What does VW's big dieselgate settlement actually mean?

Just as the details of VW's dieselgate settlement in the USA were being announced, we also got the VW Group results for the first half of 2016. They give useful clues as to what the scandal means for the group in the longer term.

In last year's accounts, the Group put aside €16.2bn (£12.7bn) to cover the scandal. The new settlement and buyback uses up nearly 90 percent of that global provision – on just one country, the USA. So in the financial figures for the first half of this year, VW has put aside another €1.6bn (£1.3bn).

Our first takeout is that VW can afford the scandal.

In the first half of 2016, the group made €7.5bn (£6.2bn) operating profit, from which you can subtract that €1.6bn of new dieselgate provision.

So the entire cost of the scandal might be little more than a years' worth of Group profit.

Mind you, the VW brand itself doesn't pull its financial weight. The Group's two main moneymakers are Audi and Porsche, which between them made €4.5bn (£3.8bn) of operating profit.

Of course all isn't rosy. Sales of VW brand vehicles are struggling in the USA and the Europe compared with the first half-year of 2015, which is before the scandal was revealed. Plus the marketing and incentive costs will have been high, denting profit. In the USA, VW brand sales were down by nearly a sixth. In Europe they were only one per cent lower, but the overall market was rising, so VW lost share especially to a resurgent Peugeot.

Future profits will also be dented by new R&D costs. Management probably thought that having designed and tooled for the MQB platform, they could ease off on big-ticket spending. Instead they've had to commit to a new EV platform.

And the bad publicity is far from over. Soon after the scandal broke last September, VW promised it would start a full inquiry, to be carried out by external investigators. The results would be published in full by April this year.

April has come and gone. So has May. And June. It's now the end of July. Things go quiet in August, the holidays in Germany, so you probably shouldn't expect anything then either.