In mid-May, Volkswagen announced a delivery stop for the new Golf 8. The bug is fixed – the car goes back to the customers.
The Volkswagen Group has lifted the delivery freeze for the new Golf 8. This was confirmed on Thursday by a group spokesman in Wolfsburg. Due to a software error, no newly produced Golf models had been delivered to customers since mid-May . With the Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA) in Flensburg, Volkswagen has also agreed to recall the cars that have already been delivered.
As the VW spokesman also said, the recall in Germany is expected to affect about 15,000 vehicles. Since the autumn of last year, around 30,000 Golfs were mainly produced for the European market with the software bug .
A large number of the new golf vehicles have so far been sold in Germany. All cars now get a software update that fixes the bug. Volkswagen had received the necessary approval from the Federal Motor Transport Authority.
The software bug discovered a few weeks ago on the new Golf 8 ensures that the emergency call assistant that the EU has prescribed in every new car for two years does not work properly. “It can lead to an unreliable data transfer from the software to a control unit”, Volkswagen had mentioned as the reason for the error.
The emergency assistant ensures that an accident or breakdown is automatically reported to a traffic control center. Rescue and emergency services are to be directed to an accident site more quickly.
Volkswagen saw no alternative to the now recall of the Golf vehicles that had already been delivered. The imposed delivery freeze was also inevitable. According to EU regulations, Volkswagen is obliged to only deliver cars that have a functioning emergency call assistant. “It is a compliance case,” said the spokesman.
In addition, Volkswagen in Wolfsburg said that the company itself had discovered the faulty software in the emergency assistant. There were no accidents caused by the errors in the computer programs. Volkswagen responded promptly and voluntarily to the existing problems.
Software fixed faster than expected
In Technical Development (TE) at Volkswagen, work was quickly carried out on new software for the emergency call assistant. The modified computer programs can be installed immediately on all newly produced golf models. The vehicles already delivered will receive the new software as part of the planned recall in a workshop.
The new software was finished a little faster than expected. Originally, Wolfsburg had said that the new error-free software would only be ready in the middle of this month.
For Volkswagen, the delivery freeze and recall had come at an extremely inconvenient time. The Wolfsburg-based car manufacturer already had major problems last year in completing the new and more complex software for the new Golf 8 in good time.
This significantly delayed the start of production. Instead of the initially planned 80,000 to 100,000 cars that were to be produced in Wolfsburg last year, in the end only around 8,000 copies had left the assembly lines. Volkswagen has combined the entire golf production at its main plant in Wolfsburg.
At the start of sales at the end of last year, the German Volkswagen dealers in particular were only sparsely supplied with the new Golf. VW sales director Jürgen Stackmann had publicly apologized to the German dealers for this.
The Golf had continued to be produced despite the delivery stop. The cars were parked without new software. The modified software is now installed on the vehicles. According to internal data, Volkswagen currently produces around 4,000 new golf models in Wolfsburg every week.
