Following a hearing in San Francisco Thursday, US District Judge Charles Breyer said German carmaker Volkswagen had reached an agreement in principle to provide what he called "substantial compensation" to the owners of about 80,000 3.0-liter polluting diesel vehicles.

The judge didn't disclose the amount of the owner compensation, saying only that the details of the out-of-court settlement would be hammered out by the end of January 2017.

Breyer said half of the total compensation would be paid at the time he granted final approval of the deal.

Costly affair

Earlier this week, VW reached a $1-billion (960-million-euro) settlement with US regulators, offering to buy back about 20,000 of the vehicles and paying $225 million into an environmental trust fund to offset the cars' excess emissions.

In September of last year, the Wolfsburg-based company admitted it had used emissions-cheating devices in about 11 million cars worldwide to manipulate pollution tests in the lab.

In the US, Europe's largest automaker already reached a separate deal with the owners of manipulated 2.0-liter diesel cars, costing it up to $16.5 billion. Last week, VW struck a deal with Canadian 2.0-liter car drivers, who were to get some 1.5 billion euros in compensation.

hg/jd (dpa, Reuters)