VW urged to go electric
Volkswagen should be let off the billion dollar fines it faces for cheating the emissions tests – but only if it invests that money in the development of electric vehicles instead.
That is the message of an open letter published by a leading group of environmentalists and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, including Tesla’s Elon Musk.
In a letter sent to California Air Resources Board (CARB), the governmental agency set up to protect the Californian State’s residents from poor air quality, the group argues that VW should ‘cure the air, not the car’ by giving up on diesel and focussing on making cleaner, pure electric vehicles.
Instead of wasting money on fixes, Musk’s group’s plan forces VW to invest billions in making zero emission vehicles.
Musk’s group also wants money set aside to create new factories to make the battery cell for the increased number of cars produced. And it wants these factories built in California, creating jobs in the same state where VW cheated the tests.
