US regulators say they have a lot more questions for Volkswagen AG (VW), triggered by the company’s recent disclosure of additional suspect software in next year’s diesel models that potentially would help exhaust systems run cleaner during government tests.
That is more bad news for Volkswagen dealers looking for new cars to replace the ones they can no longer sell because of the worldwide cheating scandal already engulfing the world’s largest automaker.
And, depending on what the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) eventually finds, it raises the possibility of even more severe punishment.
Photo: AFP
Volkswagen confirmed to media on Tuesday that the “auxiliary emissions control device” at issue operates differently from the “defeat” device software included in the company’s 2009 to 2015 models disclosed last month.
The new software was first revealed to EPA and California regulators on Sept. 29, prompting the company last week to withdraw applications for approval to sell next year’s model cars in the US.
“We have a long list of questions for VW about this,” EPA Acting Assistant Administrator for Air Quality Janet McCabe said. “We’re getting some answers from them, but we do not have all the answers yet.”
The delay means that thousands of next year’s VW Beetles, Golfs and Jettas are to remain quarantined in US ports until a fix can be developed, approved and implemented. Diesel versions of the Passat sedan manufactured at the company’s plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, also are on hold.
Volkswagen already faces a criminal investigation and billions of dollars in fines for violating the Clean Air Act for its earlier emissions cheat, as well as a raft of state investigations and class-action lawsuits filed on behalf of customers.
If EPA rules the new software is a second defeat device specifically aimed at gaming government emissions tests, it would call into question repeated assertions by top VW executives that responsibility for the cheating scheme lay with a handful of rogue software developers who wrote the illegal code installed in prior generations of its four-cylinder diesel engines.
That a separate device was included in next year’s redesigned cars could suggest a multi-year effort by the company to influence US emissions tests that continued even after regulators began pressing the company last year about irregularities with the emissions produced by the older cars.
McCabe would not say if VW’s failure to disclose the software in next year’s applications was illegal.
“I don’t want to speak to any potential subjects of an enforcement activity,” she said.
Meanwhile, German automotive watchdog KBA yesterday ordered Volkswagen to recall 2.4 million vehicles in the country.
“We are ordering the recall,” a spokesman for the motor transport authority said, confirming a report by German daily Bild.
Volkswagen has said it aims to start a recall of up to 11 million affected cars in January and complete fixes by the end of next year, but Bild said the KBA had rejected the idea that owners could voluntarily bring in their vehicles.
Volkswagen said it had not received any orders from the KBA.
Additional reporting by Reuters
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