Dieselgate

Dieselgate is a series of accusations, criminal charges, and civil lawsuits against the German company Volkswagen for supposedly cheating on emissions tests by programming its diesel cars to perform differently while tested. Supposedly the software disabled emission controls (called the “defeat device”) during normal driving in order to obtain better fuel mileage and performance, while activating the emissions controls only while being tested. This 7-year ongoing saga has pushed (and even required in some of the settlements) the once-richest company in the world to shift to electric vehicles.

The scandal began with reports in September 2015, and through March 2021 had cause the manufacturer an estimated €32.2 billion (roughly $37 billion) in fines, recalls, compensation and legal expenses.

Then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris announced how the liberal state milked the large automaker:

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As part of that $14.7 billion agreement, Volkswagen agreed to spend an estimated $10 billion to compensate consumers and buy back or modify hundreds of thousands of its polluting cars, pay $2.7 billion into a trust fund for environmental mitigation projects, and spend $2 billion over 10 years on zero-emission technology. Of the $4.7 billion in mitigation funding and investments, $1.18 billion will come to California ($800 million in zero-emissions technology investments and $380 million for environmental mitigation projects in the state).

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Volkswagen's car market share in the United States is approximately 5%.