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ANDREW PARKER: Volkswagen has thrashed out a new settlement with US owners of the biggest and most expensive diesel cars caught up in the company's emissions scandal.
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Court documents released late on Tuesday in California revealed VW has agreed to pay more than $1 billion to 75,000 US owners of diesel vehicles equipped with illegal test-cheating software that were powered by three-liter engines. This is the same software that engulfed VW in scandal in September 2015, when the German company said up to 11 million diesel cars worldwide contain technology that wrongly served to understate their emissions of harmful nitrogen oxide in official tests. The disclosure prompted VW's share price to plunge and led to authorities across the world launching investigations, notably led by agencies in the United States.
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Yes and no. Yes, in the sense that this should resolve all outstanding claims by US car owners affected by the scandal. No, in the sense that there is a slew of investor litigation pending against VW. Most of the US diesel vehicles caught up in the affair-- about half a million-- were powered by two-liter engines, and Volkswagen last year offered to buy back these cars from their owners. The only remaining bit are the car owner compensation jigsaw in the US related to the 75,000 three-liter diesel vehicles. This latest proposed settlement means the total cost of the scandal for Volkswagen in North America is set to reach $24 billion.
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There is. Bosch, whose software Volkswagen used in its admissions cheating has agreed to pay $327 million US to resolve claims against it from US car owners and dealers. Bosch said that by entering into the settlement, it did not acknowledge the facts alleged by the plaintiffs. But it added that it had agreed to the deal so that it could focus on big changes at the private German company.
Bosch has previously acknowledged that it supplied VW with a device allowing cars to recognise when they were being tested and to enter low emissions mode. But it said in 2015 that, "How these components are calibrated and integrated into complete vehicle systems is fundamentally the responsibility of each automaker."
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