German prosecutors are widening their investigation into Volkswagen amid the ongoing emissions cheating saga to include possible acts of tax evasion.
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The investigation focuses on five Volkswagen employees, a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office in the northern German city of Braunschweig, near Volkswagen’s Wolfsburg headquarters, said on Tuesday, confirming an earlier media report.
Volkswagen estimates it will cost €2.2 billion ($3.2 billion) to reimburse European governments that granted tax breaks on cars said to feature low levels of carbon dioxide emissions.
Volkswagen continues to dig its own grave as the automaker admits another 85,000 diesel cars in the USA contain software to defeat emissions tests.
For the 1.6-liter diesel engine, engineers devised something called a flow straightener. The costs and complexity of the fixes, which apply to more than 90 per cent of the affected vehicles in Europe, are “manageable”, he said in excerpts of the speech obtained by Bloomberg. Most recently, the company revealed that all Volkswagen and Audi vehicles with 3-liter diesel engines since the 2009 model year violated emissions standards. After all, two $500 gift cards can only go so far with customers who have largely been kept in the dark over the past several months.
The 1.6-litre four-cylinder diesel engine provides the bulk of the 11 million Volkswagen’s affected worldwide by its cheating scandal, where it used sneaky software coding to get around NOx emissions regulations in the U.S., Europe and other countries that adopted European Union rules, including Australia.
Despite the negative publicity, 96% of diesel drivers said they had no plans to reduce how much they drive their vehicles. The automaker is still working on what changes are needed for cars with 1.2-liter diesel engines, he said, but expects a software update will be all that is needed.
Volkswagen also uses the engine in the Touraeg and Porsche has used it in the Cayenne since 2013.
Audi confirmed Monday that the three brands were affected and that it would cost “in the mid-double-digit millions of euros” to provide a remedy that would be approved by U.S. authorities.
Amid fears the emissions scandal could hit sales of diesel vehicles, Mueller said VW would increase spending on alternative technologies such as electric and hybrid vehicles by 100 million euros next year compared with previous targets.
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Volkswagen has been facing severe repercussions after researchers at West Virginia University discovered that some vehicles were emitting almost 40 times the legal limit of nitrogen oxides during road tests.
