsuits could raise that number significantly.
Here’s an analysis of the situation from USA Today:
By Nathan Bomey, USA TODAY, Sept. 24, 2015 – Volkswagen had staked its U.S. reputation on ‘clean diesel’ branding in advertisements.
In the landscape of recent automotive scandals, Volkswagen’s emissions cheating is particularly cutting precisely because of its intentional nature.
The accusation that the German automaker’s engineers programmed software to trick regulators into believing vehicles were compliant with emissions standards differentiates the episode from recent industry calamities at General Motors and Toyota.
“There’s a measure of arrogance to this that I think people find appalling because they figured they can get away with it – we’re smarter than everyone else,” said former automotive marketing executive Peter De Lorenzo, blogger at Autoextremist.com, in an interview. “That really casts this in a wildly negative light.”
Volkswagen admitted to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that it installed software on some of its diesel-engine vehicles that tricked regulators into believing the cars met the appropriate emission standards.
That proactive attempt to deceive — which can be traced back at least as early as the 2009 model year — is already making the episode profoundly more expensive for Volkswagen than its competitors’ scandals.
