Volkswagen Will Retrofit Up To 11 Million Diesel Vehicles Affected by Dieselgate

2015 VW Jetta TDI
2015 VW Jetta TDI

A lot of details still remain unknown about the “Dieselgate” scandal. Volkswagen finds itself in the middle of the emissions cheating scandal that cost the company it’s reputation, business, and at least $7.3 Billion.

EPA accused Volkswagen of discrepancies between “real world” diesel emissions from their TDI passenger cars and lab tests. The cars emit between 10 and 40 times less nitrous oxide during the EPA lab testing when compared to regular street driving. Hence, the “cheater” computer program or the “defeat device”. VW admitted that the car’s computer goes into a “clean” mode during emissions testing and goes back into regular mode during everyday driving.

However, we still do not know how this affects the power or MPG numbers on the affected vehicles. The involved cars in the American market are: 2009-2015 VW Jetta, Golf, Beetle, and Passat with the 2.0-liter TDI engine. Audi A3 with the 2.0-liter TDI are also affected. Altogether, there are up to 11 million vehicles sold worldwide with this “cheater” device.

Today, VW announced that they retrofit the 11 million affected vehicles to resolve the problem. They estimate the cost of this action at $6.5 Billion. Once again, they did not specify what the fix entails. Is it a simple reprogramming? Does it require any hardware installation? Will it affect real-world power and MPG numbers?

Volkswagen says, more details on the fix will be released in October 2015.

TFLcar is working hard to answer some of these questions. Stay tuned for more about this very soon.

Watch Michael Horn, CEO of Volkswagen America, address the “dieselgate” scandal.