The motion seeks to consolidate Volkswagen litigation before U.S. District Judge Fernando Olguin in the Central District of California. That court has been home to litigation accusing Toyota Motor Corp of concealing a defect that caused cars to accelerate suddenly, as well as cases accusing Hyundai Motor Co and Kia Motors of overstating certain vehicles’ fuel-economy ratings.

Toyota agreed in 2012 to pay $1.1 billion to resolve acceleration class actions, and Hyundai and Kia won approval last year for a settlement valued by plaintiffs' lawyers at more than $255 million.

Since the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced last Friday that some of Volkswagen’s diesel cars used software to deceive regulators measuring toxic emissions, at least 25 proposed class actions have been filed in seven states. The cases accuse the carmaker of duping customers into paying a premium for cars they falsely believed to be fuel efficient and compliant with environmental regulations.

Volkswagen has said that 11 million vehicles worldwide could be affected, including nearly 500,000 in the U.S. The automaker's chief executive Martin Winterkorn on Wednesday quit as a result of the scandal.

The lawyer who filed Wednesday’s motion, David Vendler, said hundreds of additional cases could potentially to be filed, given the publicity surrounding Volkswagen’s admission and the number of affected customers. “It makes sense to get these cases in one forum as quickly as possible,” he said. “Otherwise it’s like herding cats.”

Vendler is an attorney with law firm Morris Polich & Purdy in Los Angeles. He has filed a proposed class action against Volkswagen in the Central District of California.

It is typical for large-scale litigation involving nearly identical claims to be consolidated, although the questions of before which judge and which court can be hotly contested as plaintiffs' and defense lawyers jockey for advantage. The requests are decided by the seven-judge U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, which holds hearings every two months on such motions.

A spokeswoman for Volkswagen declined to comment, citing the pending litigation.

(Reporting by Jessica Dye; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Christian Plumb)

By Jessica Dye