According to orders stemming from a targeted, deceptive effort, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said Monday that Volkswagen has successfully reimbursed customers more than $9.5 billion “advertising campaign for clean diesel.
Volkswagen USA advertised and marketed more than 550,000 “clean diesel cars” to consumers between 2008 and 2015, becoming “the largest seller of light-duty diesel vehicles in the United States,” according to the FTC’s initial complaint. The cars sold for an average of $28,000, and the elaborate false advertising scheme claimed that the vehicles were environmentally friendly “low-emission, eco-friendly, compliant with emissions regulations, and having a high potential for resale. In non-government tests, the “Clean Diesel Volkswagen Passat and the “Clean Diesel Volkswagen Jetta exceeded federal nitrogen oxide limits by up to 4,000%. The FTC brought federal action against the company in March of 2016 for “unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commercial transactions.” In reality, the cars were fitted with emission “defeat devices, illegal software designed with the sole purpose of masking high nitrogen oxide emissions during government tests.
Three months later, Volkswagen and the FTC agreed a comprehensive set of settlements, as part of which Volkswagen was compelled to give owners of any impacted cars a choice between a repurchase option and an authorized adjustment to the vehicle’s emission system. More than 86 percent of those who completed the claims process chose to return their car through a buyback or early lease termination, according to a press release from the FTC. In addition, the US Department of Justice and the Environmental Protection Agency “obtained court orders providing billions more for environmental relief.
According to the FTC’s final report, which was submitted to the US District Court for the Northern District of California, “The orders required payments to consumers that “included compensation for their vehicles’ full retail value and all other losses [Volkswagen’s] deception caused, including:”time spent shopping for new vehicles, sales taxes and registration fees, the value of the lost opportunity to drive an environmentally friendly vehicle, and the aforementioned costs.” The company repaid consumers more than $9.5 billion in total.
The report praises Volkswagen’s assistance in “Despite the huge amount of claims, the settlement administration procedure was efficiently managed. The report adds that this is “one of the most successful consumer redress initiatives in history,” noting that claims were processed swiftly and effectively and that consumers were helped “in good faith.”
In This Article...
What was the Volkswagen-related scandal?
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) determined in September 2015 that Volkswagen had violated the Clean Air Act by using “defeat devices in the form of computer software, which was designed to cheat on federal emissions testing” in over 590,000 diesel motor cars.
Essentially, software of this type is designed to detect when the vehicle is undergoing an emissions test and turns on full emissions controls during the testing period. In the course of normal driving, however, the effectiveness of such devices is reduced. A defeat device is one that circumvents or renders inoperative a vehicle’s emission control system.
Volkswagen lied about emissions for what reason?
Volkswagen misrepresented the diesel vehicles for years in order to obtain EPA and CARB certifications that permitted the vehicles to be marketed in the U.S. Volkswagen knew that the diesel vehicles would dodge U.S. emissions rules. Volkswagen hesitated until authorities threatened to withdraw approval when EPA and CARB eventually started to catch on.
What did the scandal cost Volkswagen?
Damage to shareholders: It’s difficult to estimate precisely, but the business lost $42.5 billion, or 46%, of its worth in the first two months of the crisis. The S&P 500 is up 68% today while the DAX in Germany is around where it was in September 2015, yet the price of VW stock is still 35% below its pre-scandal level.
What impact did the Volkswagen scandal have on consumers?
We discovered a decline in consumer preference for diesel cars. This force was detrimental to BMW and Mercedes-Benz because they kept selling these vehicles after the incident. According to our model, non-VW German automakers lost US$0.7 billion in sales as a result of this effect.
What ethical transgressions did Volkswagen commit?
Volkswagen’s moral predicament was brought on by allegations that the automaker had cheated on air quality tests that were administered by the United States. The business sought to market diesel vehicles throughout the country. Interestingly, Volkswagen conducted a marketing effort where they claimed their cars had low emission levels since they were aware of the emission standards utilized in America (Hotten par.3). Before allowing the vehicles onto the market, the American authorities had to test them first. Between 2008 and 2015, the firm marketed cars on the American market that did not adhere to the requirements for emissions set by the American government. Volkswagen had installed specialized software that manipulated the emissions in the vehicles used for the emission test (Ewing 40).
The software was essential in persuading the regulators that the automobiles weren’t spewing out dangerous gases at quantities that were too high to handle. However, when cars were released into the market, certain environmental researchers began to have some reservations about the pollutants they were producing, which prompted the government to launch an investigation. Their research revealed that the vehicles were releasing up to forty times more than what was legal. As a result, Volkswagen eventually had to respond to an American government request for information about the abnormalities and admit fitting test vehicles with unique equipment that was not included in production vehicles. The Jetta, Golf, and Passat are a some of the car models that the EPA discovered to have broken the rules (Ewing 48). In response to the accusations, Volkswagen acknowledged fitting the test vehicles with a defeat device that wasn’t utilized on the vehicles that were on the road. Due to this, other nations that had a major market for Volkswagen vehicles began looking into them for possible regulatory infractions.
Which automaker misrepresented emissions?
The “diesel dupe” is the name given to it. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) discovered in September that many Volkswagen vehicles sold in America had software or a “defeat device” in their diesel engines that could recognize when they were being tested and adjust their operation to provide better results. Since then, the German auto industry titan has acknowledged faking emissions tests in the US.
VW has made a significant push to sell diesel automobiles in the US, supported by a massive marketing campaign highlighting the low emissions of its vehicles. The EPA’s results only apply to 482,000 vehicles in the US, including the Audi A3 and the Jetta, Beetle, Golf, and Passat models made by VW. VW has acknowledged that the so-called “defeat device” is installed in around 11 million cars globally, including 8 million in Europe.
The EPA has also charged the business with altering the software on select Porsche, Audi, and VW cars equipped with 3 liter diesel engines. The assertions, which include at least 10,000 vehicles, have been refuted by VW.
Around 800,000 cars in Europe, including petrol vehicles, may be affected by “irregularities” discovered by VW in tests to monitor carbon dioxide emissions levels, the automaker stated in November. However, it stated in December that after examinations, it had found that just approximately 36,000 of the automobiles it makes annually were impacted.
The Volkswagen emissions scandal: who was at fault?
In Bochum, Germany, a Volkswagen dealer’s flag may be seen. March 16,2016. Ina Fassbender for Reuters
In part, Hanno Jelden blamed Volkswagen’s corporate culture, which he described as one in which problems were to be solved quickly rather than thoroughly, for the prolonged silence regarding the software malfunction. Prosecutors claim Hanno Jelden was in charge of developing the illegal software at the center of the scheme.
In a previous hearing, Jelden said that he told supervisors about the software that caused the “Dieselgate” incident but was under pressure to remain silent.
Volkswagen admitted to cheating on U.S. diesel engine testing in 2015, igniting the company’s largest-ever scandal and costing the company more than 32 billion euros ($37.7 billion) so far in vehicle modifications, fines, and legal fees.
In the Braunschweig courtroom where the trial is taking place, Jelden stated, “I never made a secret out of this capability [of the software].” “I would never have allowed it to happen if I had realized the potential legal repercussions,” the person said.
The business has previously claimed that the software feature that ultimately rendered the car’s pollution filter inoperable was created for a different objective, namely to lessen objectionable engine noise, a defense Jelden echoed on Thursday.
Jelden claimed that the function was actually created to enhance the acoustics and labeled the approval procedure for the function as a “major blunder.”
The trial of four current and former Volkswagen managers and engineers began last Thursday, and according to Braunschweig prosecutors, all four are accused of failing to bring up the matter and instead attempting to maximize profits for the automaker and, consequently, their performance bonuses.
According to judicial authorities, the accused either assert that they were unaware of the manipulation or that they had told their superiors about it. View More
Has anyone been imprisoned as a result of the Volkswagen scandal?
When he was detained on suspicions connected to the automaker’s diesel-emissions issue, Schmidt served as VW’s point of contact with American regulators.
Oliver Schmidt, a former official of the Volkswagen Group whose arrest in 2017 at the Miami airport made headlines across the world, was freed from prison after serving almost half of his sentence for the charges he faced in the diesel-emissions crisis.
Schmidt was granted parole on Wednesday, according to a decision made by a court in the German city of Lneburg, according to his attorney Alexander Saettele. Schmidt, 52, was given a seven-year sentence by a U.S. court but was allowed to return home in November to complete his sentence there.
Volkswagen is still plagued by the diesel problem that American regulators revealed in September 2015. The biggest automaker in the world has spent at least 32 billion euros ($38.7 billion) manipulating engines to make it appear that they might pass U.S. emissions tests. Disgruntled investor and customer lawsuits are expected to last for years.
When Schmidt was detained at the Miami airport in January 2017 while returning from a trip, he served as VW’s point of contact with American inspectors. Shock waves from his arrest reverberated throughout corporate Germany.
In Germany, prisoners are eligible for release after completing two thirds of their sentence. Although it is uncommon, first-time offenders who have shown good behavior and are thought unlikely to commit crimes again may be given parole after serving only half the sentence.
The Volkswagen scandal is unethical, why?
Everyone has a right to a healthy environment, according to the Environment Quality Act, which is obviously violated by the affair. In essence, actions or processes that could harm the environment are forbidden by law, making Volkswagen’s activity unethical.
What penalty was imposed on Volkswagen?
In 2014, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) requested a research on emissions differences between European and US vehicle models from the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), which compiled information on 15 vehicles from three sources. A team of five scientists from the West Virginia University Center for Alternative Fuels Engines and Emissions (CAFEE) were among those hired for this project; they used a Japanese on-board emission testing system to find extra emissions during live road tests on two out of three diesel vehicles. [32] [33]
Two other sources of data were also purchased by ICCT. Portable Emissions Measurement Systems (PEMS), created by numerous people in the mid-late 1990s and released in May 2014[34][35][36], were used to generate the new road testing data as well as the purchased data.
Regulators in several nations started looking into Volkswagen,[37] and in the days following the disclosure, the stock price of the company dropped by a third in value. Martin Winterkorn, the CEO of the Volkswagen Group, resigned, while Heinz-Jakob Neusser, Ulrich Hackenberg, and Wolfgang Hatz, the heads of Audi research and development, were suspended. In April 2016, Volkswagen announced intentions to repair the impacted vehicles as part of a recall effort and allocate 16.2 billion euros (or US$18.32 billion at April 2016 exchange rates)[38] to fixing the emissions problems. Volkswagen entered a plea of guilty in January 2017 and signed an agreed Statement of Facts that based on the findings of an investigation the company had commissioned from US attorneys Jones Day. In April 2017, a US federal judge ordered Volkswagen to pay a $2.8 billion criminal fine for “rigging diesel-powered vehicles to cheat on government emissions tests.” The statement detailed how engineers had created the defeat devices because diesel models could not pass US emissions tests without them. The “unprecedented” plea agreement formalized the punishment Volkswagen had already accepted.[40] On May 3, 2018, Winterkorn was accused of fraud and conspiracy in the United States.[15] As of June 1, 2020[update], the scandal had cost VW $33.3 billion in fines, penalties, financial settlements, and buyback costs.[41] Various judicial and civil proceedings are currently ongoing in the U.S. and the European Union, where the majority of the affected vehicles are located.
The controversy increased public knowledge of the greater pollution levels released by all diesel-powered vehicles from a wide range of auto manufacturers, which, when driven in actual traffic, exceeded legal emission limits. Investigations into other diesel emissions issues have begun as a result of a study by ICCT and ADAC that revealed the highest deviations came from Volvo, Renault, Jeep, Hyundai, Citron, and Fiat[42][43][44]. It was raised that software-controlled equipment is often susceptible to fraud and that one solution would be to make the program available for public inspection.[45][46][47]