Wolfsburg, Germany – Volkswagen officials say the company’s diesel emissions problems in Europe are nowhere nearly as bad as initially thought with only 36,000 vehicles misreporting emissions, not 800,000 as the company originally claimed.
Following extensive internal investigations and measurement checks, officials say it is now clear that almost all of these model variants do correspond to the CO2 figures originally determined. This means that these vehicles can be marketed and sold without any limitations. The suspicion that the fuel consumption figures of current production vehicles had been unlawfully changed was not confirmed.
Nine vehicles turned in suspect numbers, and those model variants will be re-measured by a neutral technical service under the supervision of the appropriate authority by Dec. 25.
Volkswagen has presented its results to the investigation commission of Germany’s Federal Government and the Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA).
The announcement does not apply to ongoing investigations in the United States, where regulators in Washington D.C. and California have accused the automaker of using software tricks to shut down emissions controls when cars were not being tested for emissions. Volkswagen still faces massive fines for those violations and cannot sell vehicles with its popular 2L and 3L diesel engines here.
Models to have CO2 levels readjusted in Europe are:
- Polo 1L TSI BlueMotion 70kW EU6 Seven-speed (DSG)
- Scirocco 2L TDI BMT 135kW EU6 Six-speed manual gearbox
- Jetta 1.2L TSI BMT 77kW EU6 Six-speed manual gearbox
- Jetta 2L TDI BMT 81kW EU6 Five-speed manual gearbox
- Golf Convertible 2L TDI BMT 81kW EU6 Five-speed manual gearbox
- Golf 2L TDI BMT 110kW EU6 Six-speed manual gearbox
- Passat Alltrack 2L TSI 4MOTION BMT 162kW EU6 Seven-speed (DSG)
- Passat Variant 2L TDI SCR 4MOTION BMT 176kW EU6 Seven-speed (DSG)
- Passat Variant 1.4L TSI ACT 4MOTION BMT 110kW EU6 Six-speed manual gearbox
Source: Volkswagen AG