Volkswagen (ETR:VOW3) is having to recall almost 600,000 cars in China due to faulty headlights.
FAW-Volkswagen Automobile, the car maker’s joint venture in China, have announced the news that they will recall 577,590 Golf and Sagitar vehicles that were produced between September 2009 and May 2014.
China’s quality watchdog, The General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, confirmed the number and said on Wednesday that recalling the cars was necessary due to the potential safety risks.
FAW-Volkswagen Automobile is majority owned by the state and is one of China’s largest VW markets. It provided the German car manufacturer with 20 percent of their total sales last year.
The german automaker has had a bumpy start to 2017. In March the car giant had to recall one million of its Chinese Audi cars due to concerns over faulty coolant pump faults.
In January of this year, the car manufacturer recalled 136,000 Audi and Volkswagen cars from the US over the faulty antilock brake system.
However not all bad news for the car manufacturer. In January of this year, it was reported that Volkswagen, who also owns Audi and Porsche, sold over 10.3 million vehicles worldwide in 2016 and therefore beat Toyota (TYO:7203) to become the world’s best-selling carmaker for the first time.
This all came despite the recent emissions scandal, where it came out that Volkswagen was cheating in emissions tests.
In response, the car manufacturer agreed to pay the US Justice Department a total of $4.3 billion (£3.3 billion), which was the biggest fine the US government has yet handed to a carmaker.
The fine came when Volkswagen admitted that it had installed software onto the engines of almost 600,000 of its vehicles in the US. The software allowed the engines to turn on pollution controls during government tests and switch them off later.