It was unclear if the solution involved improving emissions to what the company promised its consumers or merely providing accurate readings.
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German auto giant Volkswagen, mired in a massive emissions cheating scandal, has said it has found technical solutions for more than 90% of the vehicles affected in Europe. VW and Porsche have also issued stop-sale order on their 3.0-liter TDI engine. The company’s smaller, 2.0-liter engines, which originally sparked the massive scandal back in September, are not affected by Audi’s announcement yet. “However, as all model variants first have to be measured, the achievement of these targets can not yet be finally confirmed”, Volkswagen said.
The fix to the 1.6-liter diesel, which will require the installation of a “flow transformer” directly in front of the air mass sensor, will take less than an hour to complete, VW said. Even though the fix cost in Europe will likely be relatively low, Automotive News reports that the company is still setting aside roughly $7.1 billion to handle the crisis.
The Braunschweig public prosecutor already has open investigations into Volkswagen over the Dieselgate scandal, where cars turned off their NOx emissions controls outside of laboratory conditions. You can check whether your vehicle will be part of a recall here.
Consequently, affected vehicles should comply with “the applicable emissions standards” after they have received new software and, in the case of the 1.6-litre engine, hardware. Once these changes are made the engines then pass all required emissions in EU28 markets.
VW has admitted it never told government officials about the defeat software, but the automaker said all reprogramming will be performed in full view of regulators.
“We need to be sure that VW develops an effective fix for each of the three engine types in their cars, since each engine type (Gen 1, 2 and 3) uses different technologies to control pollution”, CARB said on its website.
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The fix has been approved by the Federal Motor Transport Authority and Volkswagen intends to begin a recall in January. One of the devices takes care of temperature conditioning of the exhaust-cleaning system, while the other two help avoid deposits resulting from the emissions cleaning process.
