Washington: US environmental regulators said Monday that Volkswagen also included "defeat devices" to skirt emissions rules on certain larger diesel engines, in addition to the smaller 2.0 liter engines reported earlier.
The Environmental Protection Agency said its investigation into the already hugely damaging scandal found that various 3.0 liter diesel VW Touareg, Porsche Cayenne and Audis from the 2014-2016 model years had been rigged with the software designed to cheat US regulations.
The new EPA notice of violation followed the first on September 18 that opened up a scandal involving 11 million vehicles worldwide that has rocked the German auto giant and could cost it tens of billions of dollars in fines and compensation to owners.
Cynthia Giles, an official with the EPA's Enforcement and Compliance Assurance office, said ongoing investigations by the agency, the California Air Resources Board and Environment Canada had discovered the same problem that was exposed in smaller 2009-2015 diesel engines in the more powerful 3.0 liter motors.
That put Volkswagen in violation of two provisions of the US Clean Air Act, in making and selling cars that have defeat devices and that do not meet US emissions standards.
"This design feature is an illegal defeat device," she said. "We have clear evidence of these additional violations."
The software makes the engines run according to US standards when emissions testing is ongoing.
"At exactly one second" after the emission test ends, Giles said, the software switches into standard-drive mode in which poisonous nitrogen oxide emissions rise to up to nine times the EPA standard.
"The vehicles operate at this higher emitting 'normal' mode when the vehicle detects that it is not undergoing an emissions test," Giles said.
"VW has once again failed its obligation to comply with the law that protects clean air for all Americans," she said.
The new official notice of violation covers 10,000 cars sold since 2014 and an unknown number of 2016 model cars.
Nearly a half million smaller-engined diesel VW cars were involved in the first notice of violation.
Volkswagen had admitted the problem in the smaller engines, but had said nothing about the larger ones since the scandal broke.
AFP
