Volkswagen plans a mega recall to refit affected cars

Kuala Lumpur: After passing through the rough phase of admitting mistakes and facing felonies the German giant is all gearing up to placate its market share and rebuild the name. The company has announced to repair up to 11 million vehicles and overhaul its namesake brand following the scandal over its rigging of emissions tests.

The company is under huge pressure and acute measures are required to address a crisis that has wiped more than a third off its market value, apart from the company's value the scandal shockwaves also makes the German economy formidable. Thus, the German government had given Volkswagen a time frame until October 7 to come up with a solution to the massive problem.

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New Chief Executive Matthias Mueller has taken up all the responsibilities to bring the company back on tracks. It has been said that the German carmaker would tell customers in the coming days they would need to have diesel vehicles with illegal software refitted, a move which some analysts have said could cost more than $6.5 billion. Volkswagen has also stated that apart from the defeat device issue the vehicles are technically safe and roadworthy.

Sources reports that a mega recall is about to happen which require around five million vehicles from the Volkswagen brand (passenger cars) out of a total of 11 million cars from the VW Group affected worldwide. These cars are fitted with Type EA 189 diesel engines are included in the list. However, the new vehicles with EU6 engines are not affected by the recall.

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The major steps under the action plan will include the Volkswagen and other VW Group brands to present technical solutions and measures of fixing the issue to the responsible authorities. Once done all the customers will be informed over the coming weeks and months, and each brand will set up national websites to update customers on developments.

Wall Street Journal reported that VW Group’s new CEO Matthias Muller addressed a group of more than 1,000 managers earlier explaining that “nothing can justify deception and manipulation,” and that “the aim is to regain lost confidence. This requires an uncompromising and consistent clarification.”

He further added that refitting will involve a lot of hard work to be performed involving the change of software and possible hardware changes, which would require hours of work.

The major hardware changes will be performed on the car having 1.2 and 1.6 litre TDI engines which aren’t sold in the US. These cars will get a replaced fuel injection pump to ensure a smooth ride. However the 2.0-litre engines will only need a software update for Europe, but it is not certain in the US as their standards are higher than other countries.