Washington- Volkswagen’s emissions cheating scandal widened Friday after the US Environmental Protection Agency said the German automaker used software to cheat on pollution tests on more six-cylinder diesel vehicles than originally thought.
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2 accused VW of evading emissions in at least 10,000 Audi, Porsche and VW sport utility vehicles and cars with 3.0-liter V-6 diesel engines.
Volkswagen and Audi officials have now come out and stated that more cars and engines from their brands were equipped with the emission tests defeat device.
CARB and EPA plan another meeting with senior VW officials to discuss the issue in the first week of December.
Europe’s largest auto maker has halted sales of all those vehicles in the USA amid discussions with regulators, a company spokeswoman said. The engines went into smaller VW and Audi cars in the U.S. The latest development means the diesel emission scandal has spread to the heftier VW cars.
Volkswagen Group has now confirmed that 3.0 TDI engines produced from 2009 through to 2016 are fitted with emissions cheating tools, taking the total in the U.S. alone to 85,000. Additional VW and Porsche models weren’t available Friday afternoon, but initially the EPA said it also was on the 2014 VW Touareg and 2015 Porsche Cayenne. Stertz said the company wanted to reprogram the software “so that the regulators see it, understand it and approve it and feel comfortable with the way it’s performing”, AP reported. For Audi, the expansion affects only the 2009 to 2012 Q7 SUV, with other marques expected to reveal their affected models soon.
The VW supervisory board, says it would cap spending property, plant and equipment at around 12 billion euros next year, down about 8% on its previous plan of around 13 billion euros.
In a separate announcement Friday, the company said it was slashing spending on new products, factories and initiatives by $1.1 billion a year.
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Information for this article was contributed by Tom Krisher and Michael Biesecker of The Associated Press; by Jack Ewing of The NY Times; and by Jeff Plungis and Dana Hull of Bloomberg News.
