I was going through the late news of yesterday from Germany, noting a piece from ARD (Channel One, public TV).....over the diesel car mess.
So, the German Federal Minister for the Environment came out late yesterday and spoke to the new project....going after the retrofit of diesel cars in Germany.
They finally did their homework, and say the whole project will cost about 4.4 billion euros, and it'll come from the car industry itself.
This is figured off a couple of public estimates (from experts and foundations), that the labor and parts will run about 3,000 Euro per vehicle.
There are several odd factors over this direction by the SPD minister.
First, both Merkel (Chancellor) and the Minister of Transport Scheuer (CSU) have said 'no'....there's not going to be a forced package. So this is mostly talk by the Environment Ministry.
Second, legally.....there's no law you can use....so you'd have to draft and pass the law.
Third, no one can say with any clear evidence that the solution (the box to clean the particles) will do the complete job, or decrease mileage/power. If you went with this retrofit and owners discovered six weeks into the period that they were losing 10 to 20 percent of their mileage.....they'd want to sue the government for the 'loss'. The other amusing thing is that it would only cover cars....not trucks or other vehicles. My humble guess is that they'd be dragged in next.
Fourth....four billion is an awful lot of money. For the car industry of Germany....maybe if this was a tax credit deal and they'd get ten years of credit to balance this out, it might encourage the VW folks to cooperate.
Fifth, and final....what about all the diesel cars with the EU made by the German companies? Couldn't the EU also get into this and force more Euro spent on them too? So this 4.4 billion Euro number....might rapidly go up (maybe 10 billion Euro)?
Kinda amusing.....it's a mess that can't be fixed or solved.
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