Volkswagen admits irregularities in CO₂ type approval levels

4 November 2015

The Volkswagen Group announced that an internal investigation revealed irregularities when determining type approval CO₂ levels. Based on present knowledge, around 800,000 vehicles from the Volkswagen Group could be affected. Volkswagen estimates the economic risks at approximately two billion euros.

Volkswagen has established that the CO₂ levels and thus the fuel consumption figures for some models were set too low during the CO₂ certification process. “The majority of the vehicles concerned have diesel engines,” said Volkswagen, implying for the first time that gasoline engines have been also affected by the emission irregularities.

Volkwagen Supervisory Board said in a statement it is deeply concerned by the discovery of irregularities when determining CO₂ levels for the type approval of Volkswagen Group vehicles.

Following a US EPA Notice of Violation (NOV) of September 18^th, VW has admitted using a dual calibration strategy in 11 million vehicles worldwide that produced lower, emission standard compliant NOx results during regulatory testing, while higher NOx emissions were produced in real driving. On November 2^nd, the US EPA issued another NOV, alleging that illegal emission strategies were also used in several VW Group vehicles with 3 L diesel engines—an accusation denied by Volkswagen.

Source: Volkswagen