If we want to say what has happened to the public in recent years, it must be the emission gate incident.
Recently, foreign media reported that Volkswagen agreed to pay 620 million euro (about RMB 4.76 billion yuan) settlement fee to 200000 car owners among 260000 consumers for the “exhaust door” incident. According to the age and model of the car, Volkswagen owners who accept the settlement will receive settlement fees ranging from 1350 euro (10300 yuan) to 6250 euro (48000 yuan), which will be paid from May 5. After receiving the relevant agreement of the Volkswagen Group, the Volkswagen owners have two weeks to consider. If they finally decide not to accept the settlement, they can file a lawsuit in their own name to the Volkswagen group before October this year.
It is understood that Volkswagen is currently experiencing the largest class action in Germany, initiated by more than 400000 German Volkswagen car owners in September 2019, and the German consumer organization vzbv filed a complaint to the court on behalf of the owners. VW and vzbv reached a preliminary settlement at the end of February, when VW agreed to pay 830 million euros (about 6.406 billion yuan) to the owners of the lawsuit. In addition to the largest class action case, there are 21000 cases still under review.
The Volkswagen emission door incident began in September 2015, when it was exposed that diesel vehicle exhaust detection was false, affecting 11 million diesel vehicles worldwide, of which more than 8 million were in the European market and 2.4 million were in Germany. It has been more than four years since the incident, and the aftermath has not subsided, and there are still many lawsuits around the world.
For example, in the UK, nearly 100000 car owners filed class action against Volkswagen Group, demanding that Volkswagen take responsibility for “cheating on emissions” and “misleading consumers”; in January this year, Canadian prosecutors approved a fine of C $196.5 million (about RMB 1 billion yuan) on Volkswagen; Poland, Australia and other countries also issued huge fines to Volkswagen; even Audi and Porsche also suffered In May 2019, Porsche was fined 535 million euros (about 4.1 billion yuan) by prosecutors in Stuttgart.
According to official data, Volkswagen has been fined more than 30 billion euros (230.3 billion yuan) for the emissions gate incident.