Volkswagen AG Announces Action Plan To Resolve 'Dieselgate' Scandal

Volkswagen AG has announced its action plan to resolve the ‘Dieselgate’ scandal whereby a total of 11 million Group vehicles worldwide was revealed to have the Type EA 189 EU5 diesel engines fitted with software engineered to dupe emissions tests.

Technical solutions and measures are currently being developed to correct the emissions characteristics of Volkswagen AG vehicles, and it plans to present them to authorities in October.

The German Federal Motor Transport Authority have earlier issued an ultimatum to the world’s largest carmaker, demanding that it comes up with a solution to fix the diesel car scandal by 7 October. Failure to do so could see the German government ban the 2.8 million affected cars from driving on that country’s roads.

As of now, Switzerland has already banned the sales of affected VW AG cars from being sold, the United States has issued a stop-sale order on new diesel Volkswagen cars last week, while other countries are considering their options.

An internal evaluation by the Group determined that five million vehicles from the Volkswagen Passenger Cars brand will require a service procedure to rectify the issue. Of the figure (from 11 million), the affected vehicles are from certain models and model years such as the sixth generation Volkswagen Golf, the seventh generation Volkswagen Passat or the first generation Volkswagen Tiguan. New vehicles with EU6 engines however, are not affected.

As for the other brands in the Group with affected vehicles, they are: Audi (2.1 million), Skoda (1.2 million), Seat (700k), and Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles (1.8 million).

Customers who own Volkswagen vehicles and those from other brands within the Group, including Audi, will be kept informed over the coming weeks and months, where national websites will be set up to update customers on developments.

Keep in mind that this mass “recall” is a complicated process due to the fact that government regulators of each country with affected vehicles will need to approve any proposed fix beforehand. It is also uncertain how the fix will impact the affected cars’ performance and fuel economy.