Volkswagen recalls 3,877 Vento cars due to inconsistent CO emissions, sales halted

Volkswagen India today said it will recall 3,877 Vento cars with 1.5-litre diesel engine and manual gearbox due to inconsistent Carbon Monoxide (CO) emissions besides halting the sales of the model with immediate effect. The emissions were observed to be sometimes exceeding the threshold limits during the Conformity of Production tests done by the ARAI, the company said in a statement.

“At the same time, Volkswagen India is temporarily holding back sales of the manual gearbox version of the Volkswagen Vento with 1.5-litre diesel engine with immediate effect,” it added. The company is analysing the issue and will propose technical measures to ARAI to solve this inconsistency at the earliest, it said.

Once approved and confirmed by the competent authorities, Volkswagen India will implement the measures and resume the production and sales of the vehicle, it added. “The same technical measures will also be implemented in the impacted vehicles that are already with customers,” it said.

Volkswagen India said the problem impacts only the manual gearbox version of Vento with 1.5-litre diesel engine and is not connected to the global NOx emissions topic.

“All other diesel models and variants of Volkswagen India, including Vento 1.5 TDI with automatic transmission (DSG) and all diesel Polo cars, conform to the norms and will continue to be produced and sold in India,” it said.

Last year, Volkswagen had recalled 3.23 lakh vehicles in India after a government-ordered probe found the company using diesel engines equipped with a defeat device which help cheat emission tests, as it had done in the US and other global markets.