Volkswagen May Buy Back Over 100K Diesel Cars in the US

As Deiss said in his CES keynote address, although Volkswagen’s European Union-market cars are ready for repairs that allegedly won’t affect vehicle performance or fuel economy, the EPA is presenting unique challenges for the company’s U.S.-market vehicles thanks to its more stringent nitrogen regulations and easier carbon emissions requirements.

State attorneys from 48 USA states expressed discontent with VW’s gambit of citing German law as the reason for not turning over the requested emails.

Megan Hawthorne, a spokeswoman for Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette, said “we share the frustrations” of NY and CT. “Our patience with Volkswagen is wearing thin”.

Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen said VW is “resisting” attempts to uncover how the company was able to install so-called “defeat devices” on 600,000 cars in the US. “We can not comment on a pending investigation”. VW declined to say if it is withholding documents.

Jepsen said state AGs will work “to hold Volkswagen accountable for its behavior to the extent possible under the law, and we will seek to use any means available to us to conduct a thorough investigation of Volkswagen’s conduct”.

A Volkswagen source toldReutersthat the company is struggling to agree with authorities in the USA on a technical solution for some 482,000 faulty VW and Audi models.

The company ended up in some serious trouble after it admitted to installing software on its diesel vehicles that intentionally deceived emissions tests. These engines have been offered with urea injection for far longer than the smaller four-cylinder TDIs found in VW Group sedans, which would make their culpability here far more surprising. A criminal investigation is still ongoing.

The Justice Department’s suit said government “efforts to learn the truth about the (excess) emissions… were impeded and obstructed by material omissions and misleading information provided by VW entities”.

Herbert Diess, declared Tuesday at the Consumer Electronics Show that the German firm is having positive results after discussions with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the California Air Resources Board regarding Carbon dioxide emissions scandal.

“We haven’t identified a satisfactory way forward”, McCarthy said.