As the world continues put more efforts towards developing better, faster and cleaner vehicle engines for the future, companies like Volkswagen Group are being hit with enormous fines resulting from the diesel gate emissions scandal.
Porsche, which is part of the Volkswagen Group was issued with fines by the Stuttgart Public Prosecutor’s Office totalling to a substantial amount of €535 million ($589 million). The fines include €4 million for ‘negligent breach of duty’ by Porsche, with the remaining €531 million levied against the profits of the company.
Porsche is facing these huge fines as a result of selling diesel powered vehicles fitted with defeat devices designed to overcome emissions testing regulations. It was as a result of this that a large fleet of their SUV vehicles that included the Porsche Macan and Cayenne were recalled by German authorities once it came to their attention that they had the illegal devices.
However, the Volkswagen Group already seemed prepared to face the fines as they had already accounted for them not forgetting the fact that in the recent years Porsche had made a lot of money for the company recording over $4.73 billion in net profits.
With the company having made lots of profits and having known that the fines were soon coming, this influenced the Stuttgart Public Prosecutor to fine Volkswagen Group a higher fine based on its financial performance.
Although Porsche chose not to fight the legal proceedings, the company did note that it had “never developed and produced diesel engines” in a published statement.
The Porsche models implicated in the diesel gate scandal used Audi-sourced V6 turbocharged diesel engine, shared with other Volkswagen Group vehicles.
It should be noted however, that last year Porsche decided to completely let go of the diesel-powered cars and SUVs for good. According to their CEO Oliver Blume, the company is now focusing on a bigger goal and that’s, “future to be diesel-free.”
They are going to be focused on producing battery powered vehicles in the coming future with the forthcoming all-electric Taycan having already notched up 20,000 potential customers.
As companies all over the globe continue to develop better ways to protect the world with environmentally friendly technologies, a bigger question remains. Many old vehicles with old tech that harms the environment are still being sold to other countries especially those in Africa.
How will this help save the world if authorities are not doing their best to fix that issue first. Shouldn’t we be getting rid of these old cars and changing to the new tech? Or, they’re still a lot of technicalities and other pending matters that need to be sorted out first to realise this dream.
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