By Bruce Wallace
LOS ANGELES, Sept 22 (Reuters) - The California Air Resources Board will broaden its testing of Volkswagen (XETRA:VOWG) AG VOWG_p.DE cars with diesel engines to include those with 3.0-liter V6 engines sold by two subsidiaries, a spokesman for the state regulator said on Tuesday.
The latest models to be examined are the Porsche Cayenne and the Audi A6, Stanley Young, communications director for the Air Resources Board, told Reuters.
Porsche declined to comment. Audi did not respond to a request for comment.
Volkswagen said on Tuesday that engine software connected with a scandal over falsified U.S. vehicle emission tests could affect 11 million of its cars worldwide as investigations of its diesel models multiplied. ID:nL5N11S052
The California Air Resources Board's testing uncovered software in several Volkswagen models that allowed the company to cheat state and federal emissions requirements by switching performance levels between testing and real-world conditions.
"That investigation looked at two-liter four-cylinder engines," said Young. "Now we're going to start looking at six-cylinder, three-liter diesel engines."
Young said VW engineers acknowledged the use of a so-called defeat device - in fact, a software algorithm - to circumvent state and federal emissions standards during a Sept. 3 meeting in the board's El Monte, California testing headquarters, attended by senior engineering executives of the regulator and the car company.
It was the 10th meeting between the two sides, called by CARB to resolve the discrepancy between pollution levels measured on the road and those obtained under controlled testing conditions.
"They literally ran out of excuses," Young said, describing the meeting in which the car manufacturer "admitted there was a defeat device."