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A comment on Madrid bans polluting vehicles from city centre. Parent comment

Re:Madrid bans polluting vehicles from city centre by cmrdporcupine on Sunday December 02, 2018 @08:29AM (#18582219)
It's a strange twist that the only country that punished VW/Audi group for dieselgate with sanctions that had any kind of teeth was the U.S. -- not exactly known for its environmentalist tendencies.

There VW was forced to pay for a huge EV charging infrastructure in addition to the vehicle buyback. In Canada, the gov't did basically nothing and it was only a class action lawsuit that accomplished much, and the deal we got was far less than what they got in the U.S.

Still, the money I got from dieselgate buyback paid for most of my Chevy Volt. So that's something.

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Re:Madrid bans polluting vehicles from city centre by thefounder on Sunday December 02, 2018 @08:37AM (#18582243)
Well that may prove it was a political motivated punishment (for the US at least) not related to the environment damage. VW got fined in Europe (i.e few billions) as well but not as much as in the US.
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Re:Madrid bans polluting vehicles from city centre by jacobolus on Sunday December 02, 2018 @02:05PM (#18583869)
> political motivated punishment

You mean, they didn’t like the “politics” of a company installing devices in their cars whose only purpose was to cheat emissions tests, and then afterward lying about it?

Yes, it’s not really so much about the “environment” per se, and more about the criminal cheating followed by criminal coverup.

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Re:Madrid bans polluting vehicles from city centre by mikey_p on Sunday December 02, 2018 @06:00PM (#18585129)
I think the unsaid assumption, although it is near impossible to prove, is that this was motivated by desire to punish foreign conglomerates and provide a nice advantage to domestic producers. While I'm sure this is near impossible to prove I would be really surprised if lobbyists for the US auto industry weren't trying to get as many sanctions as possible for VW.
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Re:Madrid bans polluting vehicles from city centre by VintageCool on Sunday December 02, 2018 @03:54PM (#18584509)
The US doesn't really have a pro-deisel lobby, so they were able to impose punishments without internal political pushback.
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Re:Madrid bans polluting vehicles from city centre by Pulcinella on Sunday December 02, 2018 @02:19PM (#18583950)
not exactly known for its environmentalist tendencies.

I think that for once, the US regulations are stricter than the EU ones. Diesel emissions standards are higher in the US than Europe.

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Re:Madrid bans polluting vehicles from city centre by TheForumTroll on Sunday December 02, 2018 @02:35PM (#18584063)
Not much of a twist really since Germany (the state) owns part of VW and they also want to protect jobs.
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Re:Madrid bans polluting vehicles from city centre by netsharc on Sunday December 02, 2018 @04:08PM (#18584565)
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/sep/24/uk-franc...

Yeah, the governments are either not thinking about the long-term survival of the population and the planet, or they would rather just placate their citizenry by making sure they have jobs. Because a jobless populace will vote you out of the office, so, fuck the environment?

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Re:Madrid bans polluting vehicles from city centre by majewsky on Sunday December 02, 2018 @05:40PM (#18585031)
Nitpick: Not Germany, but Lower Saxony (a German state). They own 20% of VW and have a special case in the law that gives them special veto rights on (some?) supervisory board decisions.
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