Internal investigators within Audi have concluded their technical analyses of Audi’s large diesel engines’ software and found nothing untoward. Audi has passed on its findings to the German Federal Motor Transport Authority (Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt, KBA).
The company has so far examined around 700 model variants since 2016. The last round of investigations looked at Audi’s full-size models with diesel V6 engines, the A8, A7 Sportback, A6 and Q8; this includes second-generation ‘Evo’ and third-generation power units that have been brought out since mid-2014 or are still to be commercialized under WLTP rules.
“The investigations were more complex than expected,” commented Bernd Martens, Audi member of the board of management for procurement, who is leading the internal task force to address the diesel crisis.
“For every single diesel engine, we had to delve deep into the software codes in order to examine even peripheral areas of the driving profile. A genuine feat that our developers accomplished on top of their core task of working on new Audi models. To conduct this exhaustive analysis, our engine development colleagues combed through more than 750,000 pages of documentation.”
So far, the KBA has issued the company with seven notices for mandatory software updates in connection with the diesel crisis. These apply to a total of around 240,000 vehicles worldwide. As agreed at the Diesel Summit in Berlin August 2017, Audi is offering a voluntary software update for 370,000 vehicles with V TDI engines in Germany to improve emissions in real road traffic conditions. The retrofit program is free of charge and Audi promises no adverse effects.
These investigations only apply to Europe. In North America, the measures for the engine generations in use have already received clearance in four out of five cases from the regulatory authorities responsible. Two thirds of those cars have already been dealt with.