Volkswagen reached a settlement with federal and state environmental regulators on polluting 3.0-liter V6 diesels, another important milestone as the company looks to get past its dieselgate emissions scandal.
The agreement, which was made between the company and both the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and the U.S Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), says that the company will recall 63,000 vehicles and buy back 20,000 more.
The company also agreed to pay $225 million into a fund to offset the environmental impact of the polluting vehicles. This is an addition to the $2.7 billion they are already paying into the fund for the 2.0-liter diesel settlement.
They will also pay CARB $25 million to help promote zero-emissions vehicles in the state of California.
The 63,000 recalled cars include 2013-2016 Audi, Volkswagen and Porsche vehicles with Generation 2 3.0-liter diesel engines. These cars will be fixed so that they no longer violate emissions standards.
The 20,000 buyback cars are 2009-2012 Volkswagen and Audi vehicles with Generation 1 3.0-liter diesel engines. These will be bought back, or if CARB and the EPA approve, they can also be fixed so that customers can keep their cars if they wish.
Reuters estimates that the total cost of the settlement, when taking into account the cost of fixing and/or buying back the affected vehicles, is in the neighborhood of $1 billion.
While this can’t be good for the company’s bottom line, it does mean that another hurdle has been reached to get past the scandal and move forward. Volkswagen is still a large, multi-national company, so they will probably survive this blow. But it probably kills off the possibility of any more VW diesels ever being sold in the United States, and puts another nail in the coffin of the diesel engine as a whole.
Check out this popular TFLcar video where we took a dieselgate VW Jetta to the dyno to see how much power it loses in cheat mode:
