Volkswagen ‘s Dieselgate Bill Hits Another $30 bln

Volkswagen is taking further $3 billion charges to fix diesel engines.
Volkswagen was hit with another $3bn charge over Dieselgate scandal lifting the total damages to the carmaker from the emissions scandal to around $30 billion.
Last year, VW signed an agreement with U.S. authorities to spend up to $15.3 billion to get up to 475,000 2.0-litre polluting diesel cars off U.S. roads and to buy back or fix emissions-cheating diesel vehicles.
On Friday, the German group said it was planning to spend an additional $3.0 billion as hardware fixes that got tougher than expected. Arndt Ellinghorst, the head of Global Automotive Research at Evercore, said the fix would take significantly longer and the complications would cost $6,000 per car.
Nearly two years after Volkswagen’s Dieselgate scandal first broke, the company was hit with an anticipatory bill to the nasty tune of $3 billion to fix the nearly half a million 2.0-liter diesel cars here in the U.S.
Volkswagen AG is struggling to put the “Dieselgate” scandal behind it, wading through the mess of what to do with all the defective cars. Volkswagen is working hard to transform into a maker of mass-market electric cars.
On Thursday, Munich prosecutors said they had arrested a former board member of Volkswagen unit Porsche in connection with an emissions scandal.
Wolfgang Hatz, former Research and Development chief at Porsche and head of powertrain development at Audi and parent Volkswagen in previous roles, was the first top executive within the group to be detained.
Volkswagen shares fell 2.7 percent in early trading on Friday as analysts expressed concerns that the company was still booking charges for “Dieselgate scandal”.