VW reveals more emission problems, including vehicles with gasoline engines

To add salt to VW’s self-inflicted wounds, the company’s share value has been plummeting as well.

Volkswagen said around 800,000 cars sold in Europe, mostly diesel cars, but a “limited” number of petrol models were affected.

That scandal had already widened this week, when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Volkswagen had installed software on thousands of Audi, Porsche and VW cars with six-cylinder diesel engines that allowed them to emit fewer pollutants during tests than in real-world driving.

Volkswagen denied the accusations, but they said that they will fully cooperate with the EPA in order to clarify this issue entirely. The discount is about $1,000 higher than the industry average.

Automotive engineer John German works for the worldwide Council on Clean Transportation, a non-profit organisation dedicated to reducing vehicle emissions and is credited with helping to uncover the VW emissions scandal. The “defeat devices bypass, defeat or render inoperative elements of the vehicles’ emissions control system”, said the EPA.

The EPA said it found defeat devices on 3-litre diesel engines used in larger sport-utility vehicles from Volkswagen such as Touraeg, Porsche Cayenne, Audi Q5 and Q7 SUVs and Audi A6 and A8 sedans.

German Transport Minister Alexander Dobrindt said Wednesday his department will oversee a retest of both gasoline- and diesel-powered Volkswagen brands, including Volkswagen, Audi, Skoda and Seat, to gauge their true carbon dioxide and nitrogen dioxide emissions, according to Reuters.

The admission about fuel consumption was the first that threatened to make a serious dent in VW’s sales since the scandal erupted as it could deter cost-conscious consumers, analysts said.

On Tuesday, the automaker revealed that it found other problems with emissions as the scandal spread to gasoline engines. Out of the total, 5 million vehicles have been manufactured under the Volkswagen brand and 2.1 million under the Audi brand. Most are diesel-engined – but not all.

The company told dealers in the United States and Canada on November 4 to stop selling cars from the 2013-2016 model years of VW and Audi with 3.0-liter engines.

“From the very start I have pushed hard for the relentless and comprehensive clarification of events”, Volkswagen Chief Executive Matthias Mueller said. The company has not yet posted an official statement.