Volkswagen is going to have to shell out a lot of money in compensation as well as in fixing all the flaws in the engines that violated emissions norms. A Federal judge ordered the company to initiate dialogue with the owners of those cars that didn’t meet the norms, offering them an option of compensating them for the vehicle or to repair the vehicle. This judgement comes just two days after Mitsubishi admitted that they were responsible for falsifying fuel economy data for Mitsubishi models and cars that they made for Nissan too, in Japan.
This brings in focus the lack of due diligence done by companies, which is forfeited on the altar of big business. In both these incidents, the errors were caused by over-zealous employees but does the fault lie entirely with them or also with the brands for pushing their departments to bring out new models in record time?
Issues like this, and especially in a country like Japan where cheating and breaking rules has no honour, only serve to bring the entire automobile industry under the spotlight. Governments now need to enforce norms and encourage stricter inspection methods to avoid this from occurring again.
