Spain’s Seat says has produced 700000 units with rigged VW engines

While Industry Ministry Jose Manuel Soria says Spain will ask Volkswagen to give back the subsidies, the government may also face a civil charges because it ordered Seat’s technical unit to conduct the emissions tests, Manos Limpias said in the document.

VW GROUP cars in their 2.0-litre diesel engines only used the software, originally made by Bosch for testing purposes mainly across the United States.

“We are talking about previously produced EA 189 motors which are now in use”, Balaz said in a statement, adding that the vehicles in question were “completely safe in everyday use”.

The company said it was trying to determine how many of its cars had been sold in Spain, and that it would be setting up a search facility on its website to allow owners to know if their vehicle was one of those affected. On Tuesday it fell another 1.5% during morning trade in Frankfurt.

Since news of the rigging scandal broke last week, Volkswagen’s market value has plummeted by 35 per cent.

The effects are also spilling over into the local economy around VW’s headquarters in Wolfsburg.

The scandal was revealed after the US Environmental Protection Agency found that a few VW diesel cars were fitted with devices that could detect when the engine was being tested, and could change the car’s performance to improve results. Mr Mueller promised a “relentless” investigation to uncover what went wrong.

Müller told leading staff at the company’s headquarters in Wolfsburg, Germany, that it was “facing the severest test in its history” and “a long trudge and a lot of hard work”, according to a Reuters report.

German prosecutors announced Monday a criminal probe of Volkswagen’s former chief executive Martin Winterkorn, who resigned over the scandal.