The action also leaves the possibility of a buyback for VW owners.
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The board also said the proposed fix was not fast enough.
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.
That finding will likely mean future fines for VW as the investigation continues.
“We agreed with CARB that the plan falls short in a lot of different areas”, Grundler said.
“How many more people suffered asthma attacks?” California spurned the automaker’s December recommendation for how to fix 2-liter diesel engines as “incomplete”.
The cars include Jetta, Golf and other popular models dating to the 2009 model year.
The California regulator said the plan lacked sufficient detail and didn’t adequately address “overall impacts on vehicle performance, emissions and safety”.
Although this rejection only applies to VW’s fix for 2.0-litre engines, a fix for the firm’s 3.0-litre engines is due to be submitted to CARB next month.
In a statement, VW said that, in the time since its latest proposal was rejected, VW has been involved in ongoing discussions with both the EPA and CARB.
“Since then, Volkswagen has had constructive discussions with CARB, including last week when we discussed a framework”, the statement said.
He wouldn’t talk about what solutions the company will propose, but analysts say they will nearly certainly be expensive and involve major modifications to the exhaust systems or the addition of a chemical treatment system to turn nitrogen oxide into harmless nitrogen and oxygen.
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 USA equipped with illegal “defeat devices” that concealed excessive emissions. Details of how, if and when that approach might be taken have not been determined. But federal regulators have not shied away in recent days from publicly expressing their frustration with the company.
“Investors are betting that a solution will come out of Mueller’s meeting with the EPA”, said a Frankfurt-based trader.
“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.
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However, the meeting with the EPA risked being overshadowed by an interview in which Mueller appeared to play down the seriousness of the cheating by Europe’s biggest carmaker.
