Luxury carmaker Audi has been found using up to four defeat devices on their V6 diesel engines, by the German Transport Ministry. The emission defeat devices are in the software code used of the brand’s engine. The Audi developed defeat devices are used to produce lower emission readings on the model fitted with them during the Government tests performed under rolling roads in controlled environments which differ from the substantive results that will be produced on public roads. The devices are claimed to be fitted on the 3.0-litre turbocharged diesel engine and are said to have been used on vehicles produced by the brand up to early 2018.
The German Transport Ministry forcibly recalled various models equipped with these engines with the defeat devices and nearly 2,00,000 units were speculated of using the illegal software.
Out of four, only one function has been found as illegal, though other functions also helped emission manipulation. The one function found to be illegal is labelled as ‘Motoraufwarmfunktion’ which translates to ‘engine warm-up function’. This function is actually used to cheat the emission norms by manipulating emission results. The other three softwares, which are not deemed as illegal can be voluntarily removed by the company from the software code as part of earlier recall.
Audi’s parent company, Volkswagen was also found using similar defeat devices on various diesel engine and the Indian arm, in March, was directed by the National Green Tribunal to pay INR 500 crore for violating emission norms.
The 3.0-litre V6 diesel engine is used in the Audi Q7 45 TDI in India. We await a any kind of official statement from Audi on the same, if the cars making use of these 3.0L V6 diesel engines will be recalled to get this fixed.