Volkswagen will buy back vehicles involved in the company’s emissions scandal or fix them, according to a proposed settlement revealed in court Tuesday.
According to a company statement, VW proposed two options for customers: They can sell their car back to the company or terminate their lease early with no penalty, or they can keep their vehicle and get a free emissions modification. The emissions modification would have to be approved by the Environmental Protection Agency and the California Air Resources Board.
The federal judge overseeing the case against the German automaker preliminarily approved the proposal. Full approval is expected to come in the fall.
The agreement would cover the 482,000 2.0-liter “clean diesel” vehicles that were sold in the United States between 2009 and 2015. The company has not come up with a plan for the 103,000 3.0-liter “clean diesel” vehicles sold in the U.S.
The vehicles all came installed with “defeat devices,” or software that could tell when the vehicles were undergoing emissions testing. When they were being tested, the vehicles would switch into a cleaner mode that would allow them to pass the tests. But, when under normal driving conditions, the vehicles would spew up to 40 times the legal amount of nitrogen oxide into the atmosphere.
The company has admitted to installing the software and will pay up to $14.7 billion in a settlement with the government for the 2.0-liter vehicles.
A lawsuit filed last week by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman charged that executives at the highest levels of the company knew about the scheme. After government regulators began to get wise to the scam about a year ago, the company engaged in destroying documents to try and cover it up, the lawsuit states.
