The sands of the Mojave Desert in the US hide one of the most disturbing and large-scale monuments of modern automotive history. For more than a decade, 350,000 abandoned vehicles with Volkswagen and Audi emblems have been silently resting there. The area, which has gained worldwide fame as the "Dieselgate Graveyard", has become the setting for the consequences of the grandiose environmental scandal that shook the industry to its core, recall our colleagues from Supercar Blondie.
It all began in the fall of 2015, when the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) caught the German giant on a tightrope. It turns out that the concern's diesel engines spew into the atmosphere up to 40 times more dangerous nitrogen oxides than legally permissible norms. An unprecedented action followed, in which the parent company Volkswagen launched a colossal program to buy back compromised vehicles from American consumers - an operation that swallowed a mind-boggling 7.4 billion dollars. To accommodate the oncoming avalanche of returned cars, the Germans rented 37 huge logistics bases in the States, among which the harsh and dry Mojave emerged as the most emblematic location. The choice of the desert is actually a clever tactical move - the lack of moisture and hot air act as a natural shield against rust and corrosion, preserving the sheet metal intact.
However, the fate of these exiled German vehicles is not entirely tragic. Technical inspections are regularly carried out on site, and the purpose of their temporary exile was to wait for the green light from regulators for hardware and software modifications. Over the years, the sandy cemetery has progressively thinned out. Thousands of specimens have passed through ecological resuscitation services and have been successfully sold on the secondary car market. However, for another huge part of the fleet, the verdict was final - they were disassembled into their component parts and recycled, since their repair turned out to be economically pointless.
We recall that black clouds hung over Wolfsburg after it became clear that in over 11 million diesel cars world has implemented clever software. It recognizes when the vehicle is undergoing an environmental test and artificially lowers harmful emissions, while in real road conditions it begins to spew poisons. The revelation led to the resignation of the then boss Martin Winterkorn and plunged the brand into the deepest crisis since its creation. According to official DW data, the cost of the fraud has reached a whopping 33 billion euros in the form of fines, lawsuits and multi-billion dollar compensation, and a number of top managers have ended their careers in the dock.