Land Rover offers software upgrade amid gearbox scandal

Two technical experts from the Jaguar Land Rover UK headquarters arrived in China on Wednesday to guide a software upgrade after the luxury automaker experienced backlash for a gearbox fault.

The company has formed a special task force to address the issue after China Central Television (CCTV) reported they adopted faulty gearboxes for the Evoque model in China on Sunday, said Anthea Wang, executive vice president of Public Relations and Corporate Communications at Jaguar Land Rover China. ' Wang said they have received more than 900 reports about the gearbox problem since the first half of 2014 and found the software version did not match, leading to broken functionality.

She said the company started upgrading the software for the Evoque owners in January this year and 22 percent of the models sold in China, around 36,000, have been completed to date.

The same model sold in March was not involved in the fault, she added.

According to a consumer protection broadcast by CCTV on late Sunday, the International Day for Protecting Consumers' Rights, owners of Evoque cars throughout China encountered malfunctions such as a sudden stop while driving and a faulty reverse gear, which re-occurred soon after 4S stores changed the defective gearboxes with new ones for free.