Our diesels are clean: Audi

Audi has fended off fresh emissions cheating accusations in recent weeks after the German motor transport authority detected "emissions irregularities" in some of its 3.0-litre V6 diesels.

One of the powertrain engineers who worked on the new 3.0-litre turbo-diesel V6 engines that will make their Australian debut in the next-generation Audi A8 from July 2018 said they do not use ‘cheat devices’ to fudge emissions.

Carsten Schneider, the powertrain project lead for Audi A6 and Audi A7, said the new engines will meet all required emissions regulations in all conditions.

"These are all-new engines, they are different from the [older] engine and they all fulfil the European emissions norm," he said.

Despite the being dogged by emissions cheating and dirty diesels, Audi is committed to diesel engines and will launch its new A6 in Australia in early 2019 with diesel engines remaining the mainstay of the fleet.

The German motor transport authority is investigating around 60,000 of the German luxury car-maker's previous-generation A6 and A7 turbo-diesel V6 engines, which may have manipulated exhaust gas outputs.

But the all-new A6, A7 and A8 cars fitted with the updated TDI 45 (170kW) and TDI 50 (210kW) 3.0-litre turbo-diesel V6 engines are not affected, according to Audi spokesman Michael Crusius.

"There's no connection with the press information of the last two weeks with the A6's new engine. It was only the old engine," Crusius told motoring.com.au at the international launch of the new Audi A6 in Portugal this week.

The abnormal emissions claims levelled at Audi come on the back of its parent company Volkswagen's ‘dieselgate’ crisis that was blown wide open in late 2015.

Audi Australia has not confirmed whether any Australian vehicles are affected by the latest emissions claims but it's understood only the 200kW versions of the previous 'Gen2 Evo' V6 TDI is affected, which was not sold in Australia.