Volkswagen insists it didn’t cheat in Europe

The European Union is busy turning the screws to force Volkswagen to compensate owners of its Dieselgate cars, Volkswagen today insisted the same technology that it admitted was an emissions cheat in the US was perfectly legal in Europe.

While it has been forced into paying up to US$16 billion to compensate US owner for cheating on laboratory emissions testing, Volkswagen insisted it hadn’t done anything wrong in Europe.

And then Volkswagen doubled down, insisting to Reuters that it couldn’t be proven that nitrogen oxide (NOx) gases it emitted too much of were harmful to people and the environment.

Desperate to avoid another multi-billion euro payout, Volkswagen today reiterated it had no plans to compensate the nearly 10 million customers affected by the Dieselgate crisis in Europe.

“The software contained in vehicles with a EA-189 engine in the view of Volkswagen represents no unlawful defeat device under European law," VW confirmed to Reuters and to German newspapers.

"The efficiency of the emissions cleanup system will not be reduced in those vehicles which however would be a prerequisite for the existence of an unlawful defeat device in the legal sense.

"A reliable determination of morbidity or even fatalities for certain demographic groups based on our level of knowledge is not possible from a scientific point of view," VW insisted.

Volkswagen is only about 10 percent of the way through repairing the “voluntarily” recalled Dieselgate cars and today received regulatory approval for the fix for its 1.6-litre TDI engines, it still flatly denies European owners are entitled to financial compensation or a buyback scheme.

It is compensating its US buyers to the point of buying back their cars at the pre-Dieselgate market rate, plus between US$5100 and US$10,000.

There are also straight financial compensations, plus recall fixes, for owners who prefer to stick with their cars, while Volkswagen is also liable to compensate multiple owners of the same affected car. The US settlement covers the 2.0-litre diesel Beetle, Golf, Jetta, Passat and Audi A3 models from 2009 to 2015.

Volkswagen has also hinted that any compensation push in Europe could impact its ability or its urgency in effecting repairs to cheater cars.

"Volkswagen wants to - in the special interest of customers - cooperate constructively and cooperatively hand in hand with the regulators as well as with the Federal Motor Vehicle Authority (Germany’s KBA, or Transport Department)," Volkswagen said. "This intensive cooperation should not be burdened by a contentious dispute."

But Volkswagen is raising the prospect of another fight for public perception by insisting it didn’t cheat in Europe, especially in the wake of thermal-switching fiddles by Ford, GM, Mercedes-Benz and Peugeot and Fiat’s timing switch, both of which were strategies to switch off the exhaust gas recirculation systems that help clean NOx emissions.

As Volkswagen’s year-long investigation shows no signs of delivering any culprits or publicly clarifying where the cheating scam originated, its US problems aren’t at an end.

It is still has several groups of holdout owners in the US who will seek their own class-action cases against the carmaker and it has yet to settle on a similar cheat on its Audi-designed 3.0-litre V6 TDI motors.

The four-cylinder EA189 Dieselgate motors ranged from 1.2 litres to 1.6 and 2.0 litres and were fitted to cars from Seat, Skoda, Volkswagen and Audi, while the 3.0-litre V6 TDI powered large cars and SUVs from Porsche, Audi and Volkswagen.

The giant carmaker announced today that the KBA had approved its planned recall to fix its 1.6-litre EA 189 TDI Dieselgate engines.

The plan, which Volkswagen insists will take about an hour per car, involves new software and an air-disrupting “flow conditioner” upstream of the mass airflow sensor in the air-intake system.

The KBA insisted the repair wouldn’t change the cars’ fuel consumption, performance or sound levels and would bring the cars back into line with its emissions limits.

Volkswagen began fixing the 2.0-litre TDI motors earlier this year and has also begun work on the 1.2-litre TDIs, too.