Volkswagen Group agreed Tuesday to spend up to $14.7 billion in civil penalties and consumer compensation to settle numerous lawsuits for cheating on diesel emissions tests.
The proposed settlement would partially, but not completely, cover claims from the Justice Department, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Federal Trade Commission, along with a class-action lawsuit from consumers who bought the vehicles, officials said.
{mosads}Up to $10.03 billion of the total will go toward repairing or buying back Volkswagen and Audi branded cars with 2-liter diesel engines, a number of roughly 475,000 cars in the United States from model year 2009 to 2015. Each owner would also get up to $10,000 to settle their claims.
Another $2.7 billion will go to environmental mitigation for the nitrogen oxides and other pollutants that the diesel engines emitted above legal limits, while $2 billion will go toward research on zero-emissions technology for vehicles.
A California federal judge must approve the settlement.
The emissions scandal started last year, when the EPA revealed that Volkswagen had programmed diesel cars to emit fewer pollutants during emissions tests than during regular operations.
It quickly ballooned into a worldwide problem for the German automaker, which admitted to building millions of cars in a way meant to fool air regulators globally over seven years.
This story was updated at 10:11 a.m.
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