Volkswagen India on Friday said that it will recall 3,877 units of Vento cars, fitted with the 1.5-litre diesel engine and manual gearbox, due to inconsistent Carbon Monoxide (CO) emissions that were observed to be exceeding the threshold limits during the Conformity of Production (COP) tests done by Automotive Research Association of India (ARAI).
The company is also temporarily holding back sales of the manual gearbox version of the Volkswagen Vento with 1.5-litre diesel engine with immediate effect, said a statement here. The company said that it is analysing the current recall issue and will propose technical measures to ARAI to solve this inconsistency at the earliest.
Once approved and confirmed by the competent authorities, the company will implement the measures and resume the production and sales of the relevant vehicle. The same technical measures will also be implemented in the impacted vehicles that are already with customers. This problem impacts only the manual gearbox version of Vento with 1.5-litre diesel engine. All vehicles in the customer hands are technically safe and roadworthy. All other diesel models and variants of Volkswagen India, including Vento 1.5TDI with Automatic Transmission (DSG) and all diesel Polo cars, conform to the norms and will continue to be produced and sold in India, the company clarified.
The fresh recall comes amidst the company’s involvement in recalling over 3.2 lakh vehicles last year, which have been fitted with the E189 engines equipped with defeat device, which may lead to excess nitrogen oxide emission levels in vehicles. Currently, the company is involved in rectifying the technical problem across models to conform to the norms.
Volkswagen India had recorded its best ever production figures in 2015 with 1,23,456 vehicles. The Pune Plant registered a growth of over 10%. Volkswagen Vento was the highest produced car in 2015 contributing close to 60% of the total production. Production at the Pune plant crossed 5,75,000 numbers since the start of operations in 2009.