Volkswagen to recall 8.5 million cars in Europe

The recall ordered by the government will be much more expensive for VW since it requires the company to speed up the process and devote more time, money, and personnel to designing and implementeing a fix.

A statement from the company said: “Remedial action on the vehicles will begin in January 2016 – at no cost to our customers”.

The Dieselgate scandal now includes the already affected American-sold cars, the U.S. Department of Justice criminal case, and Germany’s own criminal case against Volkswagen’s executives including the former CEO Martin Winterkorn.

Despite the report from the German media that VW originally offered a proposal for auto owners to voluntarily bring in their vehicles for fix, Dobrindt said Volkswagen has been very cooperative. Worldwide, about 11m VW diesel cars are affected.

In this regard, the VW Group will accelerate plans for a new modular electric auto platform and develop an all-electric version of its next-generation Phaeton flagship sedan, reports Motor Authority.

In a letter to Dobrindt provided to The Associated Press, Volkswagen’s chief executive, Matthias Mueller, said the recall would “stretch through the 2016 calendar year”. This has given the lobby an enormous amount of global and domestic political influence, and aided in VW’s false claims about the efficiency of its diesel cars were not properly tested in real-world situations in the European Union. Lamborghini is a subsidiary of Volkswagen Group.

A recall of all 11 million vehicles would be among the biggest in history by a single automaker, similar in scale to Toyota’s 2009-2010 recall of more than 10 million vehicles over acceleration problems, though dwarfed by the number recalled by multiple carmakers due to faulty Takata air bags. Volkswagen admitted last month it had installed a defeat device in its small diesel engine configuration software aimed at deceiving these lab tests.

Overall VW sales also lagged behind the market, growing 8.4% from a year ago to 315,905 vehicles compared with 9.8% for the entire industry. “VW is ordered (…) to remove the software from all vehicles and to take appropriate measures to ensure that the emissions rules are fulfilled”. New parts necessary to fix a few vehicles will probably be ready by next September, he said.

Regulators in the United States haven’t announced a recall yet, despite the existence of so-called “defeat devices” – software which enabled its diesel cars in the USA to turn on full pollution controls only when undergoing laboratory emissions testing, not under normal driving conditions – being first discovered by the US Environmental Protection Agency.

But the company has also lost more senior personnel, including the suspension of the head of its Kassel production plant, Falko Rudolph, who was head of Volkswagen diesel engine development between 2006 and 2010.