A popular German car manufacturer has disclosed it will pay up to $87 million (AUD127 million) as part of a settlement in an Australian-class action case over the 2015 diesel emissions scandal that affected around 11 million vehicles globally.
The amount of payment will depend on the number of car owners who will join in the class-action case, but Volkswagen said it is allocating between AU$87 million and AU$127 million as remuneration to settle the massive emissions mess, company principal legal counsel Julian Schimmel said.
In a statement, Volkswagen said that it did not admit any liability in the settlement although it has agreed to pay the plaintiffs' legal costs, which have yet to be confirmed.
The carmaker has settled $33.5 billion in total fines including civil arrangements with claimants around the world after findings that the world's biggest car manufacturer, after Toyota, installed an operating system on diesel-powered vehicles to pass emission testing. Each car owner is scheduled to be paid around AU$1,400 in the settlement.
In 2015, US engineers and authorities published results of the experiments that showed some of Volkswagen's diesel-powered engines had software built in to cheat emissions tests. The German auto company then admitted that an estimated 11 million car engines equipped with the software were affected, that set the stage for lawsuits and prompted major recalls around the world.
The scandal did not only put a dent on the reputation of Volkswagen but also affected its affiliate luxury brand Audi and budget car Skoda. Other auto giants like Volvo, Jeep, Fiat, and Hyundai have also been accused of being involved in the emissions scandal.
In May this year, Volkswagen announced that it had allotted 1 billion euros for legal impediments in conjunction with the emissions scandal. Volkswagen vehicle owner Alister Dalton, one of the plaintiffs in the ongoing case, said an agreement had been finalized. "I think every one must be happy with how this has all progressed and what the result is," he said.
Another plaintiff, Robyn Richardson, who owns an Audi, said she had a sigh of relief. "It has been a long winding road. There've been peaks and troughs in the demands of the legal team," she pointed out. The carmaker agreed, and said these settlements were a "major step towards overcoming the issue".
Volkswagen bared that another round of settlement was about to be finalized with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, a fair competition and trade policy monitoring agency. Details of the settlement have yet to be released.
