Volkswagen AG (VW) has reached a tentative deal with its US dealers to compensate them for losses they said they suffered as a result of the company’s emissions cheating scandal, attorneys for the carmaker and dealers told a federal judge on Thursday.
The value of the settlement with the roughly 650 dealers was not disclosed, although Volkswagen said in a statement later that it would include cash payments.
“We believe this agreement in principle with Volkswagen dealers is a very important step in our commitment to making things right for all our stakeholders in the United States,” Volkswagen North America chief executive Hinrich Woebcken said in the statement.
Details of the settlement were still under discussion. US District Court Judge Charles Breyer gave the attorneys until the end of next month to submit a final proposal. The deal would require Breyer’s approval.
Volkswagen previously reached an agreement with attorneys for car owners. That deal calls for it to spend up to US$10 billion buying back or repairing about 475,000 vehicles involved in the scandal and paying their owners an additional US$5,100 to US$10,000 each.
Details about the vehicle repairs have not been finalized.
The settlement also includes US$2.7 billion for unspecified environmental mitigation and an additional US$2 billion to promote zero-emissions vehicles.
Breyer gave the deal preliminary approval last month.
It does not cover about 85,000 more-powerful Volkswagens and Audis with 3-liter engines also caught up in the emissions scandal.
Volkswagen attorney Robert Giuffra said the company was prepared to submit a fix for some of those vehicles by early November that would bring them into compliance with clean energy laws.
Any fix proposed by Volkswagen would have to be approved by government regulators before it could be implemented.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day