VW withdraws 4,000 cars from sale in Britain
VOLKSWAGEN yesterday withdrew 4,000 cars from sale in the UK after finding that they were fitted with software used to cheat diesel emissions tests.
The company said it ‘suspended’ the sale of the VW, Audi, Skoda and Seat cars worth up to £100 million as a ‘voluntary measure’.
But it emerged that VW had continued selling new cars in the UK fitted with the so- called ‘defeat devices’ for almost two weeks after the scandal was uncovered in the United States. Richard Lloyd, executive director at consumer group Which?, accused the company of ‘adding insult to injury’ for consumers.
The cars withdrawn yesterday represent three per cent of VW’s current UK stock of nearly 134,000 vehicles, split between those now in dealership showrooms and those at the ports, in transit or in storage.
A Volkswagen Group spokesman said: ‘As a voluntary measure we have suspended the sale of unsold diesel vehicle stocks that have the EA 189 engines.
‘If customers still want to take delivery of their car they can do so now and still have it re-programmed later on.
‘They can also choose to take another unaffected vehicle from stock instead. Or we will offer them a full refund.’
The emissions scandal began when the US Environmental Protection Agency said 482,000 Volkswagens were fitted with sophisticated software that switched engines to a cleaner mode on official tests.
Once on the road, the cars produced nitrogen oxide pollutants at up to 40 times the legal standard. VW has admitted that 11million of its diesel vehicles worldwide were fitted with the software. The company plans to contact 1.2 million UK owners to arrange for their vehicles to be ‘corrected’.
The RAC Foundation said drivers were concerned about the impact of the recall. Steve Gooding, the organisation’s director, said: ‘We all want clean air to breathe, but motorists will understandably be worried about the MPG (miles per gallon) implications of these so- called corrections on cars many will have bought on the strength of their fuel economy.’
Prof Richard Folkson, the president of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, called for a new testing regime to restore motorists’ trust.
He warned against ‘knee-jerk reactions’ and said: ‘We should not be rushing to scrap diesel cars when they clearly make a considerable contribution to reducing carbon emissions in the UK. If all new fossil fuel cars were to be solely petrol tomorrow for example, our average carbon dioxide emissions would increase by 16 per cent.’
A Department for Transport spokes- man said: ‘The UK has been involved in the development of an updated laboratory test for CO2 emissions that better reflects real-world driving conditions – the World Light Duty Test Procedure. We are pushing for this to be introduced by 2017.’
Meanwhile, Lord Drayson, a science minister in the former Labour government, has claimed that diesel cars are ‘killing people’ and has called on drivers to switch to electric vehicles.
The peer, who has an electric car racing team, said the Blair and Brown governments, in which he served, made a mistake in promoting the fuel through a favourable tax regime.