On Thursday a German newspaper reported that Volkswagen Group "assumes it will have to buy back about 115,000 cars in the United States," according to Reuters.

Volkswagen officials have been working with US regulators to come to an agreement about how best to fix the nearly 600,000 diesel vehicles in the US that were discovered to illegally include software—generically called a defeat device—that thwarts the emissions control system. Defeat devices helped some of Volkswagen Group’s cars pass emissions tests in a lab but allowed the cars to pollute more heavily when driving under normal conditions. In the 2.0-liter engine diesel cars especially, models were found to give off 40 times the amount of nitrogen oxide (NO x ) as is permitted by federal law.

The scandal eventually extended to Europe and then to global Volkswagen markets, with the company admitting that 11 million diesel passenger cars could have defeat devices on them. In Europe, at least, fixing the cheat was relatively easy for Volkswagen Group, with the approved fix taking under half an hour in most Volkswagen and Audi models.

But getting a fix approved by regulators in the US to bring the offending cars in line with the rules has proved much more difficult for Volkswagen due to stricter rules about NO x emissions in the US. On Tuesday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, VW Brand Chief Herbert Diess told Reuters that bringing older cars into compliance with emissions standards would be very difficult and costly for the company. "The intrusion into the car will be quite significant,” Diess said.

That statement seems to support what the German paper, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, reported Thursday morning local time. The paper wrote that Volkswagen might either refund the owner’s purchase price, "or offer a new car at a significant discount,” Reuters said. The paper added that Volkswagen Group vehicles that are not eligible for a buyback might have to get “major refits” to reduce the amount of NO x they emit.

The Environmental Protection Agency said earlier this week that it has not yet seen an “acceptable way forward” from Volkswagen in talks regarding how to recall the automaker’s affected vehicles. Also earlier this week, the US Department of Justice officially sued Volkswagen for violations of the Clean Air Act, asking for billions of dollars in fines.