Volkswagen has already bought back 350,000 diesel vehicles in the US.

Up until the middle of last February, in the United States alone, the Group Volkswagen has bought back around 350,000 diesel vehicles as a result of the emissions scandal. For months, it has been storing them in up to 37 lots, where some 300,000 of these units are currently waiting to find out what will happen to them. A closed suburban football stadium in Detroit, an old paper mill in Minnesota, and a desert cemetery near Victorville,… and so on, up to 37 large expanses of land where the vehicles are being accumulated.

Any large, enclosed and supervised space will do. These lots are only some of the many that the Group has set up “to ensure the responsible storage of the vehicles being bought back under the terms of the diesel settlement brokered by Volkswagen,” says company spokeswoman Jeannine Ginivan.

“These units,” Ginivan commented, “are stored on a temporary basis and are routinely maintained to ensure their operability and quality in the long term, so that they can be returned to dealers or exported once US regulators approve the appropriate emissions modifications.”

The Group Volkswagen committed to investing 25 billion dollars in the United States to satisfy claims from owners of its vehicles, environmental regulators, states and dealers affected by the fraudulent software in its cars. The German manufacturer committed to buying back up to 500,000 affected vehicles due to excess emissions, buybacks that will continue until 2019. So far, and according to the judicial authorities overseeing the entire buyback process, Volkswagen had repurchased up to 31 December 335,000 diesel vehicles, of which it had already resold 13,000 and destroyed around 28,000. On that date, the lots set up stored a total of 294,000 units.

Volkswagen reached an agreement with the judicial authorities to buy back or repair 85 percent of the affected vehicles before June 2019. Otherwise, the German manufacturer will have to face higher payments for emissions. Last February, Volkswagen already reported having repaired almost 83 percent of the affected vehicles. To do so, Volkswagen sends a letter to affected customers offering to repair the fault or compensate the buyer. To date, the German consortium has sent 437,273 letters, offering a total of 8 billion dollars in compensation and buybacks.

The dieselgate scandal broke in 2015. In September of that same year, Volkswagen admitted to its trick for evading the emissions control system in the US, a deception that affected cars sold since 2009. In April 2017, Volkswagen was sentenced to three years of probation after pleading guilty to three felony counts and agreeing to pay 4.3 billion dollars in federal fines.

Although the performance of the Volkswagen group is proving very positive despite the serious economic problem posed by the dieselgate, the problem has not been fully resolved. Following the solution applied in the United States, complaints are now beginning to emerge on this side of the Atlantic.

Thus, owners of a model from the brand affected by the rigged software in the United Kingdom have just launched their legal battle against the Wolfsburg marque. Lawyers representing more than 50,000 owners of an affected VW have filed a lawsuit against the carmaker in the High Court of London seeking compensation, and the same could soon happen in other European countries.