Last week, Volkswagen announced that it's launching a claims program for all United States owners of nearly 600,000 affected diesel vehicles from its continued emissions scandal.
That will pave the way for a U.S. recall, as the embattled automaker had already been granted approval to make faulty diesel vehicles comply with emissions regulations in Europe.
But in an open letter to California Air Resources Board (CARB) chairman Mary Nichols, Elon Musk and 38 executives, investors and environmental leaders signed off on a way that would allow the automaker to forgo its emissions recall and focus on another task, altogether.
Musk and his colleagues propose that instead of spending its time, money and energy fixing affected models — via software updates and new parts as part of a projected $9.6 billion recall to make them comply with emissions regulations — that VW should transition to zero-emissions vehicles.
That's part of a five-step blueprint of suggestions that Musk and his colleagues support, as written in the letter.
"Instead, direct VW to accelerate greatly its rollout of zero emission vehicles, which by their very nature, have zero emissions and thus present zero opportunities for cheating, and also do not require any enforcement dollars to verify," the letter, which Musk signed off on, recommends. "Require that this acceleration of the rollout of zero emissions vehicles by VW result in a 10 for 1 or greater reduction in pollutant emissions as compared to the pollution associated with the diesel fleet cheating, and achieve this over the next five years."
They also implore CARB to "allow VW some flexibility in the execution and timing of this plan by allowing it to be implemented via zero-emission vehicle credits."
While this bailout plan and repositioning blueprint sounds good on paper, Tech Times wonders if VW would go for it even if CARB agreed.
Probably. Anything to get it out of its current trudge and onto a steady drive into a cleaner future, right?
