Some cars may be fixed, but many won’t and will be crushed before they are fixed. A giant sum of money thus will be wasted in attempting to fix cars that cannot all be fixed, and where the fix may be worse than the problem if the cars are crushed well before the end of their useful lives. The solution we propose for VW and the CARB is to, in a legally enforceable form: 
 
 1./ Release VW from its obligation to fix diesel cars already on the road in California, which represent an insignificant portion of total vehicles emissions in the State, and which cars do not, individually, present any emissions-related risk to their owners or occupants 
 
 2./ Instead, direct VW to accelerate greatly its rollout of zero emission vehicles, which by their very nature, have zero emissions and thus present zero opportunities for cheating, and also do not require any enforcement dollars to verify 
 
 3./ Require that this acceleration of the rollout of zero emissions vehicles by VW result in a 10 for 1 or greater reduction in pollutant emissions as compared to the pollution associated with the diesel fleet cheating, and achieve this over the next 5 years 
 
 4./ Require that VW invest in new manufacturing plants and/or research and development, in the amounts that they otherwise would have been fined, and do so in California to the extent that California would have been allocated its share of the fines 
 
 5./ Allow VW some flexibility in the execution and timing of this plan by allowing it to be implemented via zero emission vehicle credits. The letter authors note: 
 
 “In contrast to the punishments and recalls being considered, this proposal would be a real win for California emissions, a big win for California jobs, and a historic action to help derail climate change.” 
 
 At this month’s climate conference in Paris, 13 countries pledged to make only emissions-free cars in 2050 and beyond.
– More than 40 technology leaders have proposed a radical solution for how Volkswagen can fix its emissions-test-cheating vehicles: don't. Instead Quartz reports the 44 signers—including Tesla's Elon Musk—of a letter sent to the California Air Resources Board on Thursday suggest putting all the money and resources that would have gone toward fixing diesel cars already on the road toward speeding up production of emissions-less electric vehicles. "Cure the air, not the cars," they write in the letter. Earlier this year, Volkswagen found itself in hot water when it was revealed it had installed software to cheat emissions tests in nearly 500,000 diesel cars sold in the US, the Wall Street Journal reports. Quartz reports regulators have ordered Volkswagen to fix all emissions-test-cheating vehicles currently on the road. In their letter, Musk and the other signers argue it's no longer worth it from a financial or performance standpoint to keep trying to make diesel cleaner, and many owners won't get the fix anyway. According to the Journal, they argue putting that money—as well as money from potential fines—toward electric cars and new zero-emission plants and technologies would reduce pollution 10 times what fixing the individual cars would. They also point out zero-emission cars have no way to cheat emissions tests, Quartz reports. Neither Volkswagen nor CARB have responded directly to the letter, with a CARB spokesperson telling the Journal only that their "focus has and will continue to be cleaning the air and advancing the cleanest vehicle and fuel technologies.”