“Substantial” Progress Seen in Talks on VW’s Cheater V-6 Diesels

Negotiators are making “substantial” progress about what to do with more than 80,000 Audi, Porsche and Volkswagen vehicles in the U.S. that are equipped with high-polluting V-6 diesels.

So says U.S. District Court Judge Charles Breyer, who is overseeing the matter from his court in San Francisco. He adds that he is “very optimistic” that VW and the U.S. Dept. of Justice will soon reach agreement. Breyer has ordered the carmaker to provide another progress report no later than Dec. 1.

Sources tell Reuters that VW may agree to buy back about 21,000 of the oldest affected vehicles and offer to fix the others. Settlement discussions have not yet addressed compensation for owners and possible environmental remediation penalties against the company.

The V-6 engines were not part of VW’s $15.3 billion settlement in June that covers 475,000 vehicles powered by 4-cylinder diesels. VW secretly rigged those engines so they ould pass pollution certification tests but later emit as much as 40 times the allowable levels of smog-forming nitrogen oxides.

Regulators say the V-6 engines, which are fitted with a different type of defeat device, exceed allowable NOx levels by as much as nine times in real-world driving.