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New York - Volkswagen's emissions cheating scandal escalated on Tuesday after VW subsidiaries Audi and Porsche admitted that their engines contained software considered illegal in the United States.
Some 13 000 Porsche Cayenne units are affected, not only 3000 as assumed previously, a company spokesman said in Stuttgart.
Read: How VW's 'defeat device' works
Porsche buys its diesel engines from Audi, which admitted on Monday (November 23) evening that engines it manufactured contained the controversial software.
Cheating emissions tests
Volkswagen has been in hot water since September when US regulators announced their investigation into allegations that Volkswagen had installed software into its cars that tricked testing devices and made it seem that they conformed to US emissions standards when they, in fact, exceeded them.
The affected Cayenne models date back to 2013. Previously, only the model year 2015 had been looked at. The new findings significantly increase the number of cars affected.
Read: VW to have fix proposals by end of Nov
Diesel cars are only a sideline of Porsche's business, as the majority of its customers prefer petrol engines. However, around one-quarter of its Cayenne SUV sold in the United States are fitted with diesel engines. Porsche stopped selling the diesel version at the beginning of November.
It was not immediately clear how the new revelations would affect customers, as internal talks were still ongoing, the Porsche spokesman said. The company was also in touch with the US authorities and cooperating fully with them, he said.
'Defeat device'
Audi says it told US regulators that its 3.0-litre diesel cars used three software programmes that it had not previously revealed when obtaining regulatory approvals. One of those programmes could be considered to be a "defeat device" under US law.
Volkswagen has previously maintained that the emissions scandal was confined to its 2.0-litre diesel engines, which it manufactures, while denying that larger engines manufactured by sister company Audi were similarly suspect.
The affected VW engines were used in some Audi models.
While Audi admits it did not initially reveal the programmes in the 3.0-litre engines to US authorities, it denies that the software was meant to manipulate emissions. A company spokesman said that cars with the engines could not detect whether they were on the road or being tested, which the illegal VW software could do.
The software affects Audi, Volkswagen and Porsche models reaching back to 2009, or approximately 85 000 cars in the United States.
