A German government task force has now discovered the same devices designed to cheat emissions tests were found in two of luxury carmaker Audi's models -- the Audi A8 Automatic with V8 and V6 engine, built from 2009 to 2013. A total of some 24,000 Audi vehicles are affected by the cheat, with around half of them having been sold in the carmaker's home market Germany and the rest throughout Europe.

Germany's Transport Minister Alexander Dobrindt, who announced the findings on Thursday, has demanded a recall of those vehicles and set a June 12 deadline for the carmaker to come up with a comprehensive plan to refit the cars. On Friday, state prosecutors in Munich confirmed to Handelsblatt that they would investigate the new disclosures.

The findings mean that Audi cars sold in Europe will also now be investigated, according to Ken Heidenreich, a spokesperson for the Munich state prosecutors office. Until now, prosecutors had only been looking into some 80,000 cars sold in the United States, where Audi admitted at the start of 2017 that cars had been manipulated to cheat emissions tests. Europe wasn't part of the investigation because Germany's automotive authorities believed there was no manipulation on this side of the Atlantic.