VW officials themselves acknowledged on Thursday the number of affected vehicles is greater to EPA. That revelation, concerning 2-litre diesel engines from the 2009 through 2015 model years, sparked criminal probes in Europe and the US. The bad news is that Volkswagen Group still needs a solution for the bulk of their millions of emissions-cheating vehicles. It turns on emission control systems when the cars are being tested and turns it off when the tests are over, causing the cars to appear to meet pollution standards while in ordinary, everyday use they may be emitting more pollution than the law allows.
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As Automotive News reports, the company says it has a software update for its V6 diesels that should bring the emissions into spec. The fix is said to work for 85,000 vehicles.
“So we agreed to take all of the 3-liter disel engines, look at the software, recalibrate it, and then we’ll resubmit it to the agencies so they’re comfortable with how it’s performing and what it’s doing”, Stertz said. Volkswagen has not yet given details of those remedial measures, which could be more complex than the measures in Europe because the United States places stricter limits on emissions of nitrogen oxides, pollutants linked to lung ailments.
Volkswagen will reduce spending by 1 billion euros ($1.07 billion) in 2016 and “strictly prioritize” investments as it readies to contend with the ongoing fallout from the scandal, CEO Michael Mueller said in a statement Friday.
It was at the beginning of the month when the Environmental Protection Agency accused VoA of installing a defeat device in the V6 3.0 TDI engine and now the Volkswagen Group has admitted this is true. The engine was also used in the VW Touareg and Porsche Cayenne SUVs since model year 2013, Audi said.
The company is still working on modifications for 1.2-liter diesel motors, but it is likely that a software update will be sufficient, Mueller added.
The German KBA has approved the proposed software fix for the 2-litre diesel engine and has given a general approval for software and hardware fixes proposed for the 1.6-liter diesel engine. VW is also facing additional government investigations and lawsuits.
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Audi admits that it failed to disclose three of its Auxiliary Emissions Control Devices or AECD, which is suspicious considering one of those is actually a cheat device.
