“I personally feel insulted by their peace offering”, said Nevada resident Dave Thompson, who owns a 2010 diesel Jetta sportswagon.
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“That trust is gone”, he said.
Owners of the following vehicles are eligible for the package. This process will take four weeks for the customer to receive the “goodwill package” and needs to be brought to the dealer to avail their gift card and Visa debit cards that is worth $500 each, according to USA Today. The car-of-the-people maker is doing this as a goodwill gesture to owners of small-diesel-powered vehicles involved in the emissions cheat scandal.
Volkswagen U.S. chief executive said that the company was working tirelessly on developing an approved remedy for affected vehicles.
“It in no way diminishes the seriousness of the deceptive practices and environmental harms that are the subject of states’ investigations or the determination of the attorneys general of 48 jurisdictions to hold Volkswagen to account for its conduct”, they said.
The latest notice covered the diesel versions of the 2014 VW Touareg, the 2015 Porsche Cayenne, and the 2016 Audi A6 Quattro, A7 Quattro, A8, A8L and Q5, and alleges nitrogen oxide emissions up to nine times EPA’s standard. It also helps bridge the gap while their cars are being repaired and ridded of software that was created to ace emissions tests while secretly belching out far more pollutants than is legally allowed in real-world driving conditions. Approximately 325,000 models using the first-generation 2.0-liter TDI will need both hardware and software adjustments, which could be complicated enough to leave drivers without their cars for a few time.
Early in October, Kelley Blue Book said the average resale value of Volkswagens with two-liter diesel engines fell 13 percent since mid-September, when VW admitted it cheated on the tests.
Volkswagen, based in Wolfsburg, Germany, on Monday started the hard task of convincing unions to accept cutbacks it says are necessary to survive the crisis. “There are no stipulations”, she said.
Affected owners must register for the package by April 30.
The company says about 11 million cars worldwide have the deceptive software, but this offer is only for US customers.
Sueddeutsche Zeitung said the initial results of the amnesty programme were encouraging, citing sources at Volkswagen.
But buying back those vehicles would push that sum well over $12 billion – and of course, that wouldn’t begin to cover the more than 10.5 billion Volkswagen models in other countries, or the recently red-flagged 3.0-liters.
Protesters from Greenpeace unveiled a banner reading “Das Problem” – a play on the carmaker’s marketing slogan “Das Auto” – and cleverly incorporated the VW logo at the factory gate to read “CO2”. There’s no word yet on whether a similar offer will be extended to Canadian Volkswagen owners.
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The US government last week said Volkswagen’s larger, six-cylinder diesels – used in VW and Audi SUVs – also cheated on emissions tests.
