Report: VW Refuses to Offer Big Diesel Compensation Program in Europe

Volkswagen has agreed to a massively expensive compensation plan for diesel car owners in the U.S., but it won’t roll out a similar deal for Europe.

The automaker can’t easily afford a similar payout for customers across the pond, VW CEO Matthias Mueller told a German newspaper recently. “You don’t have to be a mathematician to realize that compensation at arbitrarily high levels would overwhelm Volkswagen,” he said, reports Reuters.

Not only that, but different legal regulations make it hard to compare the situation in Europe with the compensation deal in the U.S. “In the U.S. the [emission] limits are stricter, which makes the fix more complicated. And taking part in the buyback is voluntary [for customers], which is not the case in Germany, for example,” Mueller said.

Despite the differing regulations, Europe’s Industry Commissioner Elzbieta Bienkowska has asked VW to pay up to European owners, saying it wouldn’t be fair to treat them any differently from U.S. customers.

VW has set aside more than $10 billion to settle its emissions scandal with U.S. consumers. Owners can choose to have their vehicles repaired or sell them back to VW. Most owners will receive anywhere between $5,100 and $10,000 as compensation for their troubles. VW has also agreed to pay $2.7 billion to an environmental trust to offset excess diesel emissions, and it will invest $2 billion to bolster the nation’s EV charging infrastructure and promote other clean vehicle programs.

Source: Reuters

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