No Australian cars affected by VW emissions scandal

Volkswagen said on Thursday the roots of the global pollution-cheating scandal it is now engulfed in date back to 2005, and while the current situation was hard, it would not break the company. Said Poetsch: “This factor was most hard for us to accept”.

VW itself said last month that up to 800,000 vehicles might be affected, meaning that Carbon dioxide emissions and consequently fuel usage would have been understated.

Mueller said the crisis was an opportunity for VW to introduce long-needed structural change. In addition, Volkswagen announced that it will create a new committee, responsible for authorizing new emissions software in the future. Volkswagen has lost about 7.5 billion euros ($8.2 billion) in market value since the cheating became public on September 18.

“Temporary jobs are a tool of ensuring flexibility, that is not new”, he said. However, an internal investigation has concluded that only 36,000 vehicles may be impacted, a far smaller headache for the German automaker to deal with.

The carmaker said Thursday it will have future emissions tests independently evaluated. They have gathered 102 terabytes of data, equivalent to about 50 million books.

“It was not a one-off error, but an unbroken chain of errors”, said the company’s supervisory board chief Hans Dieter Poetsch.

The automaker revealed that its internal investigation uncovered weak processes, individual misconduct and a mind-set in some parts of the company “that tolerated breaches of rules”. “That is the factor that’s the most hard one for us”.

NINE Volkswagen models including two versions of the Golf are to undergo independent emissions tests after potential discrepancies were confirmed in their Carbon dioxide readouts.

The carmaker is also experiencing a backlash from consumers amid the sluggish progress to recall the vehicles. Sales in the USA fell almost 25 per cent in November, the first month to show the full impact of the scandal. It did manage to get a low-priced fix approved in Europe, but analysts tell CNBC Volkswagen might have a harder time getting it approved under the U.S.’ tougher standards. The costs associated with the scandal – fixing the cars, paying fines, dealing with legal challenges – were estimated to be worth tens of billions of dollars.