The California Air Resources Board (CARB) has rejected Volkswagen’s proposed plan to recall and repair some 16,000 models fitted with its emissions-cheating 3.0-liter diesel engine.
The powertrain is used in a number of VW, Audi and Porsche models and last year, was found to have been installed with a device to cheat emissions testing, just like Volkswagen’s smaller 2.0-liter diesel. While a plan to buy back all of those 2.0-liter models has been approved, fixing the V6 is proving more difficult than the German conglomerate imagined.
In a statement, CARB said “VW’s and Audi’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 air quality regulator confirmed that it won’t be able to determine if a proposed fix will work across all vehicles until December. If an adequate fix isn’t presented, VW may also have to buy back these V6 models.
Already, VW has agreed to buy back as many as 475,000 2.0-liter models in the United States at a cost of over $10 billion and any further buy-backs would make that bill significantly heftier.
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