Dieselgate: South Korea fines VW
Emissions cheating punishment for Volkswagen isn’t just coming from the US any moreSouth Korea has become the first country outside the United States to smash Volkswagen for its Dieselgate emissions-cheating scandal.
The Asian peninsula nation has given the Volkswagen the biggest fine it has ever given a car company, fining the company 14.1 billion won ($A1.7m).
Its Environment Minister has given Volkswagen a January 6, 2016 deadline to recall the 125,552 affected cars on its roads, after the South Korean government’s own retesting echoed the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and California Air Review Board (CARB) findings of a “defeat” code in the software to cheat emissions testing labs.
The South Korean Volkswagen Group cars affected include both 1.6- and 2.0-litre versions of the four-cylinder EA 189 turbo-diesel engines, sold between 2008 and 2015.
It is still testing the current generation of four-cylinder turbo-diesel Volkswagen Group engines, codenamed EA 288, and refused to confirm whether or not the engines were clean and legally compliant, as Volkswagen insists.
But it’s not just picking on Volkswagen, and is independently retesting 15 diesel models from other car companies. The same sort of heat is being replicated in Germany, which is testing all diesel models from more than 20 manufacturers, and in the US.
The Korea Automobile Importers and Distributors Association confirmed Volkswagen sales had been slammed in the country, tumbling from 2901 cars in September to 947 in October, with its market share crunched from 14.2 per cent of the imported brands to only 5.4 per cent in October.
The Dieselgate crisis has triggered a general fall for all imported brands in the land dominated by Kia and Hyundai, with the market share of the locals rising from 84.3 per cent to 87.7 per cent in October.
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