Troubled carmaker Volkswagen says it will recall 8.5 million diesel vehicles across Europe after German authorities ordered the company to fix all the affected cars in the country.
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Volkswagen said in a statement that it would approach customers, who can already enter their car’s serial number on a special website to find out whether it is affected.
Vahland was only appointed to the role three weeks ago in the wake of the Dieselgate scandal and leaves after 25 years within the Volkswagen Group, starting at Audi.
What started off as a bad morning for Volkswagen has now blossomed into an all-around terrible day.
Around 117,000 vehicles are affected in Portugal, the country’s economy minister said on Thursday – 102,000 Volkswagens, Audis and Skodas and 15,000 SEATs.
Volkswagen Australia has confirmed that more than 91 thousand vehicles sold in Australia were fitted with emission cheating software.
A German recall of Volkswagen’s diesel vehicles means 8.5 million cars throughout the European Union will be fixed beginning in 2016, but the North American recall can not begin until USA regulators are sure the fix is going to work.
Volkswagen came under a lot of fire when it was discovered it was rigging diesel emission tests. The Wolfsburg-based company is preparing to recall 8.5-million cars in Europe, one of the biggest such programmes ever in the region, after the emissions-test cheating became public on September 18.
Italian police had raided VW offices in Verona and Lamborghini offices in Bologna related to a commercial fraud and put six executives under investigation.
Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer, head of the Center of Automotive Research at the University of Duisburg-Essen, said Daimler is helping VW to rebuild trust in the German auto industry.
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The agency is “upping our game”, she said, and will conduct many more spot checks of vehicles on the road, including those owned by individuals and cars from rental fleets. The automaker is staring at a mid-November deadline to share its fix with KBA and then it must begin the recall in January. According to KBS more than 2.4 million vehicles are present in Germany alone that need to be recalled. VW has set aside €6.5bn (£4.8bn) to cover the costs of the scandal, but a few experts believe the final bill will be significantly higher.
