2016 VW diesels have new suspect software

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

U.S. regulators say they have a lot more questions for Volkswagen, triggered by the company’s recent disclosure of additional suspect software in 2016 diesel models that potentially would help exhaust systems run cleaner during government tests.

That’s more bad news for VW dealers looking for new cars to replace the ones they no longer can sell because of the worldwide cheating scandal already engulfing the world’s largest automaker. And, depending on what the Environmental Protection Agency eventually finds, it raises the possibility of even more-severe punishment.

Volkswagen confirmed to The Associated Press on Tuesday that the “auxiliary emissions control device” at issue operates differently from the “defeat” device software included in the company’s 2009 to 2015 models disclosed last month.

The new software first was revealed to Environmental Protection Agency and California regulators Sept. 29, prompting the company last week to withdraw applications for approval to sell the 2016 cars in the U.S.

“We have a long list of questions for VW about this,” said Janet McCabe, acting assistant EPA administrator for air quality. “We’re getting some answers from them, but we do not have all the answers yet.”

The delay means that thousands of 2016 Beetles, Golfs and Jettas will remain quarantined in U.S. ports until a fix can be developed, approved and implemented. Diesel versions of the Passat sedan manufactured at the company’s plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., also are on hold.

Volkswagen already faces a criminal investigation and billions of dollars in fines for violating the Clean Air Act for its earlier emissions cheat, as well as a raft of state investigations and class-action lawsuits filed on behalf of customers.

If EPA rules the new software is a second defeat device specifically aimed at gaming government emissions tests, it would call into question repeated assertions by top VW executives that responsibility for the cheating scheme lay with a handful of rogue software developers who wrote the illegal code installed in prior generations of its four-cylinder diesel engines.

That a separate device was included in the redesigned 2016 cars could suggest a multiyear effort by the company to influence U.S. emissions tests that continued even after regulators began pressing the company last year about irregularities with the emissions produced by the older cars.