Volkswagen denies claims it knew cars would fail UK emissions limits

Volkswagen has hit back at claims it admitted vehicles involved in the dieselgate emissions scandal should never have been approved for British roads.

Reports on The Times suggest a Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) paper confirms that Volkswagen knew its cars didn’t “meet the regulatory requirements” for registration under European emissions rules.

However, the German manufacturer has responded by saying the quotes in question have been taken out of context, and that they were issued in short notice to speed up the roll-out of technical fixes for affected models.

Dieselgate - greed, lies and deception

“Volkswagen notified the DVSA of its intention to conduct a non-coded action in respect of the vehicles affected by the NOx issue,” said a Volkswagen spokesman. “The wording in the notification was a brief and immediate notification to explain to the DVSA broadly why the voluntary service action was to be commenced. That was quickly done – in just one sentence – by setting out the allegation that was made.”

Volkswagen said the “notification does not reflect any accepted factual or legal position” and that “it was focused on ensuring that we were quickly given the DVSA’s agreement to commence a voluntary service action.”

Of the 1.2 million cars affected by the emission scandal in Britain, Volkswagen has already applied its technical fix to around 580,000.