VW Admits to Emissions Fraud in 11 Million Vehicles

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Wow. It’s not just half a million cars in the United States. It turns out that Volkswagen installed its emissions cheating software in 11 million cars worldwide, mostly in Europe:

The German automaker said it was setting aside the equivalent of half a year’s profits — 6.5 billion euros, or about $7.3 billion — to cover the cost of fixing the cars to comply with pollution standards and to cover other expenses, which are likely to include fines as well as responses to civil lawsuits from angry customers.

$7.3 billion is just the start of things for VW. This is going to end up costing them a lot more than that. And when you count in lost sales, who knows? This could be a life-threatening event for them.