Dieselgate – Volkswagen to recall 8.5m cars in Europe

German authorities have ordered a recall of all VW cars fitted with the software, affecting 8.5 million diesel cars across the EU. German authorities have now demanded that VW recall 2.4 million diesel vehicles equipped with defeat devices, pushing away the automaker’s requests to keep the callbacks voluntary.

German media reports suggest the watchdog had rejected VW’s proposals that auto owners could voluntarily bring their cars in for fix.

Scott Olson/Getty Images The Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, hopes to force a recall of Volkswagen’s diesel engine vehicles released between 2009 and 2015 and is threatening the German automaker with $18 billion in fines for violating emissions standards set by the Clean Air Act.

VW’s new chief executive Matthias Mueller told senior executives meeting in Leipzig that the company needed to become “leaner and take decisions more rapidly”.

VW’s own figures show that given 2,173 partner garages in Germany, each would have to retrofit 1,100 vehicles as part of the recall.

Outside European Union countries, each individual country will clarify in detail which emissions classes of the EA 189 engine are in fact affected, the KBA said.

The revelations about VW’s manipulation of its diesel engines have sparked one of the biggest scandals in the history of the automobile sector.

The full impact of the scandal on sales and the extent to which Volkswagen is able to counter the expected drop in volume with incentives to dealers and customers will be more thoroughly revealed when October’s sales results arrive in early November.

Volkswagen named Daimler manager Christine Hohmann-Dennhardt on Friday to the newly created post of board member for integrity and legal affairs, as it strives to recover from the scandal over its cheating of diesel emissions tests. The company also suspended the sale of a few of its diesel vehicles in various countries.

Volkswagen is already facing 250 class-action law suits.

Furthermore, the Italian police raided the Lamborghini head office in Bologna as well, with Lamborghini being the subsidiary of Volkswagen Group.

By contrast, sales in Brazil, Russian Federation and China – whose slowing economies are causing headaches not just for VW, but for other carmakers as well – fell by 43.7 percent, 26 percent and 0.8 percent, respectively.