Volkswagen’s $14.7B Settlement For Fuel Emissions Scandal

The price tag Volkswagen will pay for misleading U.S. regulators over emissions in diesel vehicles: just under $15 billion, one of the largest consumer class-action settlements ever. Owners of the 475,000 affected vehicles will receive a cash payout of between $5,100 and $10,000, and Volkswagen will spend a maximum of $10.03 billion to buy back vehicles at pre-scandal values. The EPA will receive $2.7 billion to compensate for the environmental impact of the cars, and the company will spend $2 billion on new cleaner-vehicle projects. Last September the German automaker admitted to installing software designed to cheat air-quality tests in about 11 million diesel cars worldwide. “For Volkswagen, it’s an extremely expensive settlement, far more than many analysts predicted,” said David M. Uhlmann, former chief of the Justice Department’s Environmental Crimes section, and now a law professor at the University of Michigan.