Car_and_Driver_USA_July_2017

THE
FIX
IS
IN
B Y J E F F
S A B A T I N I
I L L U S T R A T I O N
B Y A N D Y
P O T T S
T H R E E Y E A R S
A F T E R I T S
E M I S S I O N S
S L E I G H T O F
H A N D W A S
E X P O S E D ,
V O L K S W A G E N
H A S A
S O F T W A R E
U P D A T E T O P U T
I T S D I E S E L S
B A C K O N T H E
R O A D . W E T E S T
T H E R E S U L T T O
F I N D O U T I F
R E P A I R S T O
I T S C A R S W I L L
B E A S T E P
T O W A R D
R E P A I R I N G
T H E B R A N D ’ S
R E P U T A T I O N .
> Throwing money at problems is how
corporations make them go away. Pay for
more lawyers, pay for more public relations,
and certainly pay for more marketing
in the hopes that the world will believe
your new promises. For Volkswagen, those
invoices have recently been supersized,
befitting the scope of the diesel cheating
scandal that has engulfed the company and
prompted the recall of approximately
590,000 vehicles in the United States.
Yet, its attorney bills and the costs of
hiring extra PR staff must seem like little
more than a few padded expense reports to
the accountants in Wolfsburg. Since a
group of West Virginia University scientists
announced in May 2014 that they had
found unexpectedly high emissions from
VW’s TDI vehicles—which led to the uncovering of the company’s conspiracy to cheat
government regulators and defraud consumers—Volkswagen has committed to spend
at least $25 billion in the U.S. in legal settlements alone.
As the world’s largest car company bleeds, TDI money now begets its own economy
[see “TDI Profiteering”]. VW even has had to create a subsidiary called Electrify America
to ensure the spending of $2 billion on brand-neutral electric-vehicle infrastructure.
Not coincidentally, Volkswagen says that it has quit the “clean diesel” business for good,
at least in the U.S., to focus its green efforts on EVs. Except that as of April, the company
owns more than 237,000 used diesels acquired through its court-mandated buyback program.
And inventories are growing, with 15,000 more vehicles being turned in each week,
according to reports. Without the joint blessing of the California Air Resources Board
(CARB) and the United States Environmental Protection Agency, these cars are to
remain parked in places like the lots that surround the shuttered Pontiac Silverdome,
the former Detroit Lions football stadium 30 miles north of Detroit.
That’s where Volkswagen found our test vehicle, a 2015 Passat sold new in Texas and
now showing 25,000 miles on its odometer. One of the so-called Gen 3 diesels that clean
050 . FEATURE . CAR AND DRIVER . JUL/2017