Volkswagen last month agreed to pay up to US$10 billion for vehicle buybacks and loss compensation to consumers, US$2.7 billion in environmental mitigation, US$2 billion on clean-emissions infrastructure and US$603 million to most states in a sweeping settlement that must still be approved by a federal judge.
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Volkswagen already spent €16.2bn in 2015 dealing with the scandal. “… It is regrettable that some states have made a decision to sue for environmental claims now”.
“A thorough explanation for [high] emissions can not be given to authorities”, reads the first, according to the AG, including bracketed type. It said it continues to cooperate with the investigations.
On Tuesday, the attorneys general of NY and MA claimed that VW’s inability to comply with U.S. emissions standards had allegedly “reached the attention” of Matthias Mueller, the current Volkswagen CEO, and his predecessor Martin Winterkorn as early as July 2006. The suit said VW opted to install defeat software instead of larger tanks to save money.
All three suits allege violations of the states’ environmental laws, Reuters reports.
The latest lawsuit cites emails and other documents to allege a prolonged effort among dozens of Volkswagen employees in the US and Germany to equip vehicles with the devices and stonewall inquiries from regulators. Volkswagen declined interviews with those individuals mentioned in the NY suit.
Healey also took a vocal lead in the separate, multi-state suit that VW settled with consumers and regulators in June.
These devices detected when a vehicle was having its emissions checked and switched on full pollution controls, but during normal driving conditions they were not functional, meaning that cars pumped out up to 40 times more pollution. Engineers developed a technology that could eliminate traditional clattering noise of engines at start-up but it caused vehicles to exceed European emissions standards.
The company insists that senior management did not know about the defeat device, a claim contested by the suits filed Tuesday.
After the first known instance of the company rigging diesel engines with software to cheat emissions tests in 1999, VW spent much of the next decade perfecting its so-called defeat devices for use in Europe and then the USA, the attorneys general for New York, Maryland and MA said.
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“The allegations in complaints filed by certain states today are essentially not new and we have been addressing them in our discussions with USA federal and state authorities”. However, the company still faces possible civil penalties and criminal charges from the U.S. Justice Department. May sales gains were even stronger, a sign that the automaker is starting to put the diesel scandal behind it. Its U.S. sales have been down 7% in the first half of the year, although the United States accounts for only about 5% of its global sales.
