California rejects VW’s recall plan

According to CARB, the plan, which would see the recall of only a fraction of the 600,000 US cars affected in the latest VW scandal, does “not adequately address overall impacts on vehicle performance, emissions and safety”, and would not fix the cars’ pollution problems quickly enough.

In Detroit, Chris Grundler, who heads the EPA’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality, said at an Automotive News forum that the agency wanted a fix as soon as possible – and said the agency does not have a satisfactory plan yet from VW.

CARB Chairwoman Mary Nichols had stern words for the Wolfsburg-based automaker as she delivered news of the rejected plan: “Volkswagen made a decision to cheat on emissions tests and then tried to cover it up”, she said. “EPA has conveyed this to the company previously”.

In September 2015, the automaker had admitted that it has intentionally installed “defeat device” on millions of its diesel vehicles world-wide in order to cheat emission tests.

Last week, the U.S. Justice Department, representing the EPA, filed a civil suit that could potentially expose VW to more than $20 billion in fines under the Clean Air Act.

Mueller: We didn’t lie.

He wouldn’t talk about what solutions the company will propose, but analysts say they will nearly certainly be expensive and involve major modifications to the exhaust systems or the addition of a chemical treatment system to turn nitrogen oxide into harmless nitrogen and oxygen.

In a statement, California’s Air Resources Board (CARB) said it has rejected proposals put forward by VW to rectify cars with its 2.0-litre diesel engine, saying the proposals lack detail and contain gaps in information.

In this statement, CARB says it’s issued a notice of violation to VW.

Those specifics may well be on the table Wednesday when the German automaker’s top executive, CEO Matthias Mueller, meets privately with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy in Washington, D.C.

In the eyes of the EPA, CARB and definitely the public.

California environmental regulators have rejected a proposal by Volkswagen to recall thousands of its diesel vehicles.

Just last week, a German paper reported that Volkswagen is considering buying more than 115,000 affected vehicles back from consumers in the U.S. because recalling and fixing the cars would be too costly. “And we had some targets for our technical engineers, and they solved this problem and reached targets with some software solutions which haven’t been compatible to the American law”. “Volkswagen will continue to fully cooperate” with regulators, the company said in a statement.