Currently reading: Volkswagen denies claims it knew cars would fail UK emissions limits
Reports suggest Volkswagen admitted its cars should have never been sold in UK; manufacturer says otherwise

Volkswagen has hit back at claims it admitted vehicles involved in the dieselgate emissions scandal should never have been approved for British roads.

Reports on The Times suggest a Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) paper confirms that Volkswagen knew its cars didn’t “meet the regulatory requirements” for registration under European emissions rules.

However, the German manufacturer has responded by saying the quotes in question have been taken out of context, and that they were issued in short notice to speed up the roll-out of technical fixes for affected models.

Dieselgate - greed, lies and deception

“Volkswagen notified the DVSA of its intention to conduct a non-coded action in respect of the vehicles affected by the NOx issue,” said a Volkswagen spokesman. “The wording in the notification was a brief and immediate notification to explain to the DVSA broadly why the voluntary service action was to be commenced. That was quickly done – in just one sentence – by setting out the allegation that was made.”

Volkswagen said the “notification does not reflect any accepted factual or legal position” and that “it was focused on ensuring that we were quickly given the DVSA’s agreement to commence a voluntary service action.”

Of the 1.2 million cars affected by the emission scandal in Britain, Volkswagen has already applied its technical fix to around 580,000.

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Jimbbobw1977 4 April 2017

Rubbish utter rubbish - this

Rubbish utter rubbish - this company makes me angrier by the day. It was far cheaper for them to design the and install the cheat device than make cars comply with relevant emissions regulations.

This is a company cutting costs wherever they possibly can and then employing the best marketing people to cover it...

fadyady 4 April 2017

Trail of denial

If last two years are anything to by then every time Volkswagen says they have not done something wrong or illegal it means exactly the opposite. Watch this space.
Chris C 4 April 2017

VW

VW seem to be having a very soft ride in the UK over the emissions scandal compared to other markets such as the US - it's about time our government caught up...
Neil2129 5 April 2017

Can't re-write regulations retrospectively

The problem the UK Government (and all other European governments) has is that the European regulations were so poorly written that it isn't clear if the emissions cheat devices actually contravened the regulations. You can't re-write the regulations now and apply them retrospectively to cars sold 5 years ago.
The US regulations were written in such a way that it was clear that the cheat device was a violation. That's why VW has been treated much more harshly there than here.