Early on into repairing the damages of its emissions scandal, it certainly appears that Volkswagen is having better luck in Germany than the United States.
On Wednesday, the embattled automaker was granted its first emissions-fix approval in Germany for one affected diesel model.
That came after the United States' Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and California Air Resources Board (CARB) rejected VW's proposed fix for an estimated 580,000 vehicles affected in the country, stemming from the automaker's emissions crisis.
It's so bad that it led to VW's second-largest shareholder giving the company a three-month deadline to come clean about the origins of its compromising of vehicles to better help relations in the U.S.
Well, projections for an emissions fix approval in the U.S. are looking so grim that VW could resort to buying back some of the affected diesel vehicles in the country, the company's lawyer said.
The New York Times is reporting that Robert Giuffra, an attorney defending VW against class action lawsuits of compromised diesel vehicles, gave a clear indication of a possible buyback during a court hearing statement.
Although Giuffra said that the automaker could eventually find a resolution, he offered, "the question though is one of timing."
"And for some of the vehicles it may well be that the timing is too far into the future," he continued. "So 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."
Volkswagen's official statement?
"We have no comment other than to say that Volkswagen continues to work cooperatively with EPA and CARB to resolve these issues as quickly as possible with approved remedies for the affected vehicles," VW said in a statement.
