German automaker, Volkswagen AG has reached a $1 billion settlement to fix or buy back another 80,000 polluting U.S. diesel vehicles.
The automobile manufacturer had on Tuesday taken new steps to put its emissions cheating scandal behind it.
The settlement deal covered luxury VW, Audi and Porsche vehicles with 3.0-liter engines, meaning Volkswagen has now agreed to spend as much as $17.5 billion in the U.S. to resolve claims over polluting diesels from owners as well as federal and state regulators.
However, the world’s No. 2 automaker still faces the possibility of spending billions of dollars more to resolve a U.S. Justice Department criminal investigation and federal and state environmental claims.
The agreement, settling part of litigation brought against VW by federal and California regulators, “is another important step forward in our efforts to make things right for our customers,” Hinrich Woebcken, CEO of Volkswagen Group of America, said in a statement.
Volkswagen also agreed to boost electric vehicle efforts in California as part of the settlement and faces additional costs as it works to finalize an agreement to provide substantial compensation to the owners of the 3.0-liter vehicles, Automotive News reports.
U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer announced the settlement during a hearing in San Francisco. Breyer in October approved VW’s earlier settlement worth about $15 billion with regulators and the U.S. owners of 475,000 polluting diesel vehicles with smaller 2.0-liter engines, including an offer to buy back all of the cars.
