Today, the U.S. District Court of Northern California is supposed to be finalizing the terms of a settlement for VW’s approximately 80,000 cheating 3.0-liter diesels. According to Reuters, how much VW has to pay to clean up the cars’ pollution has already been solidified. The final figure according to the site’s sources: $200 million.
That might sound like a lot, but compared to the $2.7 billion the company had to pay into the “environmental mitigation trust” to offset pollution from 480,000 2.0-liter diesels, this is small potatoes.
Still, that $2.7 billion was only a small portion of VW’s $14.7 billion settlement for the 2.0-liters, with the biggest chunk being over $10 billion allocated for buyback and consumer restitution. And that’s the part of the 3.0-liter settlement that, Automotive News says, is still up in the air. The news site says the Federal Trade Commission and VW has been at it for weeks, but to no avail:
A sticking point over a comprehensive deal has been how much VW will agree to offer owners in compensation for getting vehicles repaired or selling them back.
We wrote earlier about a Reuters report that said 20,000 of the 80,000 3.0-liters affected by the recall would be bought back and later fixed, but that the remaining 60,000 would be recipients of a relatively simple software fix.
By not having to buy back all of the vehicles, Reuters said VW is expected to save billions. Still, even if VW is just going to repair many of these cars, the company still owes owners money for selling them lies. How much exactly is something we may find out as the Dieselgate saga progresses.