Unfixed German Volkswagen Cars Affected With Cheat Diesel Engines To Face De-registration

German federal authority for motor vehicles Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt (KBA) has ordered owners of all Volkswagen vehicles with the cheat software to fix their cars failing which they would be de-registered. 

This comes after several Audi and VW cars have already been discontinued in Munich and Hamburg which were fitted with affected Euro 5 diesel engines after a series of successive reminders that were ignored by the owners. 

The KBA stated that the recall for all the affected VW cars was mandatory and that the cars which are not fixed will be eventually taken out of service. The car owners were provided with about a year and a half of notice period following which the de-registration would commence. 

In 2016, KBA approved software tweaks in the EA189 engines of Volkswagen which was intended to correct manipulated engine control software in 1.2, 1.6 and 2.0-litre engines. This came after Volkswagen, in 2015 admitted to installing cheat devices in 11 million vehicles worldwide, out of which five million were in Europe. 

In the US, the German giant was compelled to pay a fine of $30 million additional to other compensation to all the affected car owners. Meanwhile, the rest of the world had to only corrects the software or to install a small piece of hardware (only for 1.6-litre engines)

Volkswagen, however, is not the only company who has faced heat for emission-manipulating software. Earlier in June, German automobile giant Mercedes-Benz had issued a mandatory notice to recall 7,44,000 of its cars over violation of emission norms in Europe. The brand affected by the violation is Mercedes-Benz. According to Germany’s Federal Transport Authority, the car had an underlying, unauthorized code that could be used to manipulate diesel exhaust emissions.

The authority issued a recall notice for the company which included 2,38,000 German cars. However, Mercedes-Benz put across a mandatory notice recalling 7,44,000 cars from all of Europe.

Following the discussion between German Transport Minister  Andreas Scheuer and Mercedes-Benz chairman Dieter Zetsche, the minister had said that its parent company Daimler had promised to remove the suspected software from all the models.

Mercedes, however, defended its diesel engine software, saying it conformed to the law prescribed by the EU. In certain situations, car-makers are permitted to switch off the SCR filter in diesel engines in the interests of engine longevity.