One of Volkswagen’s lawyers said at a court hearing today that the automaker thinks it has a fix for 85,000 3.0-liter diesel V6 VWs, Audis and Porsches that don’t meet emissions requirements, Reuters reports. The four-cylinder engines are another story.
The news site goes on to say that the Department of Justice has mentioned that 3.0-liter-powered Volkswagen Group vehicles are in the process of being tested, but that it may be a matter of months before there’s a resolution in place. From the story:
VW lawyer Robert Giuffra said the automaker believed the 3.0-liter vehicles were fixable and that the fix will not be “complicated” or negatively impact the vehicles’ performance.
The testing is to ensure the durability of the proposed fix, he said.
“The company believes that we can fix the 3.0 liter to the standards to which those cars were originally certified,” Giuffra said.
[Justice Department lawyer Joshua] Van Eaton said the talks were highly technical and it “takes time to be fully confident that whatever is being proposed is a technically sound solution.”
U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer hasn’t set a deadline for the fix, but there will be a hearing on August 25th to discuss the progress. Those V6 engines saw duty in the Volkswagen Touareg, Porsche Cayenne and various Audis.
While this could be very good news, the 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine was sold in much higher volumes (nearly half a million have been recalled), and, unfortunately, there’s still no fix for those. And there may never be one, as the consent decree from the Department of Justice makes us have our doubts. It reads:
At the present time, there are no practical engineering solutions that would,without negative impact to vehicle functions and unacceptable delay, bring the 2.0 Liter SubjectVehicles into compliance with the exhaust emission standards and the on-board diagnostics requirements to which VW certified the vehicles to EPA and CARB;
Still, it’s good that there may be a fix for the V6s, even if 85,000 3.0-liter V6 diesels compared to half a million 2.0-liter diesels seems like small potatoes.
Really, it’s still a big deal when you consider that if VW doesn’t find a fix, those 85,000 vehicles are likely to join their 2.0-liter counterparts at the junkyard. And junking out cars isn’t exactly the most environmentally friendly thing on this earth.