The patch needs to be approved by the U.S. EPA, with which new VW CEO Matthias Mueller is meeting on Wednesday, Bild said.
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CEO Matthias Mueller said that as of now VW has only given technical data to the Environmental Protection Agency and the California Air Resources Board. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy indicated this week that a technical solution to bring the affected cars into compliance has not been identified as of the first week of January.
Global sales of the namesake VW brand fell 4.8 percent to 5.8 million vehicles in 2015, the first decline in 11 years, including a 7.9 percent decrease in December.
U.S. regulators have rejected Volkswagen’s recall plan for diesel cars equipped with emissions “cheat” devices.
“We know we deeply disappointed our customers, the responsible government bodies and the general public here in the U.S.”, Mueller says.
“Consumers are pretty smart and this is being recognized as a big problem for one company, and I don’t think people are translating that into questions about diesel in general”, Schaeffer said. This results in cars that meet emissions standards in the laboratory and at the test site, but during normal on-road driving emit oxides of nitrogen (NOx) at levels up to 40 times the EPA compliance level. “It’s part of the solutions we want to discuss with Mrs McCarthy Wednesday”, he explained.
“We suppose that that should be enough”, Mr Mueller said in an interview with Reuters TV at the Detroit auto show.
However, Volkswagen executives ensured the EPA they recognized the fact that the company’s troubles in the U.S. were far from over. Volkswagen’s emissions cheating emerged there in September.
Vehicles bearing the Volkswagen badge once captured seven percent of the American auto market before sales plummeted and hit rock bottom in the 1990s.
The U.S. formally asked German prosecutors to share evidence in the investigation of Volkswagen AG as officials around the globe work to coordinate dozens of probes into the company’s emissions scandal. Horn said it took automaker’s management team in Germany two weeks to approve the 1,000-dollar “bonus” for the U.S. owners, something that under the prior management would have taken six months.
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Volkswagen is set to invest a further $900 million at its Chattanooga, Tennessee factory to build a new mid-sized sport utility vehicle that is expected to roll of the assembly line by the end of this year.
