U.S. regulators seek painless Volkswagen fix

DETROIT • The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency wants Volkswagen AG to come up with a solution to its emissions-rigging scandal that has zero negative impact on the vehicles’ owners, an agency director said Wednesday, a day after it rejected the automaker’s recall plans.

“( We) continue to insist on an expeditious fix that will not only bring these vehicles into compliance but do so in a way that doesn’t create any adverse impacts for the owners, and we’re not there yet,” Christopher Grundler, director of the EPA’s office of transportation and air quality, said in a speech to the Automotive News World Congress in Detroit.

On Tuesday, the EPA and the California Air Resources Board ( CARB) rejected the recall plan that Volkswagen had submitted for two- litre diesel passenger vehicles sold between 2009 and 2015. Those vehicles were equipped with software that turned on pollutioncontrol systems only when a car was undergoing emissions tests. When the controls were turned off, some cars exceeded pollution limits by as much as 40 times.

The California regulator said the plan lacked sufficient detail and didn’t adequately address “overall impacts on vehicle performance, emissions and safety.” Volkswagen CEO Matthias Mueller said last weekend he believed a new catalytic converter could be fitted to most affected vehicles in a way that would satisfy regulators, but apparently this wasn’t enough.

“We agreed with CARB that the plan falls short in a lot of different areas,” Grundler said. When asked if Volkswagen was close to a plan that would satisfy the EPA, Grundler said he couldn’t give details about ongoing enforcement matters.

However, he did acknowledge that the agency feels “personally responsible” for not detecting the so- called defeat device sooner, and said it’s “in a hurry” to get it fixed.

“But also, ( the auto) industry is investing billions and billions of dollars to meet these standards and if we don’t do our job right, all those investments are at risk, and that’s wrong.”

It wasn’t the EPA, but rather a little-known group called the International Council on Clean Transportation that first discovered Volkswagen’s defeat device.

Grundler said this was because, at the time, the EPA tested only passenger cars in the lab. It did have the technology to test emissions in real-world driving situations, but it only did those tests on heavy-duty diesel trucks.

“We made a priority decision to focus on heavy- duty diesel trucks at the time, and that’s why we didn’t catch it,” he said. “That’s a lesson learned.” He added the agency is now testing all vehicles in “new and unpredictable ways.”

At the North American International Auto Show in Detroit this week, Herbert Diess, chairman of Volkswagen passenger cars, vowed to make things right with customers. “We know we have let down our customers … and for that I am truly sorry,” he said.

At the time, he said the company had made “much progress” in its discussions with the EPA and CARB and he was “confident we will be able to reach a solution soon.”

Volkswagen CEO Mueller was scheduled to meet EPA head Gina McCarthy in Washington on Wednesday.