Volkswagen: no need for trial on emissions scandal

Volkswagen has said there will be no need for a trial this summer over damages related to its rigging of 600,000 diesel vehicles to cheat pollution control laws.

The carmaker does “not believe” a trial will be necessary after the company updates a judge on Thursday in relation to its proposed solution to address the polluting vehicles, it said in an agenda for the hearing.

Lawyers for about 600 plaintiffs in the case asked the judge for preparations for a summer trial “dependent on the status and progress” of VW’s proposal.

US district judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco, who is overseeing lawsuits against the company, has indicated that a summer trial might be necessary if VW can’t get the polluting vehicles to slash emissions or get off the road.

The judge set the April 21st deadline for the company to submit a detailed plan.

Investigators are struggling to make headway through data secured from more than 1,500 laptops and other devices that might prevent them from filing a complete report on the carmaker’s emissions cheating by the end of the month, according to people familiar with the status of the probe.

Volkswagen, based in Wolfsburg, Germany, admitted last year that it had manipulated diesel engines with a “defeat device” on some 11 million cars worldwide so emission controls switched on only during pollution tests.

A plan to fix the 8.5 million noncompliant cars in Europe was approved in December but failed to meet California’s emissions standards.

Volkswagen and US regulators have expressed doubt as to whether the cars can be fixed at all. A California regulator in March told state legislators it was unclear if a solution aside from scrapping the vehicles was possible.

“We do not believe any of the three generations of vehicle technologies for the two-litre vehicles can be repaired to meet their certified emissions levels,” Todd Sax, chief of the California Air Resources Board’s enforcement division, told a California Senate committee.

Jeannine Ginivan, a US spokeswoman for VW, declined to comment on the talks, as did Julia Valentine, a spokeswoman for the US Environmental Protection Agency.

Bloomberg