Older vehicles will need more extensive work on the exhaust system and could even need a chemical system to treat nitrogen oxide that would have to have a storage tank. The litigation is over software created to mislead emissions tests that should have revealed the cars violate pollution standards. Already, the automaker has lost billions of dollars in value since the diesel emissions scandal unfolded last September.
Advertisement
Germany’s government has waded into the Dieselgate emissions scandal by ordering 630,000 vehicles to be recalled to fix an engine management software issue that now sees the affected diesel engines produce excessive amounts of NOx emissions that pose a significant danger to health.
The company released its full year earnings on Friday, reporting a net loss of 5.5 billion euros ($6.2 billion) in 2015.
Details of the agreement must be made public by June 21.
Regulatory authorities and district attorneys all over the world are examining the auto maker after its admission in 2015, which impacted 11 million vehicles worldwide.
“The Volkswagen Group’s operations are in great shape, as the figures before special items for the past fiscal year clearly show”, VW CEO Matthias Mueller said in a statement.
Messages were left Friday for the EPA and the Justice Department. Terms for dealing with any models built by carmakers outside Germany will have to be agreed on with regulators that certify those vehicles, he said.
The Government has piled pressure on Volkswagen to ramp up compensation for United Kingdom owners caught up in the diesel emissions scandal.
Don Marron, a banker and self-described Volkswagen enthusiast from Allentown, Pennsylvania, who owns a diesel 2012 Jetta SportWagen, said he wants VW to offer him about $5,000 in compensation beyond the cost of any fix.
At this point the deal covers 482,000 VW models with 2-liter diesel engines dating to 2009. The agreements are “an important step forward on the road to making things right, ” the manufacturer said, according to the Wall Street Journal. There is still no official word on the 80,000 vehicles with the 3.0-liter TDI engine, which was also guilty of cheating, but reports indicate that this deal is in the works too.
Advertisement
The Justice Department and the Environmental Protection Agency are also weighing potential criminal charges against the company and senior executives.
