As you might have heard, Volkswagen has recently landed themselves in a bit of trouble over in the US. It would seem that they had engaged in deceptive practices with regards to their diesel emissions tests in which through the use of software, the results they offered based on benchmarks differed greatly from actual road use.
Unfortunately for the company it looks like they will be spending a fair bit of money trying to fix the problem. According to a report from the New York Times, the company has announced that they will be setting aside as much as $7.3 billion, which is about half a year’s profits, in order to ensure that their cars will indeed legitimately comply with pollution standards.
They also expect that this fund will be used towards covering other expenses like fines and possibly civil lawsuits filed by some of their customers. In a video statement released by Volkswagen, its CEO Martin Winterkorn said, “Everything will be laid on the table, as quickly, thoroughly and transparently as possible, and, to be clear, manipulation and Volkswagen — this must never happen again.’’
It had been previously thought that only 500,000 cars were affected, but it turns out those numbers were just for the US market and that the total number of cars affected by this deception is said to be around 11 million. It looks like the company has their work cut out for them.
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