VW BOSS: WE’VE TOTALLY SCREWED UP
Cheating car firm fixed diesel tests Thousands of UK vehicles facing recall Threat of criminal probe in US £4.7bn put aside to win back trust
HUNDREDS of thousands of Volkswagen owners in Britain face their cars being recalled over the emissions scandal, it emerged last night.
VW said yesterday that 11million of its diesel vehicles had been programmed to cheat emissions tests – with the company’s US boss Mike Horn admitting: ‘We have totally screwed up.’
Experts believe vehicles caught up in the scandal will need to be recalled and modified to ensure they meet legal targets, potentially affecting hundreds of thousands of UK cars.
It emerged at the weekend that, since 2009, VW diesel cars in the US had been fitted with software enabling them to mislead regulators and appear ‘greener’ than they really were.
In fact, the cars – including the top-selling Golf and Passat models as well as the Audi A3 – emitted up to 40 times more nitrogen oxide than claimed. The US Department of Justice has begun a criminal investigation, while authorities in France, Germany and South Korea have all announced inquiries.
Last year the Volkswagen group sold more than 500,000 cars in the UK – around half of which had diesel engines. More than 200,000 were under the VW badge, while the group also owns Audi, Skoda, Seat and Porsche.
Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin called on the European Commission ‘to investigate this issue as a matter of urgency’.
Industry experts warned the scandal was just ‘the tip of the iceberg’ and that other manufacturers in the UK and across Europe could become involved.
Motoring experts have warned for years – and shown in tests - that the European system for testing emissions and fuel efficiency in a laboratory bears no relation to the results achieved in the real world.
Volkswagen has refused to say exactly how many cars in the UK had been fitted with the emissions software.
Over the past six years, around 3million Volkswagen ‘family’ cars have been sold in Britain. Half the cars sold in the UK are diesels, so up to 1.5million cars may be at risk.
The scandal has wider implications on health and even UK car tax, which is based on a car’s emissions levels.
VW chief executive Martin Winterkorn offered his ‘deepest’ apologies yesterday and said he was ‘utterly sorry’.
As VW shares plunged, Dr Winterkorn said the scandal went ‘against everything Volkswagen stands for’ but refused to quit. Reports claimed he had lost the confidence of shareholders and could resign by the end of the week, with Porsche chief executive and Volkswagen board member Matthias Muller expected to replace him.
Dr Winterkorn said: ‘Manipulation at Volkswagen must never happen again. Millions of people around the world trust our brands, our cars and our technologies. I am endlessly sorry that we betrayed this trust.’
Volkswagen said it was ‘working at full speed to clarify irregularities concerning a particular software used in diesel engines’.
The US Environmental Protection Agency said the cars had been fitted with software known as a ‘defeat device’ to switch engines to a cleaner mode when undergoing official emis- sions testing. Volkswagen faces the cost of recalling millions of vehicles as well as a fine of up to £11.6billion in the US.
Some US motorists who bought their cars on the strength of false emissions data are expected to sue VW. The company yesterday said it will set aside £4.7 billion in the third quarter of this year to cover the cost of recalls ‘and other efforts to win back the trust of our customers’.
Campaign group Transport and Environment said VW was ‘the tip of the iceberg’ with the technology in Volkswagen’s cars used by other manufacturers, meaning millions of vehicles in the UK may be affected.
An estimated 29,000 deaths a year in Britain are caused by long-term exposure to air pollution. The Clean Air in London campaign described the effects of diesel emissions as the ‘biggest public health catastrophe’.
Tory MP Zac Goldsmith, a member of the Commons Environmental Audit Committee, said: ‘Air pollution kills thousands every year across the UK, which is why these emissions standards matter so much and why what Volkswagen has done is inexcusable.’
But the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) insisted there was no evidence of attempts to mislead testers with UK cars. Chief executive Mike Hawes said: ‘All European tests performed in strict conditions as required by EU law.’
Comment – Page 16