VW agrees to pay 3.0L diesel owners $7,000 to $16,000 after emissions scandal

Late Tuesday night, the plaintiff’s committee suing Volkswagen Group on behalf of customers who bought 3.0L diesel vehicles announced that it struck a deal with VW Group to compensate the owners of approximately 75,000 vehicles.

The vehicles, including VW SUVs, Audis, and Porsches, were discovered in 2015 to have illegal software on them that would engage the car’s emissions control system under lab testing conditions and circumvent the car’s emissions control system to give better performance under normal driving conditions.

Volkswagen’s cheating was discovered in September 2015 in almost 500,000 2.0L diesels. Similar software was found on approximately 80,000 3.0L vehicles a few months later, so lawsuits pertaining to those cars have been on a separate but parallel legal track.

About 75,000 3.0L diesel owners and lessees are participating in the class-action lawsuit against VW Group. The settlement details announced today split up the 3.0L diesel vehicles into “Generation 1” cars, which are from model years 2009 to 2012, and “Generation 2” vehicles, from model years 2013 to 2016. Affected cars include VW Touareg; Audi Q7, A6, A7, A8, A8L, Q5; and Porsche Cayenne Diesels. Generation 1 cars can’t be repaired to meet their officially certified emissions standards, so owners of these cars will be eligible for a buyback from VW Group. Generation 2 vehicles, on the other hand, will likely be able to be fully repaired, so VW Group may not have to buy those cars back if the company can get a fix approved by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

VW Group is still working on a fix for both Generation 1 and Generation 2 cars, but if VW Group can come up with a suitable plan for Generation 1 cars, owners and lessees will be able to have their cars fixed instead of bought back.

For Generation 2 vehicles, VW Group must have fixes for its various cars within the "3.0L, Generation 2" subcategory approved by the EPA and CARB by October 23, November 8, and December 20, 2017. If deadlines for the specific models aren’t met, VW Group can have a 90-day extension, but it will have to pay an extra $500 per vehicle, per 30-day period, directly to the consumer for the delay, according to Elizabeth Cabraser, the court-appointed lead counsel for the Volkswagen consumer plaintiffs. If VW Group can’t get a fix approved by the end of that 90-day extension, the plaintiffs will ask the court to approve an expedited process for a buyback of the vehicles.

In addition, if VW Group’s projected fix for Generation 2 vehicles affects performance of the car at all, customers are eligible for an additional $500 per affected vehicle.

VW Group is ordered to buy back eligible vehicles at the trade-in price that the National Automobile Dealer’s Association listed for those vehicles in September 2015, just before the emissions scandal was made public.

Getting the cars fixed is an important part of the settlement for VW Group, as it is prohibited from reselling the cars it buys back—even in other countries—until they can be fixed according to US regulations. Hundreds of thousands of cars are already sitting in VW Group-established parking lots around the country.

Owners and lessees of both Generation 1 and Generation 2 cars will also be eligible for cash compensation on top of any buyback or fixes. Generation 1 customers will get $7,755 to $13,880 and Generation 2 customers will get $7,039 to $16,114, depending on the car. Lessees of Generation 1 cars will be allowed to terminate their lease without incurring any penalties.

The projected payments equal about $1.2 billion for VW Group, on top of the $15 billion the German automaker has to pay for cheating emissions regulations on its 2.0L diesel vehicles.