2023 Author: Eric Donovan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-05-21 15:44
It took longer than expected. But now the Volkswagen Group is allowed to recall 800,000 diesel vehicles affected by the emissions scandal. The Federal Motor Transport Authority has now issued a corresponding permit.
Volkswagen had to wait a long time for this news: The Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA) allowed the group to recall more than 800,000 tampered diesel vehicles. VW announced this on Friday in Wolfsburg. It's the largest number of cars released since the entire recall began in January. "The start of the conversion for the Passat, CC and Eos models is associated with a large number of vehicles that will now come to the workshops," said VW sales manager Jürgen Stackmann, according to the announcement. In Germany, customers should now be informed of the start by post.
Last September, Volkswagen admitted that it had used illegal software on more than eleven million vehicles worldwide. This artificially pushes the exhaust gas values down during test operation. In normal road use, on the other hand, the emission values for harmful nitrogen oxides are significantly higher. VW is therefore threatened with fines running into billions around the world. Because of the emissions crisis, the largest European car company had already created a financial buffer of 16.2 billion euros, which in 2015 brought a record loss of 1.6 billion euros.
Prohibited program must be dubbed
Despite the official start of the recall in January, VW has so far only been allowed to exempt a few vehicles in its own workshops from the prohibited software. In the past five months, the KBA had initially only approved the conversion for around 125,000 diesel vehicles - including 8,500 VW Amaroks, 10,000 VW Caddies, 15,000 VW Golfs and around 90,000 Audi A4, A5, A6, Q5 and Seat Exeo. For all cars, a prohibited program must be copied with a legal version. This should take around 30 minutes for the 1.2 and 2.0 liter engines affected. A new component - a grid - must also be installed on vehicles with the 1.6-liter unit. This should take about 60 minutes. VW insured, performance and consumption data would not change.
The recall of all 8.5 million vehicles in Europe should be completed this year according to the will of the VW top. Within the group, however, there are already considerable doubts about the implementation of the plan because of the months of delay. So far, there are no official reasons for this from VW or the KBA. According to information provided by the dpa, problems with increasing consumption values after the software update should have occurred, particularly in around 160,000 Passat models with the 2.0-liter engine. This seems to have been resolved, because the models expected in the workshops for the end of February are included in the now released batch. (dpa)
