In its notice rejecting Volkswagen’s recall plans for 2.0L engines, CARB said that “VW’s submissions are incomplete, substantially deficient, and fall far short of meeting the legal requirements to return these vehicles to the claimed certified configuration”.
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“We made a priority decision to focus on heavy-duty diesel trucks at the time, and that’s why we didn’t catch it”, he said. Admittedly, there are some worries about the effectiveness of Volkswagen’s fix itself, but much of CARB’s focus has to do with the administration of the recall rather than with the repair plan itself.
“We made a default, we had… not the right interpretation of the American law”, he said in an interview with NPR that aired on Monday.
The rejection by CARB and the EPA also comes two days after Volkswagen CEO Matthias Mueller said of his company’s reaction to the EPA’s findings, “We didn’t lie”. “And then we worked since 2014 to solve the problem”.
Following the meeting both Müller and McCarthy said that they would continue to work together to find a solution to the crisis, although details on whether concrete plans had been agreed upon and what those plans entailed were not disclosed.
The rejection only addresses initial plans that were submitted in late November, the company said in an e-mailed statement.
Volkswagen’s chief executive, Matthias Mueller, is scheduled to meet in Washington with EPA head Gina McCarthy to discuss how the German automaker plans to deal with almost 600,000 of its cars in the U.S. equipped with illegal “defeat devices” that concealed excessive emissions.
VW has apologized many times since the scandal broke in 2015, yet many feel that these apologies are insufficient. Federal and state regulators have separately demanded recall plans for another 80,000 larger diesel vehicles from the Volkswagen Group-including Audis and Porsches-for containing other emissions defeat devices.
The CARB also says that VW’s documentation lacks enough information for a “technical evaluation”, as well as not addressing “overall impacts on vehicle performance, emissions and safety”. Last month, German regulators had approved a technical fix for its European cars, permitting the automaker to start recall this month of almost nine million cars.
Volkswagen’s efforts to smooth over its emissions-cheating scandal in the USA are off to a bad start.
Recall plans for diesel vehicles with 3.0L engines were not included in the discussion because Volkswagen has until February to submit its proposals for those cars.
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Besides rejecting the proposed fix, CARB slapped Volkswagen with 13 different violations of California regulations. “However, it’s unfortunate because it continues to delay getting consumers the answers and solutions they want, need, and deserve”.
