VW to recall 8.5 million cars in Europe

Volkswagen Group is planning to recall 8.5 million diesel-powered million cars in Europe fitted with software to cheat on emissions tests.

The Thursday announcement came after German authorities rejected Volkswagen’s proposal to remedy the emissions software problem in 2.4 million German cars, forcing a mandatory recall instead, Bloomberg Business reports.

{mosads}The automaker must expand the recall to the 28-state European Union, making it one of the biggest recalls in European history.

It follows revelations from last month from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that nearly 500,000 Volkswagen diesel vehicles sold in the U.S. had “defeat device” software that would retool emissions to pass tests, while emitting far more pollutants in regular driving.

Volkswagen soon revealed that about 11 million vehicles worldwide had similar software.

The decision by German officials “opens up the possibility of a common and coordinated response in all European Union states,” Volkswagen Chief Matthias Mueller wrote Thursday to German Transport Minister Alexander Dobrindt.

“Such a unified procedure would be in the European spirit as well as in the interests of customers.”

The group of recalled vehicles is about a third of the cars Volkswagen has sold in the continent since 2008, Bloomberg said. It is the biggest in Germany since its new recall regulations took effect in 1997.

The mandatory recall will happen much faster than the voluntary process would have, a process that Volkswagen estimated would stretch into 2017.

“It’s an unusual measure to be ordering a mandatory recall,” Arndt Ellinghorst, a London-based vehicle analyst, told Bloomberg. “It shows to me that the [government] is losing patience with VW’s slow response on what to do to fix the engines so far.”