The Volkswagen Group now has two extra reasons to worry about the legal consequences of the Dieselgate scandal. Not only has VW AG supervisory board chairman Hans Dieter Poetsch been included in the German prosecutors' investigation, but it seems a new emission cheat scheme has been discovered on U.S. Audi models fitted with automatic transmissions.
VW supervisory board Chairman Hans Dieter PoetschProsecutors in Braunschweig, a city sharing Germany's Lower Saxony state with Wolfsburg, VW's home city, have extended their investigation on market manipulation matters, with a Bloomberg report stating that the action covers Poetsch's time in the Volkswagen Chief Financial Officer role, which the executive occupied between 2003 and 2015.
Poetsch, who is included on the supervisory boards of both Volkswagen and Audi, follows former VW Ceo Martin Winterkorn, who resigned following the Dieselgate scandal, as the second board member to be investigated. And the list of top names also includes VW chief Herbert Diess.
Dieselgate consequences so far, by the (financial) numbers
So far, the Dieselgate fiasco has cost the VW Group EUR18.2 billion ($ at the current exchange rates) in provisions, while cutting approximately EUR14 billion ($) off the company's market value.
In Europe, Volkswagen is recalling the affected 2.0 TDI diesel cars, while the carmaker has settled civil penalties in the U.S.. However, the case of the 3.0 TDI vehicles affected by the so-called defeat devices, remains unsolved, with this covering 80,000 Audi vehicles.
CARB has reportedly discovered a new Audi gearbox emission cheat
On top of all those problems, it seems the automaker has yet another issue to deal with - according to a report coming from German Newspaper Bild am Sonntag, CARB (the Californian Air Resources Board) has discovered a new emission cheat on Audi models fitted with certain automatic transmissions.
Monitoring the steering wheel angle and switching between two setups whenever the said value passed 15 degrees, the software switched between two separate gear shifting strategies.
The first was the normal, street-destined setup, while the second focused on reducing carbon dioxide during testing procedures, when there was no need for such generous steering angle to be applied.
It appears Audi ended the use of the said software in May this year, less than a month before CARB noticed the strategy while testing an earlier model. The report also states that a group of engineers related to the matter has been suspended. So far, no official statement has been released on the matter.
What about future models being axed or delayed?
When it comes to the model line-up Dieselgate consequences, the results are mixed. For instance, while Audi has delayed the development of the next-gen A3 and the Q4 due to the financial issues caused by the scandal, it seems that the VW Microbus production version, which had been on hold long before the scandal erupted, has finally received the green light.
