Volkswagen eyes agreement soon with feds on emissions

The top executive of the Volkswagen brand worldwide says he’s optimistic that US environmental regulators will approve fixes within the coming weeks or months for diesel engines that cheat on emissions tests.

Volkswagen AG may buy back tens of thousands of cars with diesel engines that can’t be easily fixed to comply with US emissions standards as part of its efforts to satisfy the demands of regulators, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Quoting sources inside the company, the newspaper said that VW expected to have to buy back around one fifth of the affected cars in the U.S., which totalled around 580,000. This is why the BUDD-e is described as a modern interpretation of the first VW bus. He pledged to reach an agreement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and California’s Air Resources Board soon. Europe will still be a major diesel market in the next decade, Diess said. When not being tested, the cars released pollution well in excess of permitted levels.

Separately, Diess announced a new partnership with Mobileye, an Israeli machine vision company that is a leader in camera technology used in advanced safety features such as automatic braking or lane departure warning.

According to the complaint, VW is liable for injunctive relief and civil penalties of up to $32,000 Dollars per vehicle per violation before Jan. 13, 2009 and up to $37,500 USD per vehicle per violation after January 13, 2009. Nor does it include the price of any fees or repairs in other countries, where the majority of Volkswagen’s 11 million tainted diesels are registered. So on Tuesday, Diess tried to turn the page by teasing some of the company’s new, more high-tech and eco-friendly vehicles.

To demonstrate how drivers of the near-future will interact with their various devices from the vehicle, Diess hopped inside and asked the auto to tell him if he had enough beer in the fridge for a party.

Volkswagen’s brand CEO Herbert Deiss introduced the BUDD-e concept at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), saying it is its vision of what transportation will look like in 2019.

“Door handles are so 2016”, he said, waving his hand towards the vehicle dubbed the “Budd-et” to open its doors.

“I find it frustrating that, despite public statements professing cooperation and an expressed desire to resolve the various investigations that it faces following its calculated deception, Volkswagen (Other OTC: VLKAF – news) is, in fact, resisting cooperation by citing German law”, he said.

It could have been the comeback of the Volkswagen bus, but instead the concept that VW unveiled in Las Vegas is another nice little electric van that would be years away from production, if it’s ever built at all.