Volkswagen also did say the 800,000 were “predominantly vehicles with diesel engines”, raising the possibility for the first time that a few Volkswagens with gasoline-powered motors may also have emissions problems.
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The Environmental Protection Agency said the company programmed vehicles to trick emissions testers into believing its diesel cars released a much lower volume of nitrogen oxide than they actually do. Specifically, the automaker is allowing employees with knowledge of the emission cheating effort to keep their jobs and be exempt from damage claims if they reveal what they know by the end of November.
All the major national markets recorded sales increases in October except for the United Kingdom, where registrations fell 1.1%.
Europe’s biggest automaker has said around 1.2 million vehicles in Britain have been affected by the scandal.
Well, it’s something. Perhaps a bigger display of its commitment toward change will be if VW could actually make good on its vow to begin making 11 million faulty diesel vehicles comply with emissions regulations in January and finish the massive undertaking by late 2016.
“The Volkswagen passenger cars brand is experiencing challenging times”.
Deliveries of Volkswagen group cars were down by 0.5% in October, but the German manufacturer remains European leader with a market share of 25.1%.
“The entire company is working to restore the trust of our customers in the brand and our products”, VW brand sales chief Juergen Stackmann said. The company can ill afford a drop in sales and weaker profitability while grappling with a growing crisis that it estimates will exceed €8.7-billion ($12.3-billion) in fines and fix costs.
“The main factor in this deceleration in fortunes appears to be the fallout from VW’s emissions scandal”, Kristina Church and Charles Coldicott, analysts at Barclays (LSE: BARC.L – news), said last week.
Of the millions of manipulated cars, VW’s namesake brand accounted for more than half, followed by the group’s luxury brand Audi at 1.2 million.
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“We are counting on your cooperation and knowledge as our company’s employees to get to the bottom of the diesel and Carbon dioxide issue”, Diess was quoted as saying in the document. “The majority of the vehicles concerned have diesel engines”, said Volkswagen. Due to this reason the American market saw a 6 percentage growths in Volkswagen sales.
