"As part of its court settlement with the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for the DieselGate scandal, Volkswagen agreed to invest $2 billion in electric vehicle infrastructure in the US."
electrek.co
assuming "they" is "VW" this seems to be a contradiction
Sawyer quotes 10% for layoffs in 2024 when it's already higher than that and Musk has stated closer to 20% is the goal. It's not just the normal media that is biased, you have to be careful of using these "OSINT" sources too. (side note, did Elon re-friend Sawyer? Why is he back to shilling for the company after he was excommunicated for sharing the SC firing story?)
That's exactly what they were talking about, VW, which runs EA, was forced to build a network. EA is not an independent company, but rather a subsidiary of VW. That was one of the main criticism of the penalty. It was suggested it would have been more fair (and likely result in better networks) for VW to pay the $2 billion into a fund that would be distributed to other independent charge networks.
That was the first result in Google when looking up the history of layoffs. The exact number doesn't matter for my point.
They were fined for dieselgate. Afaik they made the decision to create EA for their penalty, if you consider that “forced.”
I'm still pissed nobody got jail time for that. When your company's behavior is that egregious there need to be serious penalties.
huh?
Not a very effective way to encourage your employees to speak up. A certain amount of discussion should be expected and firing the entire team has likely done far more harm than good. While Elon is very good he has also made mistakes as in the Boreing Company and Solar Roof tiles.
VW did not "decide" to do this. They agreed to do it as part of their consent decree agreement with the courts and regulators. They specifically "agreed" to create an electric vehicle charging network, and if they had not, they would have had to negotiate a different settlement.
The EPA literally has a list of VW executives that are fugitives in the USA from dieselgate. It's just that they can't get them extradited from Germany:
I’m not trying to be tricky with language, IMO they were “forced” to pay for their dieselgate actions, they “decided ( or chose)” to create EA to comply with the verdict. Perhaps they could have decided/chose to simply pay the money to the EPA or another agency. Creating EA at least had the potential to increase VW EV sales and sell power for profit.
The language here is the problem. There was no "Verdict" - there was a settlement, and part of that settlement was creating EA. They didn't get "convicted" and then after that decide to comply with that conviction by creating EA. They specifically offered the creation of EA to the regulators as part of the overall settlement, and the regulators accepted that.
sounds like they got off pretty easy if part of the language of the settlement was.. "create a crappy charging network"
Plus billions in fines, having to recall all the cars, and criminal indictments for some people which Germany shielded from extradition.
Exactly why this was the result of that negotiation. A very large sum got invested into a US charge network instead of being available to invest elsewhere in the world or given to shareholders. I would all that a hefty win to the US for a not inconsiderable inconvenience to VW, but don't forget the win!
All you need to know is in the Dirty Money series on Netflix. Season 1; the episode is called Hard NOX. It explains all about the Dieselgate scandal that VW was involved in. The part that is maddening is that they were caught cheating, asked questions about what the authorities knew, and then tried to improve their cheating based on that information. They deserved to be shut down...
