2013 Passat SE with 13K miles
Based on calculator on
https://agrahamg.github.io/VWBuybackCalculator/
I get $25,700 or $6700 adjustment. I also got the $1000 from VW. So that's not so shabby. I paid $23K for my SE TDI. That's $3700 profit and free use of the car for 3 years. I only put about 10K miles a year on the car. IT would make sense to just keep the car and turn it in around 2018 before this settlement expires. VW may need to provide more compensation if enough people don't turn in their cars by the deadline or if they don't have a resolution to the problem. It would pay to wait a little and see how things develop.
And that's what really doesn't make sense to me. Of all that has been written about this, in most articles, there is just a brief mention of how the TDI would run poorly if it had to run as it does during the test process. There is mention of needing to reduce performance or reduce efficiency. However, I think that VW missed the boat on the options to fix this issue. An option to reduce performance and provide much better mileage is an option for those drivers that don't want that surge in power that we feel with the TDI. Honestly, most drivers of TDI or much faster cars rarely need the maximum torque output for daily driving. In reality, most of us are thinking of hypermiling and driving our cars carefully to squeeze out every additional MPG.
I feel that the surge when I put my foot down is sometimes annoying unless I'm on a very steep incline. I wish there was an economy mode like in the BMW 750iL or even any HONDA that just reduces the power and maxes out efficiency. In those cars the initial push on the pedal provides a gentle acceleration that smoothly brings the car to speed even if it is slow. Following that process, the TDI could be a sluggish very efficient engine 90% of the time on flat roads and at highway speeds 55-65MPH, and the bypass of emissions could be activated as it was originally intended for emergency vehicles during short bursts. It wouldn't take much to program the ECU to allow brief accelleration times of 10 seconds to give the car full power and then automatically put it back in efficient mode again.
I understand this would be far from ideal for most TDI owners that want all the power and efficiency but lets face it, there are trade offs with many things. For my part, I think VW management were simply idiots for getting themselves to this place and allowing the defeat software to be implemented in this manner. They then continued to drop the ball by not proactively admitting this to the government a few years in advance and work on the solution thus adding billions of dollars in additional costs.
Finally, they continue by not providing a solution a full year after the problem was discovered. What they failed to realize is that the majority of VW Diesel owners are people that didn't buy the car for the clean environmental benefits that they advertised. Most wanted the strength and endurance of the VW diesel, the high resale value, and great mileage. I suggest that most of us TDI owners would put up with reduced power, torque, accelleration, "fun factor" just to have a reliable TDI that gave good mileage, reliable performance and lower TCO.
TO all those that may disagree with me, I truly do understand your side of the this and can empathize with the anger towards VW.
Respectfully submitted to my fellow TDI owners.