Pressure mounts on the German automaker Volkswagen to reveal details of pollution cheating scandal that has affected 11 million vehicles worldwide.
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VW said it supported the action and it had handed over a “comprehensive” range of documents. “This serves a prompt and thorough clearing-up, in which Volkswagen has great interest”. He was replaced by Porsche boss Matthias Mueller. It has allegedly responded by suspending over 10 employees, including three top engineers.
The raid came on the same day that Germany’s vice chancellor and economy minister, Sigmar Gabriel, was in Wolfsburg to attend a meeting of VW employee representatives.
Gabriel said it is important to send the message across that the employees should not pay the price for the “criminal behavior by managers”.
“It is clear that the company must clear this up – the more offensively it does so, the better”, Gabriel said. Dr. Ferdinand Piech, Chairman of the Supervisory Board Volkswagen.
Minister Alexander Dobrindt spoke Wednesday evening after the automaker replied to German authorities’ demand to present a timetable for a solution. Larger 2-liter motors will need only a software fix, which should be available from January, Dobrindt said.
The parts for 1.6-liter engines won’t be available for these engines until next September, about a year after VW admitted to cheating on emissions tests.
After installing software created to fool US pollution testers since 2009 and covering it up for nearly a year, Volkswagen faces costs and lost revenue from its damaged image of more than 35 billion euros ($39.6 billion), Warburg Research estimates. He didn’t say what fix 1.2-liter cars will require. “And I had no indication whatsoever that a defeat device could have been in our cars”.
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Volkswagen said in an emailed response to questions about the report that “whether and to what extent this software actually intervenes improperly is now still the object of internal and external tests”.
