Volkswagen’s rolled out much of the details of its “Goodwill Program” in the wake of Dieselgate, as it hopes to somewhat soothe the feelings of people who bought cars with afflicted 2.0-liter diesel engines from the company. Will it work? (No.) It’s much of what we heard last week, but now with additional technicalities!
Keep in mind, before we continue, that none of this is an actual fix for the cars. That will come later, and probably be a much more massive headache for everyone involved.
As we first heard from The Truth About Cars, VW owners are getting a $500 Volkswagen Prepaid Visa® card upfront, and you should definitely, definitely not call it your Diesel Bribe Card™. It’ll work in places that accepts credit cards, for goods and services like food, or booze, or whatever else, I don’t know, you people should know by now what credit cards do.
Next, they’ll get a $500 card that’ll only be good at VW dealerships, so that they can stock up on air fresheners or repairs to their notoriously unreliable cars, presumably. In reality this is more of an apology gift to the dealers than to the customers.
And then finally, you’ll all get free roadside assistance for three years! How much you use that would obviously determine the total value of your Volkswagen Apology World Tour goodie bag.
Since some 500,000 cars are affected here, this alone will end up setting Volkswagen back about $500 million just to start, assuming that none of these owners ever use the roadside assistance, which they probably will anyways.
Want to know if you’re eligible for dirty diesel money? Click here. Want to know if you’re eligible for dirty diesel money, and you own a Volkswagen Touareg TDI?
You’re not. Sorry. Volkswagen is already saying you’re excluded from the deal.
Contact the author at ballaban@jalopnik.com.
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