When last we checked in on Volkswagen and the widening emissions scandal, we learned that in addition to software installed on some 11 million diesel vehicles designed to game nitrogen oxide tests, Germany’s largest carmaker has also been habitually understating CO2 output on around 800,000 cars sold in Europe. 

In a nutshell, the company said it found “unexplained inconsistencies” while conducting an internal probe related to carbon-dioxide output.

For the first time, gasoline engines were said to be affected. 

“VW is leaving us all speechless,” Evercore ISI’s Arndt Ellinghorst said.

Prepare to be left speechless-er, because now, the company has admitted that some 85,000 Audi engines contained a second defeat device just weeks after saying (and this is about as explicit as it gets) that “no software has been installed in the three-litre V6 diesel power units to alter emissions characteristics in a forbidden manner”.

As it turns out, software had been installed in all three-litre V6 diesel power units. As FT reports, “the luxury car brand of the VW group admitted that the software was in all three-litre V6 diesel engines manufactured by Audi and sold from 2009 until this year.”

So no big deal, just every single three-litre V6 diesel vehicle sold for the past seven years. 

FT goes on to note that after a meeting between Audi’s chief executive, the company’s engineers, and the US Environmental Protection Agency, the carmaker “sent out a statement saying that it had failed to disclose three auxiliary emissions control devices (AECDs) to regulators. Without disclosure and subsequent approval from regulators, AECDs are not legal.”

“One of them,” the company added, “is regarded as a defeat device according to applicable US law.Specifically, this is the software for the temperature conditioning of the exhaust-gas cleaning system.”