Why would someone build a massive parking lot in rural Virginia and fill it with cars?
I drive by this place every day. For the past decade it has been an unused industrial property. There was a foundry there at one point, but it is long gone and all that is left is half of one small building and a lot of asphalt. Last spring, someone started clearing out all of the brush that had started taking over and turned it into a giant parking lot. They put up chain-link fences and security lights, too. Then the cars started arriving.
Every day a few car haulers would show up to unload cars and pretty soon there were thousands of them. At this point there are probably 10,000 cars on the lot. There is no other activity on the site, no sign of a sale going on or something else that would explain what is happening. I didn't understand what was going on until someone pointed out that all the cars are the same brand - Volkswagon.
These are all cars that were caught up in the dieselgate scandal from two years ago. VW was caught cheating on the emissions testing for their "fuel efficient" diesel engines. The engineers programmed the engine computer to recognize when it is getting an emissions test and run in a ultra-efficient mode while the test is being done then go back to a high performance mode when the car is back on the road.
There was an article about the business in the Lynchburg newspaper. The pictures in this post look a lot like the ones in the article even though I took them myself. There is really only one good place to stand to see the whole parking lot.
Apparently the plan is for these cars to be exported to South Asia, South America, and Africa. I'm not sure whether or not this is a good thing or if we should be outraged. On one hand, the cars pollute a lot more than they are supposed to and VW has agreed to take them off the road and refund the defrauded customers. It seems like cheating to turn around an resell the same cars to unsuspecting people in other countries. On the other hand, these cars represent a huge investment of materials, energy, and other resources, so destroying them ensures that all of those resources go to waste. If a dieselgate VW can provide someone in Africa a opportunity to own a reliable, affordable car, then maybe that is the best use for them.
What do you think?
