Dieselgate overwhelms Volkswagen, but what are the concrete consequences for European and Italian consumers? How should those who have bought a car with the EA 2.0 189 Tdi engine, or the one on which the illegal software that caused the scandal is installed?
First of all, the Italian consumer is required to know that getting his car up to date is an absolutely free operation: if you own a car included in the black list, the interventions to bring it into compliance with the regulations will be entirely at the expense of Volkswagen.
It is not yet known in what ways, but it will necessarily have to be so. And it is also better to wait for the Volkswagen move for the recall, because at the moment it will be very difficult to resell those cars, unless you accept a strong "cut" with respect to valuations. That said, history shows that the massive 2009 recalls by Toyota and General Motors had no long-term impact on the residual value of the models.
So how to behave if you decide (wisely) not to sell, pending the review? The consumer should know that in the meantime he doesn't risk any fines: cars with a "rigged" control unit are in fact perfectly legal and homologated. No one can therefore fine those who drive them.
To know if your control unit is rigged, just know that theand cars pre-Euro 5 (sold until 2009) and Euro 6 homologated ones – i.e. all those marketed from 1 September 2015 onwards, are in order: the latest generation Golf, Passat and Touran do not have this problem. In any case, Volkswagen has already announced that customers owning a car with an EA 189 engine will be contacted individually. There is therefore no risk of remaining unaware.
However, it should be known that the problem does not only apply to Volkswagen cars, which is the parent company of several other rather popular brands, including here Audi, Seat and Skoda. In any case, the consequences on the European market could paradoxically be positive: in fact, there are those who predict that Volkswagen, in order not to lose market share following the scandal, will implement very aggressive pricing policies, to which the other brands will then have to adapt as well.
