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28th Mar 2024

VW has to fix 3.3 million cheating cars in under a month

  • VW has promised to fix all 8.5 million European cars by autumn (Photo: Brett Levin)

Volkswagen Group (VW) has removed illegal cheating software from 5.2 million diesel cars in the European Union, a spokesman told EUobserver on Friday (25 August).

A total of 8.5 million cars are affected in the EU, which means that 61.2 percent of cars have now been fixed.

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This means there is still a substantial amount of work to be done if VW is to keep its promise made to the European Commission, with 3.3 million cars that still require the update.

In September 2016, the commission announced that the German carmaker would “have all cars repaired by autumn 2017”.

The agreement did not specify whether the deadline expires at the beginning of meteorological autumn (1 September) or astronomical autumn (22 September). The commission did not respond to a request for comment.

It was discovered in September 2015 that Volkswagen Group had installed so-called defeat devices in 11 million diesel cars worldwide.

The devices helped the cars to pass emissions test by making them appear much cleaner than they actually were.

Meanwhile, it is still unclear what long-term effects Volkswagen's “fix” will have on the performance of cars.

Last July, the EU's Joint Research Centre found that one VW vehicle actually became dirtier after the cheating device was removed.

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