Volkswagen’s recall plan rejected in California

The California Air Resources Board rejected Volkswagen’s recall proposals for its 2.0 liter diesels, and the federal Environmental Protection Agency agreed the plan was not acceptable.

“VW’s submissions are incomplete, substantially deficient, and fall far short of meeting the legal requirements to return these vehicles to the claimed certified configuration”, the chair of CARB, Mary D. Nichols, wrote to VW executives in a letter published on the agency’s website.

The California Air Review Board (CARB) has rejected Volkswagen’s proposed fixes to its Dieselgate cars.

Since then, Volkswagen has been in negotiations with the regulators in Europe and the U.S. over reservations about fixing the issue making it complaint with the policies of EPA and environment-friendly.

The company’s CEO Matthias Mueller, apologized to American consumers on Sunday ahead of the Detroit auto show for building cars that cheated on emissions tests.

CARB’s decision, which does not affect a separate VW plan for an estimated 85,000 3.0-liter diesel engines also fitted with the emissions devices, sends the company back to the drawing board.

The company had installed software on millions of diesel engines world-wide that allowed them to dupe emissions tests.

California regulators on Tuesday rejected Volkswagen’s recall plan for some of the German automaker’s most popular diesel models that used software to intentionally deceive government emissions tests, including the Beetle, Jetta, Golf and Passat.

In addition, CARB felt Volkswagen did not describe the proposed modifications in enough detail for regulators to determine their potential effectiveness, or indeed their technical feasibility.

In a statement of its own, Volkswagen insisted the rejection did not cover its latest engineering and software proposals, but rather a set of proposals it delivered to CARB in December. The carmaker “continued and compounded the lie, and when they were caught they tried to deny it”, Nichols added on Tuesday. Mueller said the source of the dispute is variations between German and USA laws governing corporate documents.

It’s possible that they may need SCR systems to meet emissions standards, which could cost thousands of dollars per auto and greatly extend the duration of any recall.

Volkswagen is also in ongoing talks with the US Environmental Protection Agency to find a fix for the almost 600,000 cars affected around the country, and is expected to present a plan on Wednesday.

He said: “I believe they considerably underestimated the readiness in America to resolve the issue seriously and effectively”.