Volkswagen fixes 470,000 cars affected by diesel scandal

German carmaker Volkswagen (LON:VKW) has fixed 470,000 cars out of 1.2 million affected by the diesel emissions scandal in Britain, according the firm’s UK managing director.

“Out of 1.2 million technical measures which have to be applied, as of today, we have applied 470,000 and at the current rate we are applying these measures to 20,000 cars a week,”Paul Willis told the UK transport committee.

Paul Willis faced difficult questions from lawmakers, many of whom were angry that Volkswagen was not fined in Britain and that motorists have not received compensation, unlike Volkswagen owners in the United States.

The firm insists that no laws were broken in Europe.

“I don’t think we did anything wrong”, said Willis in his testimony.

This did not go down well among many MPs, with Committee member Graham Stringer MP saying of Mr Willis’s testimony: “I have seen all sorts of evasive witnesses, but I think we have just seen somebody tell us absolute blatant lies.”

Ian Yarnold, head of international vehicle standards at the Department for Transport told MPs that he thought the device was “prohibited,” but he would need to much more evidence to determine if fitting the devices was a technically criminal act.

The Volkswagen scandal emerged in 2015, when it was found that the carmaker had installed “defeat devices” in its diesel models that allowed them to falsify the results of US pollution tests.

Britain’s junior transport minister John Hayes said he and Transport Minister Chris Grayling would travel to Germany next month to meet their counterparts and seek more information which could lead to an investigation into Volkswagen in Britain.

“(We) will go to Berlin next month to meet the minister … to request that we’re provided the detailed technical information that will allow us then, if we chose to, to take further steps,” Hayes said.