Insight: the fate of American diesel Volkswagen buy-backs
Thousands of diesel-powered Volkswagens were bought back by the company after Dieselgate. Where will they all end up?
Have you ever wondered the fate of those thousands of diesel Volkswagens that the company bought back from their American owners in the wake of the diesel emissions cheating scandal?
There were a spectacular 350,000 of them that have been stored in 37 compounds across the country. Crushing them all would be a horrendous waste, not to mention a further abuse of the environment. So, what’s happening to them?
According to a Volkswagen spokesman at the Los Angeles motor show, they’re being retrofitted with corrective hardware and then, depending on their age and condition, sold to Volkswagen dealers for retail or sent to auction.
The cars are being sent in waves in order not to flood the market and lower their value. According to our man, the residual values have been better than you might expect, because, he says, there are quite a lot of people who still want a diesel TDI engine, despite the unfortunate history.
Not every car gets saved. A 100,000-mile 2013 Passat, for example, will ride again, but older cars with higher mileages will be scrapped, because rectification doesn’t make economic sense.
There's no indication of how long the process will take, nor what proportion of cars will be scrapped, but it's good to hear that a significant number of them aren't going to be trashed.
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