German automaker Volkswagen said Thursday that the USA cars identified as having been fitted with software to cheat on emissions tests include a few vehicles with a newer diesel engine.
Advertisement
Company officials told reporters two weeks ago that the cost associated with the deception may top the $7.4 billion, or $6.5 billion euros, the company has set aside to pay for the scandal, Reuters said.
When the news of Volkswagen’s emissions cheating scandal first broke last month, the automaker said that 11 million vehicles were affected worldwide.
Shareholder advocates and former employees have criticized what they said was a culture inside Volkswagen that centralized decision making at company headquarters in Wolfsburg, Germany, and discouraged open discussion of problems, creating a climate in which people may have been fearful of speaking up.
While cars with larger, 2-litre, engines will be corrected with a simple software upgrade, the smaller 1.6-litre engines will require more expensive and complex hardware adjustments in addition to the software patch.
The recalled vehicles contain “defeat devices” that optimize their engines to perform well during emissions testing.
Volkswagen said Thursday that it was investigating whether substantially more vehicles than previously disclosed were equipped with software meant to deceive emissions tests.
The EA 189 engines were central to Volkswagen’s marketing of “clean diesel” cars that were billed as offering fuel economy and emissions competitive with gasoline engines. The EA 288 engine already is part of that tally, said Jeannine Ginivan, a spokeswoman for VW’s American division.
The software, known as a “defeat device”, allowed the cars to beat lab tests, but it was revealed that the cars emitted 40 times what they tested at when driving around in the wild.
Market experts presume that about 120,000 Volkswagen and Audi vehicles might have been manipulated in South Korea by the same software found by the USA environment regulators and be subject to a recall.
Advertisement
Volkswagen shares rebounded 3.39 percent to 103,80 euros on Frankfurt’s DAX 30 index which closed up 2.48 percent overall on hints of more economic stimulus by the European Central Bank.
