Re: Which cave did they dig you out from?
But I also believe that the amount of the fines being talked about by the US is grossly excessive and is intended to break up VW and remove a major competitor to the US car companies.
Close but no cigar. It is to remove diesel as an option on USA market regardless of source.
Diesel is by its nature more economical. In addition to that diesel can run on fuels of biological origin which have nothing to do with corn.
As a result both the petrol lobby and the corn farmer lobby have been spending a vast amount of money to revert its inroads (mostly driven by foreign companies) into the USA market. If you trace the campaign financing of the people who have been instrumental in pushing the various local derivatives of the clean air act you will always come across the same combination of petrol and corn and corn and petrol even instates which have very little of these industries like for example California and New York.
The amount of fines is about forcing petrol + hybrid + bioethanol as the only options for fuel efficiency and environmental impact reduction and thus protecting the interest of the two biggest and most politically active industrial lobbies in the USA. It is not about reducing competition to the moribund USA car industry.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
