USA regulators say they have a lot more questions for Volkswagen, triggered by the company’s recent disclosure of additional suspect software in 2016 diesel models that potentially would help exhaust systems run cleaner during government tests.
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Germany’s Transport Minister Alexander Dobrindt is set to announce details of the recall later Thursday.
Austrian authorities have already said a few 363,000 VW cars there are affected by the recall.
The Federal Motor Transport Authority has rejected a Volkswagen proposal for a voluntary recall, according to the dpa news agency.
Already from the beginning of October, every VW customer had been able to use the company’s website to check whether their vehicle was affected, simply by typing in the car’s number.
In a letter to Mr Dobrindt, Volkswagen chief executive Matthias Mueller said the recall would “stretch through the 2016 calendar year”.
It comes as a survey found nine out of 10 Volkswagen drivers in the United Kingdom whose vehicles could be affected think they should get compensation.
“VW is ordered…to remove the software from all vehicles and to take appropriate measures to ensure that the emissions rules are fulfilled”, Dobrindt told reporters in Berlin.
Those hardware changes, which may not be ready before September 2016, will determine the timeline, he said.
If it is determined the new issue is a second defeat device, that would call into question recent assertions by top VW executives that responsibility for the cheating scheme lay with a handful of rogue software developers who wrote the original code installed with the company’s diesel engines starting with the 2009 model year.
Volkswagen said it had not received any orders from the KBA.
Volkswagen has said that a few managers had been suspended, but said the report Wednesday of up to 30 “lacks any basis”. Dobrindt said only 2.4 million needed to be recalled because the other 400,000 were no longer on the roads.
“Volkswagen will be pro-active in approaching and informing customers”, the carmaker said.
A Volkswagen Touareg diesel is tested in the Environmental Protection Agency’s cold temperature test facility Tuesday in Ann Arbor, Mich.
Germany ordered Volkswagen on Thursday to recall and refit 2.4 million diesel vehicles next year, following the company’s admission it rigged emissions tests.
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Elsewhere, Italian authorities have searched the headquarters of Volkswagen Italia as part of a local investigation into the emissions testing scandal.
