CARB, EPA Reject Volkswagen's Fix for 2-liter Diesels

by Aaron Cole

Updated: November 6th, 2020 Published: January 12th, 2016

The California Air Resources Board and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rejected Tuesday Volkswagen’s proposed fix for its illegally polluting 2-liter diesel engines and said the automaker’s plan lacked enough detail and information.

“Volkswagen made a decision to cheat on emissions tests and then tried to cover it up,” said CARB Chair Mary D. Nichols. “They continued and compounded the lie and when they were caught they tried to deny it. The result is thousands of tons of nitrogen oxide that have harmed the health of Californians. They need to make it right. Today’s action is a step in the direction of assuring that will happen.”

According to a letter sent to Volkswagen, the automaker’s plans were “incomplete, substantially deficient, and fall far short of meeting the legal requirements.”

The rejection letter was accompanied by a new notice of non-compliance for the automaker’s diesel vehicles. It’s unclear from the notice whether Volkswagen faces additional penalties for submitting a rejected proposal.

In a statement, Volkswagen said it was meeting with CARB and EPA regulators to discuss a potential fix, and that the rejection applied to a plan that it sent in December.

The rejection is the latest chapter of an ongoing saga between the automaker and regulators to fix nearly 500,000 cheating cars. Last month, the EPA filed a lawsuit against the automaker, seeking billions in damages, and said officials at Volkswagen were withholding information vital to fix their cars.

In an interview with NPR, Volkswagen chief Matthias Müller said the automaker didn’t intentionally cheat, but rather that the company misunderstood the law.

#CaliforniaAirResourcesBoard #EnvironmentalProtectionAgency #Volkswagen #VwDieselScandal

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Kosmo on Jan 13, 2016

Advice to Muller: Anybody: Could we get an interview, Mr. Muller? Muller: I am sorry, but no, I am devoting all available time to fixing this problem we have caused. It's simple. Be polite, be apologetic, and BE FIXING THE PROBLEM IN A TIMELY MANNER. He is blowing this up to the point that it will end up being quietly settled at the Secretary of State level -- though that will never appear to be the case. And if that happens, VW will pay a huge debt to Ms. Merkel somewhere down the road.

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- 28-Cars-Later on Jan 13, 2016
  
  I know I'm going off on a tangent and acknowledge it in advance but in your VW-German Gov't scenario my thought on Merkel is f*** her. VAG is one of the if not the most powerful industrial concern in Germany, any "fine" money spent is much better spent overthrowing the traitor Merkel's gov't and replacing it with something backed by VAG. The ensuing chaos doesn't excuse VAG fines in the US or other nations but it takes pressure and attention off of them for a time and allows VAG to install a new friendly gov't who forgives any fines for help in reshaping the new country for the better.
  
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- Pch101 on Jan 13, 2016
  
  You wrongly assume that it's easy to fix this in a timely manner. The most effective solutions are simply too expensive to implement, so there is a need to negotiate. How do you think that it got this way in the first place?
  
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- 28-Cars-Later on Jan 13, 2016
  
  @Pch101 VAG seems to have steamed off the US authorities which brought this to light in the first place. What incentive is there for them to negotiate with VAG now?
  
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- Pch101 on Jan 13, 2016
  
  @28-Cars-Later The feds are obviously miffed, no doubt, but something will be negotiated eventually. The point remains that a technical fix that complies fully with the law is probably impossible. If there was an easy quick affordable fix, then it would have already been underway a long time ago (and the law probably would not have been violated in the first place.)
  
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- 28-Cars-Later on Jan 13, 2016
  
  @Pch101 I am in agreement.
  
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Zip89123 on Jan 13, 2016

I love it. A bunch of government appointee's without a background in anything but Brown nosing making rules for everyone else without qualifications.

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- Highdesertcat on Jan 13, 2016
  
  That's life here in these United States.......
  
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Storz on Jan 13, 2016

Think this rejection improves the odds of a buy back from VW?

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George B on Jan 13, 2016

Seems to me that there are many different variants of the Volkswagen 2.0 liter diesel. Surprised that Volkswagen wasn't able to get approval for changes to get the most recent ones, the ones with DEF hardware, into compliance with at least the EPA regulations. Not surprised that Volkswagen is having more trouble engineering a retrofit kits for the older models without DEF hardware. Not trivial to add the fluid tank to several different models.

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