“We are committed to working co-operatively with CARB and other regulators, and we plan to continue our discussions tomorrow when we meet with EPA”.
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Now however the Californian Air Resource Board has detailed the fix as “incomplete, substantially deficient and falls far short of meeting the legal requirements”.
It sent VW a confidential letter detailing its objections.
The rejection only addresses initial plans that were submitted in late November, the company said in an e-mailed statement.
Volkswagen Chief Executive Officer Matthias Mueller is struggling find the right tone on his first official US visit, where he’s under pressure to placate lawmakers and regulators to emerge from the emissions-cheating scandal.
Regulators in California who have been empowered to conduct auto pollution emission tests have rejected a proposal from Volkswagen to fix vehicles that were involved in the company’s efforts to circumvent federal air quality standards. Its relations with the agency have been strained since then, and there’s still no confirmed solution for how to fix about 480,000 cars with 2-liter diesel engines in the U.S.
The California Air Resources Board rejected VW’s plan to fix 2.0 litre diesel cars equipped with software that allows them to emit up to 40 times legally allowable pollution.
And since the emissions scandal centers on Volkswagen’s use of a sophisticated “defeat device” to skirt regulations, any proposed remedy – whether that’s retrofitting cars with new parts or revising software codes – will need to be tested by California technicians before the plan is rolled out to consumers. Mueller said the problem was a misunderstanding in language, not a deception.
“Volkswagen made a decision to cheat on emissions tests and then tried to cover it up”, CARB Chairwoman Mary Nichols said in a statement. CARB wants to be able to assess whether the fixes work in individual cars and as a whole, and so far, Volkswagen hasn’t provided enough detail to ensure that. Officials said Tuesday the plan Volkswagen had submitted lacks enough information for them to make a technical evaluation, and did not adequately address vehicle performance, emissions, and safety issues.
The regulator has also issued a formal notice of violation against Volkswagen. “When they resolve a matter with one entity, they will likely face many additional investigations all driven by the same facts”, says Heaphy.
In the eyes of the EPA, CARB and definitely the public.
Last week, Volkswagen chairman Herbert Diess said that he is optimistic that the automaker will explore the solution soon.
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Finally, CARB said the proposal did not sufficiently explain potential effects on “the engine, the vehicle’s overall operation, and all related emission control technologies, including the OBD system”. Contradictory statements from Volkswagen’s leadership, at times condemning their own behavior, and at others claiming that the company had never lied to its customers, have led critics to call such attempts insincere.
