No vans are involved in a recall of 15,000 Renault vehicles the French manufacturer has announced as a result of recent concerns over their emission levels, a spokesman for the company has told Motortransport.com.
The recall, which applies to vehicles fitted with the dCi 110 engine, “seeks to address an error in the engine’s calibration unit” which leads to the diesel particulate filter (DPF) not being regenerated as it should be, he said.
While the dCi 110 engine is used in Renault’s Kangoo range, the way it has been calibrated in that vehicle means there is no need for modification, he said.
The issue with the dCi 110 engine has been known about for some time and corrected in new production vehicles since last September, added the spokesman.
There is no suggestion that Renault is sliding into an emissions scandal of the kind Volkswagen has been embroiled in since September. “Renault Group vehicles are not equipped with fraudulent software or systems designed to bypass the emission control system,” stressed the spokesman. The error in programming had nothing to do with vehicles’ performance in emissions tests, only affecting them in actual day-to-day use, he continued.
Earlier this month, Renault Group hit the headlines after investigators carried out raids on three of its sites in France in mid-January. The firm said these had taken place as part of an inquiry by an independent technical commission put in place by the French government to measure and analyse the vehicle emissions of all car manufacturers in the wake of the VW scandal.
Renault had co-operated and would continue to co-operate fully with any investigations by the authorities, said the spokesman.
A statement by the French energy ministry on 14 January said the independent commission’s early investigations had confirmed the existence of fraudulent software on two VW vehicles but not found any such software on other makes - though it had found a number of vehicles in which CO2 and nitrogen oxide emissions were beyond accepted standards, including vehicles from “several foreign manufacturers and one French manufacturer”.
Renault has voiced support for the introduction of new European procedures to make published fuel economy figures more representative of real-world driving conditions and late last year announced a new €50m “emissions plan” to develop emissions improvements in future vehicles.
