This saga is not, as CEO Herbert Diess said, "nearly over and done."
The Volkswagen "dieselgate" has been raging for the last five or so years as the company tries to untangle the emission cheating mess and punish those responsible. It started with a study by the California Air Resources Board in 2014. In January 2017, Volkswagen Group pleaded guilty in a criminal case over emission standards violations.
The emissions cheating software used affected 11 million cars worldwide and has cost the VW Group around $38 billion in penalties, fines, financial settlements, and vehicle buyback costs of the Jetta, Passat and others. In April VW said it wanted money from bosses in charge and in June those bosses agreed to pay several million dollars. But now it's Porsche's turn.
Reuters is reporting that a suit filed with the Supreme Court of New York targets Porsche and former members of the management and supervisory boards of Volkswagen. Porsche, who didn't identify the plaintiffs, holds 31.4% of Volkswagen shares.
"The plaintiffs claim to be shareholders of Volkswagen AG and assert with their action alleged claims of Volkswagen AG on behalf of Volkswagen AG," Porsche SE said. There are billions more in shareholder claims, which could take years to be paid out.
This all started with the news that there were discrepancies between the standard lab tests and Volkswagen's diesel engines' emissions on the road. When the findings were reported to the California Air Resources Board, an investigation was started and the agency discovered a cheat device programmed to lower Volkswagen cars' emissions during testing and evaluation.
Since then it's been a never-ending streak of lawsuits and damages for VW Group. It also lead to the creation of its subsidiary Electrify America, which was born to help the adoption of EVs by erecting chargers all across the country. We're still at less than 10% adoption, but that could be changing soon with more government tax breaks and more options on the market.
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