German regulator asks Volkswagen for clean up plan

Volkswagen AG (VW) has been asked by German auto regulators to submit a plan by 7 October specifying by when its vehicles would meet national emissions requirements, after the auto major admitted to cheating on US air pollution tests.

The Federal Motor Transport Authority in a  letter to VW has called for a ''binding'' programme and schedule for a technical solution, transport minister Alexander Dobrindt said yesterday in an e-mailed statement.

Volkswagen would be required to present a plan on how it would fix its affected vehicles and would notify customers and relevant authorities, Peter Thul, a company spokesman, told Bloomberg telephonically.

Meanwhile, newspapers reported that VW might have known for years about the implications of software at the centre of the test-cheating scandal.

According to Bild, Robert Bosch GmbH had warned VW in 2007 that its planned use of the software was illegal. A Volkswagen employee had also said the same in 2011, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported.

Thul said VW was investigating and would present its findings as soon as they were available, declining to elaborate.

Meanwhile, lawyers for UK drivers have urged Volkswagen to ''come clean'' over exactly which cars had been affected in the UK by the emissions-rigging scandal that had rocked the global car industry, The Guardian reported.

UK prime minister, David Cameron, labelled VW's action as ''unacceptable'', and German newspapers claimed the company had been aware of the cheating several years ago.

Cameron who spoke about the scandal for the first time, said any decision on banning VW cars was a matter for the Department for Transport. ''What appears to have happened here is unacceptable,'' he said, speaking on his way to New York. If companies are breaking the rules and fiddling the figures, that is unacceptable. Emissions standards matter and they have to be properly policed and delivered.''

Switzerland, meanwhile, has banned sales of VW diesel cars, in the most drastic action taken yet by any government.

According to London-based law firm Leigh Day, which was representing hundreds of Volkswagen drivers in the UK, there was a ''woeful lack of clarity'' over which diesel cars were involved.

Last week Swiss authorities said they had temporarily banned the sale of new Volkswagen diesel engine models potentially equipped with software capable of tricking environmental tests. (See: Switzerland bans sale of VW diesel models).