Volkswagen was caught cheating last Friday on the emissions standard compliance tests done by the California Air Resources. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was tipped off by the California group’s board.

Volkswagen is said to have programmed some of their diesel cars to turn on emission controls when being tested, making them seem cleaner than they truly are. This means that only top emission controls would turn on during testing, and then on the road, the vehicles would release 40 times the amount of pollutant. Nearly 500,000 Volkswagens have this software installed on them in the U.S, as well as some Audi cars which are the high-end versions of Volkswagen.

However, after deep internal investigation, Volkswagen found that nearly 11 million vehicles had significant discrepancies throughout the world.

The former CEO, Martin Winterkorn resigned but first stated, “We are deeply sorry that we have broken the trust of our customers and the public. We do not and will not tolerate violations of any kind of our internal rules or of the law. We will also cooperate fully with the investigation”

He also stated, “Millions of people all over the world trust our brands, our cars and our technology. I am deeply sorry we have broken this trust. I would like to make a formal apology to our customers, to the authorities and to the general public for this misconduct.”

Volkswagen has 6.3 billion dollars put aside to cover the recall costs and to repair the damage done to the company. Shares of VLKAY (Volkswagen) dropped 17% Tuesday after having the same issue Monday. Around one third of the value of Volkswagen dropped in just those two days, and it is still falling.

The mistake is affecting the German economy as well, 20% of their exports come from the auto-industry; it also employs 775,000 people directly.

Volkswagen, who is also the owners of Audi and Porsche, became the largest automaker in the world this year after overtaking Toyota.

As more nations are calling for nation-wide or Europe-wide investigations, Volkswagen could be looking at a hefty amount of fines. The U.S. has fined the company $18 billion already.

Michael Horn, the head of Volkswagen in the U.S. stated, “We have totally screwed up.” As well as, “Let’s be clear about this, our company was dishonest with the (EPA), and the California air resources board, and with all of you.”

The EPA recalled cars include the VW Jetta, the Beetle, the Golf from 2009-2015 models, the Passat from 2014-2015, and the Audi A3 2009-2015 models. Only the diesel versions were effected.

So far the company is already facing 34 lawsuits from people who claim their cars are not as valuable since the emission testing scandal.