Volkswagen and Audi told federal regulators Thursday that more vehicles than they previously had admitted had equipment rigged to cheat emissions tests.
An Environmental Protection Agency spokeswoman said Friday afternoon the new admissions from Volkswagen means an additional 85,000 vehicles have defeat devices installed in their software. EPA officials said VW and Audi officials reversed their initial denial of the charges leveled by the EPA earlier this month during a meeting Thursday.
On Nov. 2, the EPA announced 10,000 vehicles had been identified in a second round of violations for having the “defeat devices” installed on the vehicles, including cars from Porsche. VW initially denied the vehicles had defeat device software.
EPA officials did not immediately return a request for comment on how how many additional vehicles have the defeat devices installed in their software. It is estimated that 492,000 “clean diesel” vehicles have been cheating EPA emissions tests.
Defeat devices are about 100,000 lines of software code written into vehicle software. The software identifies when vehicles are in testing conditions and then activates emissions controls on nitrogen oxide.
When not under testing conditions, the vehicles can dump as much as 40 times the legal amount of nitrogen oxide into the atmosphere.
Officials at the German auto giant have said the defeat devices were isolated incidents perpetuated by “rogue” employees in Germany.
The maximum fine the EPA could hand out for each vehicle with a defeat device is $37,500, meaning Volkswagen could face a fine of about $18.5 billion with the additional vehicles caught up in the latest round of testing. It’s not clear if that fine could increase now that Volkswagen has been served multiple violation notices for the same offense.
No recall has been announced in the United States. Volkswagen and the EPA both emphasize that the cars are safe and legal to drive.
The EPA and the California Air Resources Board continue to investigate Volkswagen.
