Diesel car software updates could fall foul of EU rules

Evan O’Dwyer said the only legal fix would be to ban the affected cars from the road, The Irish Times reports.

VW Group, Daimler and BMW announced this week that they were releasing a software update for millions of diesel cars in the face of mounting criticism from the public over nitrogen oxide emissions.

But Mr O’Dwyer (pictured), a lawyer for several Irish owners who are taking legal action against VW Group over ‘defeat devices’, said the move would breach EU rules.

“The EU has banned software cheating defeat devices. There is no EU law authorising any fix to cure the existence of defeat devices. Unless the EU amends the law, the only legal solution currently available is to withdraw those cars affected from the roads including here in Ireland.

“In this case the political and legal solutions are, as of now, utterly incompatible,” he said.

The lawyer added: “The belated meeting of the German federal government and domestic car manufacturers seeking to find a German solution to a German problem. This is a pan-European problem that is incapable of being fixed in one EU member state.”

However, BMW said its update is not a fix but an improvement.

A spokeswoman for the firm in Ireland said: “At present we are looking into yesterday’s announcement to see what the implications are from an Irish perspective.”