In the United States, about 482,000 cars are believed to be affected. Apart from the company’s VW brand, Audi, SEAT and Skoda cars can also be checked. This basically means a total of approximately 8.5 million vehicles in the European Union, out of which 2.4 million have been sold on its local market.
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The German Federal Motor Transport Authority or KBA, has given the deadline until end of November to submit the detailed technical plan of recall. Dobrindt said only 2.4 million needed to be recalled because the other 400,000 were no longer on the roads.
Several dealers said that while VW group sales have held up in September and the first half of October, it is still too early to see what the overall effect of the scandal will be on consumers’ long-term perception of the company’s various brands.
Volkswagen couldn’t talk German safety regulators into allowing “voluntary” recalls for cars equipped with software that cheats the system and makes official emissions tests obsolete.
VW has not yet given full details of the recall but said it would contact individual customers directly. It’s unclear when the remaining US cars would be fixed.
While a broad recall had been expected, the move reflects the difficulty that Volkswagen faces in fixing the 11 million vehicles worldwide that contain a so-called defeat device, which effectively lowered emissions for testing purposes. The Wolfsburg-based company is preparing to recall 8.5-million cars in Europe, one of the biggest such programmes ever in the region, after the emissions-test cheating became public on September 18. Additionally, the scandal has also wiped out a third of the company’s market value, making it the worst crisis in the automaker’s 78-year history.
New VW chief executive Matthias Mueller said the recall was likely to “stretch through the 2016 calendar year”.
“It’s an unusual measure to be ordering a mandatory recall”, Ellinghorst said.
The software was to be used by Volkswagen in the upcoming 2016 vehicle models.
Volkswagen has two main options to reduce emissions on these diesels: a software update, or added hardware.
Just as with the Environmental Protection Agency in the USA, German authorities will test cars to verify all repairs actually worked before the cars are certified.
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In afternoon trade Friday, Volkswagen’s shares were trading down 3.6 percent in Frankfurt.
