Germany's automobile regulator on Thursday ordered Volkswagen to recall 2.4 million vehicles with diesel motors carrying software intended to manipulate emissions test results.<br />Germany's transportation minister, Alexander Dobrindt, said that the mandatory recall would begin in 2016 and would be overseen by the regulator, the Federal Motor Transport Authority , known by its German initials K.B.A.<br /><br />"The K.B.A. believes that the software used in the diesel engines constitutes an illegal defeat device," Mr. Dobrindt said.<br />The German automaker has been under increasing pressure since admitting last month to American environmental authorities that it had installed a line of code in software in its diesel engines intended to manipulate the results of emissions testing.<br />In its proposal, Volkswagen had offered to update software on vehicles with 1.2- and 2-liter diesel engines starting next year to override the code that American environmental authorities discovered limited the amount of noxious gasses emitted during lab testing, but not during normal driving.
