Volkswagen AG agreed on Tuesday to a $1 billion settlement to repurchase or fix roughly 80,000 polluting 3.0-liter diesel VW, Porsche and Audi vehicles.
Volkswagen said it would offer to buy back or fix 20,000 polluting diesel vehicles with 3-liter, six-cylinder diesel engines in the US, fix another 63,000 vehicles and pay $225 million toward environmental remediation efforts.
The settlement was announced by U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer during a hearing in San Francisco.
Breyer said owners will see substantial compensation on top of any repairs or a buyback.
Hinrich Woebcken, president and chief executive of Volkswagen Group of America, said in a statement that the deal represents “another important step forward in our efforts to make things right for our customers.”
“We are committed to earning back the trust of all our stakeholders and thank our customers and dealers for their patience as the process moves forward.”
The settlement pertaining to the 3-liter diesel models is the latest in a string of suits related to the carmaker’s diesel emissions cheating scandal.
In June, the company agreed to pay $14.7 billion to address claims over a separate batch of approximately 475,000 2-liter engine vehicles sold since 2008 that were equipped with secret software to make them appear cleaner in testing than they really were.
