Volkswagen's lawyer has announced that it may buy back some diesel cars throughout the United States if the company cannot make owners compliant with air quality rules fast enough.
Robert Giuffra has been defending the Wolfsburg, Germany based company against "class-action suits by owners of tainted diesel vehicles". The statement released by Giuffra indicates that the company "may not have the technology to bring emissions for some of the cars into line with regulations without hurting performance and fuel economy."
Giuffra further said that Volkswagen is in the process of finding a solution. However, he said that "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. 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 is facing hundreds of lawsuits from both owners and dealers of their diesel-powered cars. These people have claimed that they have been left stuck with cars that have fallen short of their value "after the company admitted rigging them to cheat on emissions tests." A total of 575,000 vehicles is said to be affected with this situation.
The company admits that they have not found any alternative to reduce emissions that is satisfactory to the federal and California regulations. The company explained that it is better to buy back the affected vehicles rather than face legal claims from owners.
"We have no comment other than to say that Volkswagen continues to work cooperatively with E.P.A. and CARB to resolve these issues as quickly as possible with approved remedies for the affected vehicles," the company said, referring to California's Air Resources Board.
There is said to be about 320,000 Volkswagen diesel cars in the USA that are equipped with the first-generation motor EA 189, that is specifically the talk of this scandal.
