Report: VW Knew a Year Ago That Some Cars Had Bogus CO2 Ratings

Volkswagen AG’s top executives knew last year—not a few weeks ago as claimed—that several of the company’s vehicles fell significantly below their rated fuel efficiency, an unnamed source tells Germany's Bild am Sonntag.

The source says then-CEO Martin Winterkorn canceled one model, the BlueMotion diesel version of its Polo small sedan, because the car’s fuel consumption was a conspicuous 18% worse than rated. VW insists it withdrew the car from the market because of poor sales.

Bild claims, without citing a source, that Winterkorn and others knew last year that several other unspecified models also carried unrealistically high fuel economy ratings.

European fuel economy rankings are inferred from carbon dioxide emissions. Lower CO₂ levels equate to higher fuel economy levels. VW announced in early November it had found “irregularities” in the fuel economy ratings for 800,000 of its cars made from 2012.

VW says it discovered the suspiciously optimistic fuel efficiency ratings in the course of pursuing a larger and unrelated probe launched in late September after the U.S. said VW equipped diesels with software to cheat emission tests for oxides of nitrogen. The company has since conceded it equipped more than 11 million of its 4- and 6-cylinder diesels with software to evade NOx tests.