Volkswagen Announces European Fixes For 'Defeat Device' Diesels

Volkswagen announced today that the German Federal Motor Transport Authority has accepted its proposed fixes for the EA 189 four-cylinder diesel engines with the "defeat device" emissions cheating software. In Europe, at least, those changes won't be too extensive.

For the 2.0-liter engine, the change will require only a software update, while the 1.6-liter engine (which is not offered in the United States) will get a software update and add a "flow transformer" in front of the air mass sensor.

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The flow transformer is a mesh that calms the swirled air flow in front of the air mass sensor and therefore allows measurements taken by the sensor to be more accurate. Volkswagen says air mass throughput is a very important parameter for an optimum combustion process.

According to Volkswagen, software and airflow are keys to the fixes: "Thanks to advances in engine development and improved simulation of currents inside complex air intake systems, in combination with software optimisation geared towards this, it has been possible to produce a relatively simple and customer-friendly measure."

Volkswagen claims the fixes will have no adverse effects on performance or fuel consumption, and that the fixes will take less than an hour.

It should be noted that these fixes will almost certainly not work for the 482,000 affected cars on these shores. That's because the current U.S. Tier 2, Bin 5 emissions standards, adopted back in 2008, are far more stringent than Europe's Euro 5 standard, which was in effect from 2005 through 2014. In fact, even the latest Euro 6 standards won't be as tough as current U.S. standards until 2017.