After months of bad news that never seems to end, Volkswagen announced Monday it has a plausible and financially feasible way to correct the diesel engines that have the emissions-cheating software. It was unclear if the solution involved improving emissions to what the company promised its consumers or merely providing accurate readings.
“The efforts (needed) to carry out the refits are technically, mechanically, and financially manageable,” CEO Matthias Mueller said in a speech to managers at company’s Wolfsburg headquarters.
The Volkswagen Group of America, which includes Audi and Porsche, has to address fixing or buying back 482,000 diesel powered cars and SUVs sold in the U.S. Recently, 85,000 3.0-liter diesel engines were added to the list of affected vehicles with “cheating” software that gets around EPA regulations and guidelines. A stop-sale on new models that have a 3.0-liter diesel engine is now in effect for the U.S. market “until further notice.”
The 3.0-liter diesel engine was developed by Audi and used in diesel powered models of the A6, A7, A8, Q5 and Q7 beginning with the 2009 model year. The engine was also used in the VW Touareg and Porsche Cayenne SUVs since model year 2013, Audi said.
On Monday Audi AG submitted a plan to revise emissions control software on the 85,000 or more affected 3.0-liter diesel engines in Audi, Porsche and VW vehicles to make them compliant. This allows the automaker to avoid the high cost of hardware retrofits, which is needed to fix over 482,000 diesel powered vehicles sold in the U.S. with the illegal emissions “cheating” software.
VW has set aside nearly 7 billion Euros to help cover the costs of the diesel recalls and another 2 billion for compensation payments related to its cheating of carbon dioxide emission levels.
Volkswagen setup a VIN lookup tool on its diesel recall information website that allows owners to check if their cars possess the emissions-cheating software and will require a fix, the details of which have yet to be announced. You can check whether your vehicle will be part of a recall here.
Below is a list of the vehicle models and model years thought to be affected by the cheating software, which include:
- VW Jetta TDI (2009 – 2015)
- VW Jetta SportWagen TDI (2009 – 2014)
- VW Golf TDI (2010 – 2015)
- VW Golf SportWagen TDI (2015 only)
- VW Beetle TDI and VW Beetle Convertible TDI (2012 – 2015)
- VW Passat TDI (2012 – 2015)
- VW Touareg TDI (2013 – 2015)
- Audi A6, A7, A8 TDI (2013 – 2015)
- Audi Q5, Q7 TDI (2013 – 2015)
- Porsche Cayenne TDI (2013 – 2015)
