Problems with the existing methodology for measuring harmful nitrogen oxide emissions have come into focus following revelations that Volkswagen installed defeat devices in a few 11 million diesel cars in the USA and Europe that allowed the company to cheat in emission tests.
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Volkswagen’s new CEO says the company needs to place less emphasis on raw sales numbers as it recovers from a scandal over evading emissions testing on its diesel engines.
The Environment Ministry on Thursday said Korea will apply the same criteria in line with the free trade agreement with the EU. The company said it expects profit for full-year 2015 “to be down significantly” from 2014.
JULIAN STRATENSCHULTE/AFP/Getty Images Matthias Mueller, CEO of German auto maker Volkswagen and Lower Saxony State Premier and Volkswagen’s Supervisory board member Stephan Weil pose next to VW electric Golf Police vehicle during a visit to the VW plant in Wolfsburg, central Germany, on October 21, 2015. A German bank has estimated that the scandal could cost the German group €50 billion (CHF54.5 billion).
After vowing to introduce a new corporate style at Volkswagen, Mueller is breaking with earnings etiquette established by his predecessor, Martin Winterkorn.
“But as I told my management team quite frankly, we simply need to get on with it. Things will only change if we as leaders bring a new spirit of openness and cooperation to life”, he said, adding that the measures will make the company “more fun to work for”.
The third-quarter results show the group would have made a profit of 3.2 billion euros (£2.3 billion) if the “diesel issue” had not emerged.
“We will do everything in our power to win back the trust we have lost”.
According to Müller, the point is not to sell 100,000 more or fewer vehicles than a major competitor.
“We see it as a positive signal that VW has pretty much kept the provision for the scandal ($7.3 billion set aside) unchanged”, said Arndt Ellinghorst at Evercore ISI, a London-based firm. Sales revenue rose 5.3 percent to 51.5 billion euros.
Volkswagen plans to cut investments by €1 billion a year at its core division, which accounts for 5 million cars to be recalled.
We will be ruthless in punishing those involved and we will be comprehensive in learning from it so something like this never happens again.
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The Commission released a statement saying that the differences in test results will be allowed due to the “technical limits to improving the real world emission performance of now produced diesel cars in the short term”, British newspaper Business Reporter reports.
