8m cars in European Union have cheat devices: VW

When the company admitted last month that 11 million vehicles were affected by software created to cheat emissions-testing, VW said it was setting-aside €6.5bn (£4.9bn) to cover costs.

However, VW AG and its subsidiary Audi are yet to provide details on which models are fitted with the “defeat devices”.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission will investigate if the company misled Australian buyers.

That sum is expected to grow considerably in the coming months as it recalls vehicles and faces the prospect of legal action from regulators and drivers.

The company will do everything it can to preserve jobs, Mueller said, but he added: “All of this will not be painless”.

Mueller said Volkswagen would survive, but warned the road to recovery would be painful.

They were put in charge of research and development at the Volkswagen group shortly after Martin Winterkorn became chief executive in January 2007.

“The Government’s position is this: we have made it clear to VW that we expect the manufacturer to fix any issues to the satisfaction of all parties, which includes customers”.

A Volkswagen shareholder a suit against the company for damages suffered after a pollution cheating scam.

“We will do everything to ensure that Volkswagen will stand for good and secure jobs in the future as well”, he told concerned workers.

Volkswagen employs about 600,000 people around the world, more than a third of them in Germany. “We will do everything to regain your trust”.

The car-maker is facing a deadline on Tuesday to provide Germany’s Federal Motor Transport Authority KBA with a plan on how it wants to ensure its cars are compliant with binding emission laws. But he said an “evolution” rather than a “revolution” was needed to get VW back on track.

Messrs. Hackenberg and Hatz, who didn’t respond to requests for comment, are viewed as two of the best and brightest engineers in German industry.

The siblings Susanne Klatten and Stefan Quandt – who hold 46.7 percent of BMW shares – saw their fortune shrink to 26.5 billion euros, down from the family’s combined wealth of 31 billion a year ago, as the entire German auto sector took a hit in the market over the VW crisis.

The website, www.campaigncheck.ie, is designed for Irish owners of diesel Volkswagen, Audi, Seat, Skoda and Volkswagen commercial vehicles to quickly check if their engine is one of the 79,348 due to be refitted with engine management software.