One way for Volkswagen to potentially deal with its emissions scandal, which affected nearly 600,000 cars in the United States, is for the automaker to buy the dirty diesels back and scrap them.
However, that might not happen in one state and maybe more as time goes on. Reuters is reporting that an enforcement official from the California Air Resources Board (CARB) informed a legislative hearing Tuesday that VW might not have a way to fully fix affected owners' vehicles in California, creating the opening for only partially-repaired cars being able to remain on roads.
"Our goal has been to fix the vehicles and return them to their certified configuration as expeditiously as possible," Todd Sax, chief of CARB's enforcement division, said, as reported by Reuters. "Unfortunately, this may not be possible."
In total, California is home to over 82,000 compromised VW vehicles, with CARB estimating that 65,000 to 70,000 of those are two-liter, four-cylinder diesel models and another 16,000 of them are three-liter, V6 diesel models, as reported by Reuters and USA Today. All 82,000-plus models are said to have "defeat devices" installed in them.
CARB's statement Tuesday follows its chair, Mary Nichols, who stated in November that VW's only option might be to buy back vehicles if it couldn't figure out how to properly modify them to meet U.S. regulation stadards. Two months later, in mid-January, CARB and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rejected VW's proposal to fix the nearly 600,000 affected vehicles in the U.S., saying the plans "contain gaps and lack sufficient detail," while failing to "adequately address overall impacts on vehicle performance, emissions and safety."
While the embattled automaker has yet to reach an agreement over an emissions fix in the U.S., its emissions recall is underway in Europe, where VW is beginning to repair 8.5 million compromised vehicles, which will require a software update or flow transformer device.
As per the report last month, VW's Amarok 2.0-liter Euro 5 diesel model was the first in line to receive the fix since there are 5.2 million of those models affected.
Thus far, there isn't any word on when CARB and the EPA will grant VW with a green light on a proposed recall.
