#EMission

A Seattle firm is claiming that Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and Cummins intentionally misled owners of Ram heavy-duty pickups with falsified emission information and substandard diesel motors.

A lawyer for Volkswagen said in court that the automaker would buy back cars that it can’t fix in time, the first admission from the company that some of its cars may not be fixable, according to the New York Times.

Volkswagen lawyer Robert Giuffra told a court last week during hearings related to the class-action lawsuits facing the automaker that the company hadn’t determined how many cars would be affected.

“We might have to do a buyback or some sort of a solution like that for some subset of the vehicles, but that hasn’t been determined yet,” Giuffra said according to the report.

A Dutch journalist said Opel dealers are secretly updating emissions control software to bring into compliance cars equipped with the 1.6-liter diesel engine, disguising the fix as an unrelated software update.

Opel issued a statement strongly denying that it was changing emissions of its cars.

Dutch news site VRT News said it tested two cars with and without the updates and said emissions of nitrogen oxides were significantly reduced — more than half in one car and by three-quarters in another car.