The ad also mentions the company’s “goodwill package”, which gives owners of affected 2.0L TDI vehicles a $500 Volkswagen Prepaid Visa card, a $500 Dealership card and 24-hour Roadside Assistance for three years.
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Indian regulators acted promptly after VW publicly admitted in September it rigged 482,000 diesel vehicles sold in the US with so-called defeat devices that concealed nitrogen-oxide emissions 40 times the allowable limit.
Volkswagen’s global auto sales plunged 5.3% in October, after it admitted rigging pollution tests on millions of its vehicles. “There will be a major development thrust for the proven MQB standardised technical toolkit, where Volkswagen Passenger Cars holds responsibility for development within the Group network. We not only face the diesel and Carbon dioxide issues but also tense situations on world markets”, said Juergen Stackmann, chief of the Volkswagen brand.
VW group’s sales were however lifted by its biggest market China, where deliveries rose 1.6 percent to 312,200 cars for the month. That part of the scandal affects at least 11m vehicles. VW has said that a few of the €2bn would go towards compensating governments that had lost out on tax receipts.
Osterloh said he did not know whether diesel emission manipulations committed by the company involved 10, 50 or even 100 people. It has replaced its CEO and offered $500 cash payouts to owners hit by the scandal in the U.S. Some, such as the TDIClub.com, said they would take the take the VW offer and then wait, possibly not having their vehicles repaired at all for fear the fix would ruin either performance or fuel economy. “To my mind the response has been too corporate so far”, he said.
Meanwhile, VW’s headquarters in Germany has been mum in recent weeks about how and when it will remedy the noncompliant diesel vehicles, a communications void that has pummeled resale values and annoyed owners.
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Detroit-based Wayne State University law professor Peter Henning called Volkswagen’s expedited timeline for whistle-blowers “a creative step”, and added: “They need to break the logjam in the company”.
