Posted on 03/29/2018 10:18:48 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
It resembles a car park at an enormous open-air venue - but it is actually a knock-on effect of the Volkswagen emissions scandal.
Dramatic aerial pictures show row after row of diesel VWs and Audis sitting in the baking California sun, awaiting either repair or destruction in their desert graveyard.
This is just one of 37 storage areas the firm has around the US, housing almost 300,000 vehicles.
In addition to the pictured site in Victorville, other facilities include a disused suburban football stadium in Detroit and a former Minnesota paper mill.
The German company needs plenty of space because it has spent more than $7.4bn (£5.3bn) buying back about 350,000 US vehicles, following the scandal over software that switched engines to a cleaner mode when they were being tested for emissions.
They are not all being stored, though. In December, VW said it had destroyed about 28,000 vehicles and resold a further 13,000.
It has offered, in total, to buy back about half a million vehicles in a scheme that will continue until next year.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.sky.com ...
If you can find a 2015 I’m sure you’d like it.they really nailed the new ea233 engine
That’s not the point.
VW proved that they are smarter than the people who regulate them by an order of magnitude. And for this, they must be SEVERELY PUNISHED!!
Like I said upthread, VW punked the EPA, thus they must be punished.
Since traction control (ABS) senses wheel rotation, the software recognized only the front wheels were turning while on the emission check dyno. So the software told the car not to freak out because the back wheels aren’t turning...”car, you’re undergoing an E-check so I’m going to dummy down the output during this time soes you can pass.”
For the life of me, I cannot get my head around why using a gallon of fuel more efficiently is bad.
Exactly, what a waste of perfectly good cars, emissions be damned.
My county doesn’t require emissions testing. I would love to have one.
“Wow. You’d think it would be cheaper to fix the software and sell them at a deep discount, maybe at or just below cost. I don’t think there were any hardware problems — just software.”
Sure, you could do the mod and simply have the car run in its low-emission mode full time, but the emissions system will probably not make it to the next oil change. They have this device, called a Diesel Particulate Filter, built into the exhaust system. It costs thousands to replace and will probably go south very quickly if running in that mode for an extended period. As it is, they last just long enough to get through the EPA-mandated 100,000 miles - then they give owners a bit a surprise by lighting up a dash light and severely cutting back on performance (like not letting the vehicle go above 50 MPH, or something like that).
As pointed out by others, if VW could have come up with something that works (and was practical), they would have used it.
saw my 2013 gold diesel sitting there...lol
Love to have one at retail price. Could care less about pollution or mileage.
“My Jetta TDI is on one of those lots, and I’d buy it back if the price was right. Most fun and economical car I ever owned. Turned it in on the buyback just because I didn’t want to deal with all the fallout of owning a VW diesel after the news broke...”
We turned in our Beetle tdi, since at the time they could not say whether there would be a repair, or not.
It later turned out there is a repair, but results in the UK thus far, are a lot of problems with repaired cars.
Some claim all car companies use “defeat devices,” of some type in diesel and gas cars.
I liked the car, but didn’t want to hassle with VW. They buyback was an horrific process.
I will never buy anything from VW Group, although they make great vehicles. Emotion, not reason.
Good points.
It would make sense if VW were able to get a government waiver on the basis that total pollution of all types from manufacturing, delivery, and scrapping would be greater than manufacturing, delivery, and operation for ten years with minor modifications.
Seems like federal government analysis of TOTAL pollution of all types would make sense and possibly point to a cheap fix followed by VW selling the vehicles at deep discount. The Fed Gov could allow a one-time waiver with the caveat that “Don’t ever do this again or you will be banned from the US market forever.”
That might be the practical approach. But I doubt that Fed Gov would ever do anything practical.
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