Audi under the microscope

The peak German government automotive regulator has moved in to Audi’s Ingolstadt headquarters to keep a controlling hand on the troubled brand’s emissions testing.

In a strong indication that it no longer trusts Audi, the transport department (KBA) spent yesterday scouring all of Audi’s vehicle development data.

Charged with final approval for all German cars sold in the European Union, the KBA camped out at Audi HQ to search the company’s entire processes to reach type approval.

"Our utmost priority is clearing up this situation without reservations and we aim to prove that during the certification of our test benches,” said Bernd Martens, Audi’s purchasing chief and the head of its diesel scandal task force.

While the VW brand has used the impetus of Volkswagen Group chairman Herbert Diess to push beyond the Dieselgate scandal, Audi remains mired in it.

Its chairman and CEO, Rupert Stadler, remains in custody in the Bavarian city of Augsburg, with Munich prosecutors alleging they tapped a telephone call from Stadler plotting to suspend internal Dieselgate investigators and to hide or destroy evidence.

Almost three years on from the explosion of Dieselgate, Audi’s engine management software remains riddled with “defeat devices”, which illegally work around emissions regulations.

These devices, five of which were found in Audi V6 diesel engines in the superseded A6 and A7 and were also supplied for Porsche’s Panamera and Cayenne, continue to be found by the KBA’s investigators.

"We are the primary authority responsible for emissions here [in Germany] and we do not rule out the use of any measures needed to ensure transparency and regulatory compliance," a KBA spokesman said.

The KBA’s mistrust of Audi has moved front and centre, with all cars sold in Europe having to be recertified from the current NEDC fuel emission and consumption cycle to the more real-world Worldwide Harmonized Light Vehicle Test Procedure (WLTP) cycle by September.

The WLTP has to be done for all cars, broken down to not only all engine, gearbox and front/rear/all-wheel drive set-ups, but different wheel and tyre and even interior packages as well.

Testing laboratories in Europe are struggling to cope with the surge, though BMW at least saw it coming and locked in extra capacity two years ago.

The new WLTP regulation has forced Volkswagen to close its headquarter plant in Wolfsburg for at least one day a week until the end of September, while Daimler has blamed complications from meeting the test for a lowered profit guidance for investors.

But Audi’s position is even more onerous than that of the other German makes, because the KBA now insists on looking over its shoulder every step of the way, with Audi now ordered to report any anomalies it finds in its V6 diesels directly to the KBA.

Audi has worked with the KBA to introduce new “golden rules” for vehicle development, with a new “code of conduct” rolled into it, which includes multiple-control principles, shared responsibilities and more precise documentation of the steps towards compliance.

The KBA’s focus at Audi today was not a raid but more of a stress-test examination of the new “golden rules” processes.

“We know that we have to win back confidence,” Audi’s Martens said.

“We shall continue to invest all our efforts into doing this and to demonstrate it convincingly.

“We have introduced many improvements since the end of 2015, and there are more to come. Meetings such as this one are an opportunity to convince our partners that we are doing everything we can to demonstrate our reliability,” he said.

Audi was ground zero for the technology that developed into the Volkswagen Group’s emissions cheating scandal.

It had problems with being certified as ‘clean’ with 24,000 of its Euro 5 V6 diesels in the A7 and A8 last year and it has already had a KBA-forced stop-sale on 60,000 of its 200kW Euro 6 V6 diesels this year.