VW to give owners $500 amid scandal

It also includes free roadside assistance for the diesel vehicles for three years.

VW also said on Monday it continues to discuss potential remedies with U.S. and California emissions regulators, including the possibility that a few of the affected cars could be bought back from customers. “In the meantime we are providing this goodwill package as a first step towards regaining our customers’ trust”. Audi is the luxury unit of Volkswagen AG.

Meanwhile, Fitch Ratings said today it was lowering Volkswagen’s credit rating by two notches, noting “that the emergence of a fraud of this magnitude, going either unnoticed or uncorrected by top management for so long is not consistent with a rating in the “A” category”.

VW has admitted that four-cylinder diesels from the 2009 to 2015 model years have the software that can cheat on pollution tests. It says about 11 million cars worldwide have the software. The cash card worth $500 could be spent any way the owner wanted. “There are no strings attached”, she said. That could wind up hurting performance or perhaps fuel mileage, the two main reasons why people buy the diesels.

Volkswagen admitted in September that it had outfitted a few of its diesel vehicles with defeat devices to lower the reported emissions of nitrogen oxides, as a means to pass emissions tests.

Average auction prices of VW diesel models have dropped almost $2,100, or 16 percent, since the announcement, while VW gasoline models have fallen 4 percent, Kelley Blue Book said Monday.

Volkswagen can’t confirm the number of cars that will need hardware fixes because the company is still working out the exact technical solution with the Federal Motor Transport Authority, said VW spokesman Eric Felber.

The scandal expanded last week, when the EPA accused VW of cheating with different software on larger six-cylinder diesels in about 10,000 vehicles. Auto analysts say the company could pay as much as 38 billion U-S dollars for fines, lawsuits and the cost to bring VW’s, across the world, up to emissions standards. We’d like to hear what you think about how VW has responded to this scandal.

In addition to their banner, the Greenpeace protesters also held a “C” and a “2” on either side of the round VW logo at the factory entrance, spelling out “CO2”.