After working to finalize the settlement covering the buyback and recall program over their cheating four-cylinder, 2.0-liter turbodiesel engines, Volkswagen is going to have to work out another deal soon on the larger 3.0-liter TDI turbodiesel engine. Reported in the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag from an unknown source, US regulators have discovered 3 new unapproved software programs that work together to turn off the emissions control equipment in some diesel models after a specific period of time.

Most tests for emissions compliance takes around about 20 minutes, which lead the cheating engines to shut down the emissions control systems after around 22 minutes. The engine was found in certain VW Touareg, Porsche Cayenne, and AudiQ7 models, all of which have suspended sales in the US.

WV Touareg

Volkswagen, along with Audi had proposed a fix to the California Air Resources Board (CARB) for the 3.0-liter engines for anyone who wished to keep their vehicles instead just having them recalled, but that was rejected due to the proposal being too nonspecific. They’re going to have to keep working on some sort of viable solution in order to move past this scandal. There are 16,000 of the 3.0-liter diesels in California and 85,000 across the rest of the country. It’s not likely that they’ll make two separate fixes for California and the rest of the US, but they will have to create a solution that is acceptable to CARB in order to move on.

TDI Engine

Because of the emissions cheats scandal, Volkswagen took out a charge of roughly $18 billion to set aside in order to cover its’ nearly $15 billion settlement deal. There has been questions of whether they will need more than what they’ve already set aside to cover potential litigation costs in other countries. If they do need to come up with more money, the total cost could exceed $27 billion. 

There have been no comments from the EPA regarding the issue, and there isn’t a lot of information on it at this point, but it will be interesting to see what happens next.