Volkswagen’s emissions scandal broke in mid-September when US authorities discovered software that disabled emissions controls except when they were being tested.
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Roughly 11 million Volkswagen and Audi vehicles worldwide have the cheat software, including more than 480,000 in the U.S.
The fear is that this new software could potentially be determined to be a “defeat device” (along with the other software which VW admitted to using) created to achieve better emissions results in a testing environment. In 2012 and 2013, the latest years for which data is available, companies agreed to 67 emissions recalls covering about 4 million vehicles, she said.
Furthermore, the Italian police raided the Lamborghini head office in Bologna as well, with Lamborghini being the subsidiary of Volkswagen Group. Volkswagen then expanded the mandatory recall to cover all of its diesel fleet across Europe.
Matthias Mueller, recently installed chief executive officer of the automaker, said the KBA decision “opens … the possibility of a common and coordinated response in all European Union states”. “Such a unified procedure would be in the European spirit as well as in the interests of customers”.
Naming a compliance executive was a step taken by Daimler AG and German industrial equipment maker Siemens after bribery scandals there.
And on Friday Italian business raised concerns for the country’s auto parts manufacturers, and the Bank of Italy said in its monthly bulletin that the VW crisis adds “a new element of uncertainty for European economies”, with repercussions “still hard to evaluate”.
Volkswagen is facing pressure from KBA.
The fix will be free for customers, it said.
Instead of waiting for VW to signal it is ready to recall the vehicles, Germany regulators have said the recall must begin in early 2016, though the fix on smaller engines is not likely to go ahead until later in the year. Dobrindt said only 2.4 million Volkswagen diesel cars with the software are still registered in Germany. The plan will be costly.
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Estimates from Credit Suisse peg the costs of the scam, dubbed Dieselgate, at as much as a whopping $87 billion, three times more than the estimated $20 billion that British oil major BP incurred in the worst oil spill in the Deepwater Horizon disaster that occurred offshore USA in 2010.
