More from our Bloomberg terminal ...
The weather calmed, and they were able to get a salvage crew on to the Felicity Ace on Friday. It is now being towed towards the Azores (there's no port big enough for it there, but there's probably calmer water, and a fairly big airport nearby to get stuff in and out).
There is no longer any smoke.
Volkswagen, the owner of most of the brands on the ship, announced that they "fear that all" 4,000 or so cars are a total loss. Four hundred million dollars is the value that's been settled on as a guestimate of their value. That seems on the high end to me, and even if there are a bunch of Porsche's and Bentley's on board, it tends to suggest a lot of the more expensive electric vehicles.
That is a loss to the bottom line, so that makes this comparable in size to the ballpark for profits lost from the Ambassador Bridge blockade.
No doubt they are insured, so VW probably won't take the whole hit. But I've only heard of one insurer being on the hook, and that's for about $155M. Just like on your auto or car insurance, there can be deductible and copays on this sort of thing. And if insurers have clauses about product safety, they may decide that the cars self-combusted (my suspicion) and refuse to pay.
If you're watching this one, also be on the lookout for the phrase "self-insured". That means for both VW (and you) that you shopped around and decided that the insurance was too expensive and decided not to buy it because ... you know ... "what are the odds?" If that's the case, imagine being the VW executives who made that call.
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