ROME: VW Group announced that the company had identified “irregularities in CO2 levels” that emerged as part of internal investigations.
As many as 800,000 vehicles could be affected across the entire group, according to the release.
Shares are getting crushed in early European trading, falling by as much as 10%, pushing the price below €100 at times. An hour and a half after trading began, shares have settled down by around 8%.
The previous finding, revealed by the US Environmental Protection Agency in September, related to NOx, a different emission which can be extremely harmful to humans, but is less of a driver of climate change.
The announcement late on Tuesday relates to CO2, the main pollutant associated with global warming. It’s not clear if it relates to precisely the same issue — the use of illegal cheating software designed to game environmental emission tests required for all carmakers.
