OT. $3000 to trade VW.

Gift cards and vouchers for what?? Service on the VW? Dinner at a fancy restaurant? or cold hard cash to spend as the recipient desires? And from the wording of that paragraph it sounds like the $1000 "gift cards and vouchers" were on top of the $2000 trade in bonus. You are saying the $1000 is available regardless if the owner trades the car or not. I'm not reading the whole thing - so I'll take your word for it.

Bad move on VW's part in my opinion.

with or without the troublesome drivers left inside...?

I've only purchaced one new car, and only a few from new car dealers. Most have been from auto brokers or directly from private owners, the odd one from a used car lot.

AIUI, $500 is in the form of vouchers to be used at (VW) dealers. The other $500 is a prepaid credit card. So, it's a throwback to dealers for overpriced services and $500 to spend for the holidays (etc.)

Exactly. It's a *gift*! It does nothing to fix the "problem" that YOUR CAR will still have after the money is gone. It just buys good will (and "time") for dealers and customers: "Trust us, here's some money"

Which was *my* point up-thread! Put that $1K towards a *real* solution that doesn't result in your vehicles looking like crap!

there may be no real solution for this problem.........

if it had been a easy or cost effective solution they wouldnt of cheated.....

Of *course* there's a solution! But, like all engineering problems, you have to decide to "squeeze the balloon" in a different place. E.g., price vs. performance.

I'm sure they can get emissions in line with just a software tweek (this is undoubtedly the cheapest solution) -- but, fuel economy *and/or* performance (e.g., acceleration) may well suffer. Or, they may have to add considerable "chemical processing" to the exhaust chain which might be more labor intensive (installing a "thing") and/or harder to design ("Hmmm... where do we *put* the THING? And, what about all these other CAR MODELS??")

How much would you feel cheated if you ended up with a car that got N fewer MPG? I.e., that put it on a par with some other vehicle that you RULED OUT in your purchasing decision. Or, that took much of the "pep" out of the drivetrain? Hell, you could drive a Prius if your primary concern was emissions and fuel economy (yet, you chose not to!)

The solution was a $360 urea injector that was nixed as being too expensive. Looks cheap right about now.

Which do you think is more/less attractive to car buyers, lower mileage or a pee pumpin' package (DEF)? ;)

nb

Ed Pawlowski posted for all of us...

Isn't urea a component of piss? So just pee in the injector. I'm sure someone will get pissed off.