THE Volkswagen Group is continuing with moves to clean up its engines and has announced it will be fitting particulate filters to petrol cars from next year.

The company, still reeling from the ‘dieselgate' scandal where it admitted cheating over CO2 readouts from its diesel engines, says the filters will reduce soot emissions by up to 90 per cent.

Such filters are already used on diesel engines to remove harmful particles from exhaust gasses and VW now plans to introduce them on petrol models starting with the 1.4-litre TSI Tiguan SUV and the 2.0-litre TFSI Audi A5 coupe.

Dr Ulrich Eichhorn, head of group research and development for Volkswagen, said: "Following increases in efficiency and lower CO2 output, we are now bringing about a sustained reduction in the emission levels of our modern petrol engines by fitting particulate filters as standard."

The first models with the new filters will be available from June 2017 and VW says that by 2022 the number of its vehicles fitted with the new technology could run to seven million a year.

VW said it intended to roll out the introduction of the so-called gasoline particulate filters on all of its group brands which as well as Volkswagen and Audi also includes Skoda, SEAT and Bentley.