Volkswagen continues to store around 294,000 diesel-fueled vehicles from its buyback campaign in the United States. A recent video from BBC News (above) provides a glimpse at one of the massive makeshift parking lots where the company keeps the models by flying over the site in the California desert. The background music that sounds straight from Blade Runner provides an appropriate accompaniment to the dystopian scene. The clip makes the scope of Dieselgate a little easier to understand by showing just a fraction of the affected vehicles.
VW has bought back around 350,000 vehicles in the United States at a cost of over $7.4 billion, according to Automotive News citing a Reuters report. The company has destroyed some of them and has been able to resell others after making repairs. However, the vast majority are in storage at 37 parking lots across the country. VW will eventually repair these diesel vehicles and will export them out of the country.
The automaker will be buying back affected diesel models in the country through the end of 2019. The video below offers a look at them.
VW has also been storing diesel vehicles at the Pontiac Silverdome in Michigan (see video below). In 2017, as many as 69 cars were stolen from there. The crooks created fake titles for the models and sold them at an auto auction in Indiana.
VW execs still think there could be a future for diesel cars, particularly in Europe. "Diesel will see a renaissance in the not-too-distant future because people who drove diesels will realize that it was a very comfortable drive concept," Volkswagen Group CEO Matthias Mueller told journalists at the 2018 Geneva Motor Show.
In the wake of Dieselgate, VW has boosted investment in electrification, though. Its first dedicated EVs arrive in 2020.
