Audi diesel woes resurface

Diesel is beginning to seem like a recurring nightmare for Audi chairman Rupert Stadler and reports out of Germany ensure he’s not going to wake up happy any time soon.

Just as the Volkswagen Group gained $US25 billion worth of breathing space from the Dieselgate emissions-cheating scandal, the German government claims it has found the very same “defeat” software device in Audi’s A7 and A8.

The government’s car-industry cheating task force claimed 24,000 A7 and A8 models, built between 2009 and 2013, had the cheat in both the V6 and V8 turbodiesel versions.

Transport Department (KBA) minister Alexander Dobrindt demanded a recall as he announced the findings late last week, setting Audi a deadline of June 12, or just 10 days, to finalise a plan to clean up the cars, 14,000 of which were sold in Germany. Audi recalled the cars the same afternoon.

The KBA also found the alleged cheats on its own, meaning Munich state prosecutors will now have a new channel to investigate Audi, which it very publicly raided on the day of its annual results conference in April, even parking a BMW in Stadler’s personal parking space.

Germany’s Handelsblatt newspaper reported that the April raid was in connection to 80,000 Dieselgate cars the brand had sold in the United States, because they didn’t think the same manipulation occurred or breached European rules.

Dobrint explained the software on the A7 and A8 halved nitrogen oxides emissions until the car detected more than 15 degrees of steering-wheel movement, indicating the software knew when it was on a set of laboratory rollers and when it was being driven in the real world.

"The latest analyses of A7 and A8 automobiles of model years 2010 through 2013 with V6 and V8 engines certified according to the EU5 emission standard have revealed that in certain situations, NOx emissions are between 20% and 100% above the limit,” Audi admitted in a statement.

“The reason is that in some situations, engine speed is unfavourably influenced by the transmission software, which can have a negative impact on the engine’s emissions.

“A recall is likely to start in July 2017. As only a software update will be installed, the time required for the work on the cars will be about 30 minutes.

“Audi will continue to cooperate fully with the authorities and the Federal Motor Transport Authority. It apologises to its customers for the inconvenience and is doing everything to ensure that the anomalies it has discovered will be corrected as soon as possible."

Audi’s Dieselgate story is a list of horrors, from acknowledging in November 2015 that it had the Volkswagen Group cheating software installed in its four-cylinder cars, to admitting it had the cheat in the V6 turbo-diesels it developed for itself, Volkswagen and Porsche to finding the original software code for the entire Dieselgate scandal came from its own engineers.

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