VW Reportedly Buying Back Some Dieselgate Cars
While Volkswagen has yet to submit a sufficient fix for all of its vehicles affected by the dieselgate scandal, the German automaker has reportedly already begun buying back cars.
According to a report by The Truth About Cars, Volkswagen will buy-back affected cars from dealerships’ certified pre-owned (CPO) inventories, meaning that as of yet, there isn’t a buy-back program in effect for customer cars.
In September it was revealed that Volkswagen vehicles do not comply with the EPA’s NOx emission standards, and have been cheating the test cycle since 2008.
The buy-back program is reportedly also limited to first-generation clean-diesel cars sporting the EA189 engine that used lean NOx traps (LNTs) and exhaust gas recirculation (EGR), instead of the newer vehicles equipped with selective catalytic reduction (SCR) systems that rely on a urea-based diesel exhaust fluid (DEF) solution to reduce NOx emissions.
It was rumored that fixing these first-generation clean diesel vehicles, which didn’t use a DEF, would be hard to do without new hardware, with some speculating that it could cost $2,500 in parts alone to make the vehicles compliant with current emission standards.
Vehicles equipped with updated versions of the EA189 engine that used DEF and SCR systems are considered fixable and aren’t likely to be included in a buy-back program. There is currently no plan in place for VW to acquire affected new vehicles from dealer inventories.
Sami has an unquenchable thirst for car knowledge and has been at AutoGuide for the past six years. He has a degree in journalism and media studies from the University of Guelph-Humber in Toronto and has won multiple journalism awards from the Automotive Journalist Association of Canada. Sami is also on the jury for the World Car Awards.
More by Sami Haj-Assaad
Comments
Join the conversation
Dieselgate? For cryin out loud, stop adding "gate" to every scandal! Otherwise the break-in at the Watergate hotel would be the Watergategate scandal. It's stupid. But seeing as how these are turbo diesels cars, you could legitimately call it the wastegate scandal.