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Comment by dom0 | Hacker News Reader

> That also answers why the German government is giving them some leeway here: it's not exactly in their interest to kill Volkswagen.

While the federal government does not have a direct stake (apart from all the tax euros), the fine state of Lower Saxony holds a 20 % share (which actually causes the MP and his economics minister to always be on the board of directors).

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Interesting. Does that mean they could have been aware of the problem (from being on the board), before it became public knowledge?

The country has a huge stake regardless since they likely pay unemployment benefits if they were to go under etc.

Why would prosecuting the executives kill WV, though?

If VW is forced to make all regulations-breaching cars to be compliant and compensate the owner for down-time and loss in fuel-efficiency or performance, that might mean the end to VW. VW is touched softly, just like Intel, for example. I think both the car and the IC industries should be more regulated, and the regulations should be effectively enforced.

As far as I know, they did have to make the cars compliant. At least my colleague, who had an affected Skoda, got it "fixed" for free, including a temporary replacement car.

If there was a demand that the "fixed" cars were actually tested and were now under the limit while not losing more than say 5% in economy or power (or else owners would have to be compensated) it would likely find that the cars fail one or more of these requirements.

I believe it's now a middle ground: cars lost "only" about 5-10% performance/fuel eco, and they are still only half way to the NOx limit.

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