California officials on Tuesday rejected Volkswagen’s plans to recall and fix 75,688 diesel cars equipped with software to cheat on air pollution tests, saying the proposals lacked so many key details that the state couldn’t tell whether they would work.
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The Caiifornia regulator also issued a notice of violation to VW for the diesel cars in question.
Volkswagen Group CEO Matthias Müller is scheduled to meet with US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) head Gina McCarthy on Wednesday to cover the Dieselgate scandal, which spread to 11 million cars worldwide, across four different Volkswagen brands.
After his speech at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, Mr. Meuller spoke with National Public Radio (NPR) and when asked if VW had lied about the cars, Meuller said, “we didn’t lie”.
In a statement last week addressing the EPA’s plan to take VW to court, Assistant Administrator Cynthia Giles, who represents the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, said that legal action was an initial step in “bringing VW to justice”.
VW first admitted in September that the suspect software was installed in about 500,000 cars nationwide with its popular 2.0-liter diesel engines.
The EPA, itself awaiting VW’s formal proposals, backed the California regulator.
The CARB said VW’s proposed fix was not adequate or fast enough, according to a report from Reuters and several other media organizations.
California’s Air Resources Board (CARB) has rejected Volkswagen’s proposal for how it will deal with the recall of its vehicles in the state. Rather, he said, the scandal was down to a “misunderstanding of USA law”.
CARB has previously extended the deadline to consider Volkswagen’s proposed solutions, in light of new information that the automaker was providing the agency, announcing its reply on January 12.
Similarly, CARB is very wary about evaluating the plan (which isn’t surprising, given the fact that Volkswagen engineered diesels to cheat on emissions tests from 2009 to 2015).
At the time, he said the company had made “much progress” in its discussions with the EPA and CARB and he was “confident we will be able to reach a solution soon”.
“They continued and compounded the lie and when they were caught they tried to deny it”, Nichols continued. “It’s up to Volkswagen to live up to its promises and obligations to consumers – and that starts by being honest with the American public, providing regulators with requested documents and coming clean on how they intend to address the very real problems with their vehicles”.
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He said: “I believe they considerably underestimated the readiness in America to resolve the issue seriously and effectively”.
