Yahoo Autos VW Promises to Fix All of Its Cheating European Diesels by Fall 2017
Fixing Volkswagen's cheating diesel cars in Europe is simple, thanks to the EU's more lenient emissions standards, but challenging due to the sheer volume of cars VW needs to fix. Where the company only sold around 500,000 cheating cars in the U.S., it sold around 8.5 million in Europe. Furthermore, VW's fix has hit some setbacks along the way.
Volkswagen continues undeterred, though. Reuters reported Thursday that VW pledged to the EU that all of its cheating diesel cars will be fixed by fall of next year. This pledge follows a recent report that says VW's only fixed 10% of affected European-market cars at this point.
VW says it will issue a notice by the end of this informing affected customers that a technical fix is required. The fix varies based on the specification of the engine–1.2- and 2.0-liter engines require only a software update, whereas VW's 1.6-liter diesel requires some new hardware.
VW has also faced criticism over simply offering European customers fixes, where U.S. customers get the options of buybacks. The company justifies this disparity by saying that the fix in Europe is simpler than in the U.S. and that EU-market cars won't lose as much resale value. It insists that it doesn't need to compensate European consumers in the same way it will compensate those in the U.S.
Even if the fix is simple, this is still a logistical nightmare for VW. Trying to get roughly 7.65 million cars to VW dealers within the next year is one heck of a task.
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