After Volkswagen announced last week that it would cut dividends by 97 percent due to the financial fallout of the diesel emissions scandal, there’s a ray of light for those who have shares in the company’s owner.
Porsche Automobil Holding SE, the investment vehicle of Volkswagen AG’s ultra-wealthy owner family, said it will front the cash to allow shareholders a bigger return, according to Bloomberg. Read More >
The heavy financial cost of Volkswagen’s diesel emissions scandal is becoming clear.
After reaching a settlement yesterday with U.S. consumers and regulators, the automaker is more than doubling the size of its “make the problem go away” cash pile, Bloomberg is reporting.
Volkswagen set aside 16.2 billion euros ($18.6 billion) today to deal with the scandal’s fallout, up from the 6.7 billion euro ($7.6 billion) figure previously stated. Read More >
Update: I made a decimal flub. The math is corrected. Thanks to commenter ChemEng for pointing it out. We’ll post a new piece on Monday.
There’s no denying it: Volkswagen cheated. It confessed to the crime of emitting up to 40 times over the legal limit allowed for NOx. We learned yesterday (and the day before, to some degree), that Volkswagen will fix the vehicles that can be fixed, if owners so choose.
But what happens to all those diesel cars, which are perfectly good aside from emitting more NOx than they should, if owners decide to cut and run? And what happens to all those vehicles that can’t be fixed? Volkswagen has vowed to buy them back from customers — to which I ask, what then?
There are few options Volkswagen can employ to unload the massive windfall of cars coming its way, and none of them are particularly environmentally friendly.
Despite sharing the comfort of a corporate umbrella, it seems that two standoffish German luxury makes are now pushing the beds together.
According to the German publication Autobild (via Autoguide), Audi is tapping Porsche’s expertise to develop a new performance vehicle, designed to occupy the vast gap between the TT and R8 supercar. Read More >
Volkswagen gets a lot of unflattering press these days, but a faction of the automaker’s fan base seems determined to malign its name even more.
A disturbing subculture exists on the fringes of the Volkswagen fanboy community, and it manifests itself in decals and not-so-subtle window stickers that feature Nazi imagery.
Most normal, reasonable people would want to avoid associating themselves with a man who can claim responsibility for causing the deaths of about 70 million people, but there’s weirdos out there, and some of them are really keen on their Volkswagens. Frankly, it’s as depressing as the atmosphere inside the Fuhrerbunker, circa early May, 1945. Read More >
Volkswagen CEO Matthias Müller is expected to cave to shareholder and labor pressure today and ask that his management board agree to trim their bonuses by 30 percent, insider sources have told Reuters.
Will it satisfy dealers and vehicle owners stuck with depreciated rolling stock? Not. Bloody. Likely.
The request, if it comes to pass, comes after workers unions and the state of Lower Saxony (Volkswagen’s home and its second-largest shareholder) protested the idea of senior management receiving full compensation while the diesel emissions scandal continues to rage.
Mercedes-Benz’s parent company, Daimler, has been hit with a second lawsuit from a U.S. law firm that represents owners of diesel vehicles, despite recent evidence that could render the suit invalid.
The suit from now-familiar firm Hagens Berman accuses the German automaker of employing an emissions “defeat device,” a la Volkswagen, in its diesel vehicles, according to Reuters (via Automotive News).
The suit alleges the device must be the cause of laboratory emissions test results that show higher nitrogen oxide emissions than during real-world tests.
Volkswagen brand chief Herbert Diess has a target on his back, now that the union representing the automaker’s workers has made its distrust of the company public.
Labor union IG Metall slammed the company’s management in a letter published on its website, stating the company was using the diesel emissions scandal as a way of cutting staff, according to Bloomberg.
The union said it wants assurances from Volkswagen brass that layoffs aren’t coming down the pipe, and implied that Diess’ job is in danger if he doesn’t agree to protect employee positions.
Sometimes, stereotypes exist for a reason.
Things got heated yesterday at a Daimler AG shareholders meeting in Germany, where a fight broke out over lengthy, plump sausages, Bloomberg has reported.
This, despite the fact the lucky shareholders were told they’d be receiving the biggest dividend in the company’s history — 3.25 euros ($3.70) per share. You’d think the windfall would have tempered flare-ups, but you’d be wrong.
Tesla founder Elon Musk wants to build a new European factory to satisfy growing demand on the continent, and France knows just the place he should do it.
French Energy Minister Segolene Royal reportedly pitched the idea of using the site of a soon-to-be-mothballed reactor to Musk, according to Reuters (via Automotive News Europe).
“He didn’t say no,” said Royal, who plans to follow-up the pitch by meeting with Tesla management.
It’s had a few good days recently, but there’s no doubt the manual transmission is a patient that’s rapidly slipping away.
BMW just did its part to hasten the demise by getting rid of the stick shift option in next year’s M5 and M6, according to comments made to Car and Driver by BMW M boss Frank van Meel.
Soon, only two pedals will sprout from the firewall of the famed performance midsizers. But don’t blame the automaker. They’re just responding to consumer demand, or lack thereof.
Volkswagen dealers in the U.S. have formed a go-to team tasked with drawing compensation out of the automaker while avoiding a looming barrage of dealer lawsuits.
The five-member committee was formed at a dealers-only meeting held yesterday at the National Automobile Dealers Association convention in Las Vegas, one day before U.S. dealers were expected to meet with top Volkswagen brass, Automotive News has reported.
The move is designed to head off a potential slew of lawsuits from U.S. dealers seeking reparations for sunk costs and lost revenue stemming from the automaker’s expansion push and subsequent diesel emissions scandal.
It looks like Volkswagen has inadvertently sent a fix for its illegally polluting TDI vehicles to a customer, along with a letter spelling out the costs of said fix.
The fix, which is included on an OBD II adapter, wasn’t supposed to be sent with the letter, explained the TDI owner who wished to remain anonymous. Other TDI owners can expect to receive their fix in the next 90 days, says the letter.
After missing today’s deadline for a U.S. emissions fix, Volkswagen has been issued a new one, and will now face a summer trial if the date passes without a plan to cure its diesel ills.
The extension of the deadline until April 21 was issued by U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, who had earlier set the March 24 deadline for the embattled automaker, Reuters is reporting.
The consensus of today’s meeting in California between Volkswagen, the Environmental Protection Agency and the California Air Resources Board was that progress had been made in reaching an agreement on how to deal with 580,000 Volkswagen diesels equipped with pollution-causing defeat devices.
Toyotas will soon be screeching to a halt everywhere and that should make its rivals jealous.
That, BMW unleashes the robots on the workers, eccentric automaker picks a place with funny-sounding names, General Motors isn’t falling out of love with China, and Mercedes-Maybach to get a rival … after the break!
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