Huge numbers of vehicles not yet fixed in Volkswagen emissions scandal
08 Nov 2017
Volkswagen has fixed only around two-thirds of the 1.2 million vehicles in the UK hit by the dieselgate scandal, the chair of a Commons committee said.
According to Mary Creagh, chair of the Commons' Environmental Audit Committee, the rate at which vehicles are being dealt with has ''stalled.''
The figures which she obtained from the Department for Transport (DfT) show that only around two-thirds of the 1.2 million vehicles affected in the UK had been fixed as of September.
According to analysis the rate of fixes has declined from a high of 10 per cent of affected cars per month in February to just 2 per cent.
There was much outrage in September 2015 when Volkswagen was found to have fitted defeat device software to 11 million diesel vehicles worldwide.
Air pollution has led to the deaths of about 40,000 people annually in the UK, causing problems such as heart and lung diseases and asthma, due adverse effects on children's development.
In a communication with transport minister John Hayes to express the committee's concerns around Volkswagen's progress Creagh wrote, ''It is over two years since the VW emissions scandal was discovered. A third of vehicles have yet to be fixed and rates have slowed considerably. We have written to the Department for Transport to ask what action they are taking in response to the stalled progress.''
VW had earlier undertaken to fix, each car within the group fitted with software designed to cheat emissions testing by producing lower readings in lab conditions by autumn.
It came to light in 2015 that 11 million vehicles worldwide were affected for which the company was forced to pay $30 billion to cover the cost of the resulting scandal.
The UK had 508,276 VW cars, 393,450 Audis, 131,569 Skodas, 79,838 VW commercial vehicles and 76,773 Seats identified as requiring the company's fix.
A DfT spokeswoman said, "The UK Government continues to take the unacceptable actions of Volkswagen extremely seriously and is working hard on behalf of UK consumers.''