NY and MA combined are claiming that Volkswagen and its affiliates sold more than 40,000 vehicles in the two states armed with “defeat devices”.
Advertisement
Three US states have taken legal action against Volkswagen in the wake of the carmaker’s emissions scandal.
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman says the lawsuits expose “a culture of deeply rooted arrogance” and should serve as a warning to other companies that illegality will not be tolerated.
New York, Massachusetts and Maryland are suing Volkswagen and its affiliates Audi and Porsche over diesel emissions cheating, accusing the German automakers of defrauding customers, misleading regulators and then seeking to cover up the deception.
It noted a pattern of actions taken to deceive the public and regulators that featured the emissions-cheating devices being installed to “over and over” bypass environmental laws in NY and MA.
The state took action to put “all auto manufacturers (on notice) that violating laws created to protect our environment and our public health is unacceptable and will be punished with significant penalties”.
VW’s US$15.3 billion in lawsuit settlements with federal regulators, auto owners and 44 states covers only 2009 models and later. The agreement provides $10 billion to buy back the 2.0-liter turbodiesel models sold by the VW and Audi brands in the USA since 2009.
But the German company announced another €2.2 billion provision related to its emissions scandal.
“This “clean diesel” was nothing more than a dirty cover-up”, Healey said late Tuesday.
The company still needs to address the same issue on 3.0 liter engines with cheat devices in Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche models cars. Volkswagen spokeswoman Jeannine Ginivan criticized the states’ decision to file suits and said the company already had agreed to spend billions of dollars to address all environmental harm from the excess emissions.
VW’s Audi and Porsche units, as well as their USA divisions, are named as defendants in the lawsuits.
The three companies have been accused of selling diesel cars with illegal “defeat devices” that were installed to hide the actual amounts of harmful emissions, as well as allegedly to try and cover-up their “corrupt behavior”. In real-world conditions, however, they could produce as much as 35 times more smog-causing oxides of nitrogen, according to WVU researchers. VW used the devices even after the EPA began looking into the software to determine its objective, according to the complaint.
Advertisement
Internally, there is evidence that some senior managers, including former VW CEO Winterkorn and now-ousted global marketing chief Christian Klingler, knew about the use of a defeat device, the NY lawsuit claims. The Justice Department and Environmental Protection Agency haven’t reached a deal with VW on fines as part of a separate settlement that could bring in an outside monitor to oversee compliance.
