German minister warns car industry to finish diesel upgrades in 2018

German Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer on Tuesday warned the country's carmakers to complete software updates on diesel cars by the end of 2018 in order to bring down pollution levels.

"Carmakers will be held accountable: It is the only way to end the debate surrounding diesel cars," Scheuer told dpa. "It's about re-establishing trust in word and deed."

Germany's government is trying to manage high pollution levels through software upgrades that improve the effectiveness of the cars' filtering systems, rather than the more expensive option of rebuilding the vehicles' exhaust management systems.

A German court ruled earlier this year that individual cities could ban the most heavily-polluting diesel vehicles from their streets, but the government is trying to avoid any such ban.

Bernhard Mattes, the head of automotive industry association VDA, told the Passauer Neue Presse newspaper's Tuesday edition that "the majority" of diesel vehicles would be updated by the end of the year and that the rest would be updated next year.

The German car industry is reeling from an international backlash to revelations in 2015 that Volkswagen - Europe's biggest carmaker - had used software in its cars that cheated on emissions tests.