The Wall Street Journal
August 26, 2016
VW Fixes For Diesel Cars Will Fall Short
By Sara Randazzo, Aruna Viswanatha and William Boston
August 26, 2016
VW Fixes For Diesel Cars Will Fall Short
By Sara Randazzo, Aruna Viswanatha and William Boston
Most of Volkswagen AG’s diesel-powered vehicles on U.S. roads can’t be retrofitted to fully comply with air-pollution regulations, though its larger vehicles likely can, an attorney for the company said Thursday. Robert Giuffra also told a U.S. court that Volkswagen is close to offering regulators a fix for the larger vehicles, which he said have better emissions controls than the roughly 475,000 2-liter vehicles covered by a $15 billion settlement reached in June.
“We weren’t able to fix the 2-liter cars to the standards to which they were originally certified,” Mr. Giuffra told a San Francisco judge.
Under the June deal with regulators and consumers, drivers of 2-liter vehicles such as Jettas, Passats and other cars dating to the 2009 model year will receive compensation and have a choice between selling back their cars or accepting a repair. Larger vehicles with 3-liter engines weren’t part of the earlier offer. Volkswagen likely will conduct a recall on those vehicles.
In the proposed agreement for the smaller cars, regulators at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and California Air Resources Board accepted that the vehicles—which emit up to 40 times the legal limit of nitrogen oxides—won’t meet the standards to which they originally were certified. CARB estimates that a fix will lower excess emissions by between 80% and 90%.
Nearly a year ago Volkswagen acknowledged it installed devices in some 11 million diesel vehicles world-wide that enabled the cars to cheat emissions tests.
Mr. Giuffra said for some 3-liter vehicles, the fix could be as simple as a half-hour software update. Others, especially earlier models, will involve upgrades to catalytic converters, sensors, and other steps. “We are literally talking about 2 million lines of code,” he told the court.