Volkswagen has agreed to pay another $1.2 billion in buybacks and compensation to settle claims from the final group of customers affected by the company’s emission leaking scandal.
The settlement, which pays back owners of the most expensive vehicles affected, means the costs associated with the scandal will plateau at $24.3 billion in North America. It covers 75,000 Audi, VW and Porsche vehicles with 3.0-liter diesel engines.
Customers with older models that cannot be altered will be offered buybacks instead of fixes, while owners with newer vehicles will receive $16,114. If VW cannot find an effective fix, then buybacks could balloon above $4.04 billion, increasing the final cost above $25 billion.
“All of our customers with affected vehicles in the United States will have a resolution available to them,” said Hinrich Woebcken, head of VW’s America business. He also told reporters the company will work hard to earn back the trust of VW shareholders.
The settlement comes after VW executives and employees were charged in a 10-year conspiracy to dupe regulators on the environmental quality of its diesel vehicles.
The company also agreed in January to a $4.3 billion settlement, putting an end to the U.S. government’s investigations into the German automaker’s diesel emissions cheating.
VW will pay a $1.5-billion civil fine and $2.8-billion criminal fine, according to court documents. The company would have stiffer penalties had it refused to spend more than $11 billion to fix or buyback the nearly 500,000 tainted vehicles.
VW admitted in September 2015 to installing so-called defeat devices in hundreds of thousands of diesel-powered vehicles in the U.S. The devices would only kick on during road conditions when emission measuring tools were not engaged.
VW is not the only company laid low by the scandal.
Bosch, the German car component supplier, whose devices VW used to cheat the emissions tests, also agreed to pay $327.5 million. Bosch denies any wrongdoing.
The company admitted to supplying VW with the so-called cheat device allowing vehicles to click off the device at highway speeds, but said that “how these components are calibrated and integrated into complete vehicle systems is fundamentally the responsibility of each automaker.”
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