CANBERRA: Another 6, 444 Volkswagen emission-cheating diesel cars have been caught up in Australia, bringing the total number of affected cars locally to 97, 621.
The news follows the local branch’s announcement that it would conduct a voluntary recall of all the cars affected in the Australian market.
It has identified 61,189 passenger cars, 17,256 commercial vehicles, 5,148 Skoda cars and 14,028 Audi cars as carrying illegal engine devices.
Regulators did not know this ruse for years that since 2009 Volkswagen had been inserting intricate code into its vehicle software that tracked steering and pedal movements. When those movements suggested that the car was being tested for nitrogen oxide emissions in a lab, the car automatically turned its pollution controls on. The rest of the time, the pollution controls switched off.
