[volkman10]

Volkswagen has become a name synonyms with scandals and has one more to add to its credit.

Sells 17,000 Pre-Production Cars not road worthy - now issues a recall.

VW sold thousands of unlicensed, test vehicles, to customers in Europe and the US have been driving cars which lacked proper permits from authorities.

Another scandal has emerged at VW. The carmaker, the world’s largest in 2017, has for years sold vehicles which lacked approval from motor transport authorities to go on the road. From 2006 to 2018, Volkswagen sold around 6,700 test cars in Europe and the US, a VW spokesman said, confirming German media reports. Around 4,000 were sold in Germany and the remainder in the rest of Europe or North America.

The cars, made to test and showcase new models before the launch of large-scale series production, should officially have been scrapped, but instead VW sold them as new or second-hand cars. The problem: motor transport authorities never approved these test models, only the ones produced in series

Though the number is small ( 17000) the new is bad as it is yet to recover from the diesel gate scandal.

While some of the affected models may only need a software update or a new navigation system to become compliant, others may be so different from production cars they should be sent directly to the scrapyard.

Link

[aargee]

Strongly smell politics over scandal & this (Rumour: Volkswagen & Ford merger in the offing) thread is a clear proof something is cooking underneath

My thought is that, VW is not a company that knows one cannot sell a pre-production car in the market without proper approvals. But if the lobbying is strong, the bad times are around, it is simply easy to adjust a govt norm or even catch hold of a point that is beyond papers & say the rule has been violated.

[Malyaj]

It will be interesting to see how this unfolds. I assume when they say "recall" they mean they will take back the car for good and compensate the buyer. If in their own words they do not know how these cars differ from the production models then what exactly will they do with them other than scrapping them. Further, how will the compensation be fixed?