Around this time last year, Volkswagen was found guilty of cheating the emissions test that every car has to pass. What allowed this to happen is Volkswagen created a type of technology that would allow diesel vehicles to cheat. This affected over 600,000 cars alone, and 71,000 of these defected car were in California alone. Internationally, there are more than 11 million diesel cars that were corrupted. This discovery caused people to bring into question of how big of a problem this is and what was its impact on the environment. Well, the court decision has been made.

Volkswagen has been charged with having to take half a billion cars off the road and pay a hefty fine of $14.7 billion to “resolve claims from customers and the U.S. government.” Also, the company is having to pay for the problems that can be caused from the amount of pollution the “rigged diesel vehicles” have produced.

This is the “largest auto scandal settlement in U.S. history” says the Los Angeles Times. Not only is it just Volkswagen cars that are allowed to be compensated for but also other brands such as Audi have the same guidelines.

CHC’s Upper School Science teacher, Erik Cofer, stated his opinion on the settlement. “They should have to pay whatever their profits were from the time they started to when they got caught. What I don’t like is: if the settlement price is less than what the company made, it still works in their favor. If it was less than $14.7 billion, then they should buy the price the judge decided on.”

For anyone that does own one of these cars, VW has promised to pay a cash payment if an owner wants to sell back or modify their cars with payments ranging from $5,100 to $10,000. Although this settlement is the biggest in U.S. history, not every car was covered. According to the LA Times “90,000 cars with 3.0 liter engines” are not covered even though the engines have the same technology that allowed them to cheat like the other thousands of cars.

Lawyers are working on changing this but until then, those people will have to wait even longer to get justice.