Volkswagen AG Chief Executive Officer Matthias Mueller said the automaker must become more efficient after VW’s top labor leader called on management to reduce the number of models in the face of ballooning costs from the diesel emissions cheating scandal.
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In the midst of a diesel emissions scandal that has dragged the Volkswagen Group through lawsuits, recalls and investigations, a new reports says that company has chose to put on hold all management promotions.
Newer EA 288 cars built to the “Euro 6” standard are said not to be affected. Installing the extra catalytic converter and tank is not a trivial process since the affected cars were not created to fit these pieces of hardware.
The revelations about VW’s manipulation of its diesel engines have sparked one of the biggest scandals in the history of the automobile sector.
Volkswagen has sold around 482,000 vehicles in USA with the same diesel engine, which will be fixed later on.
The EA 189 engines were central to Volkswagen’s marketing of “clean diesel” cars that were billed as offering fuel economy and emissions competitive with gasoline engines. In Europe, Volkswagen makes about 40mpercent of its sales.
The German carmaker has been in talks to lift its stake in the FAW joint venture, and chairman Hans Dieter Poetsch has said a decision may be reached by the end of this year.
Market experts presume that about 120,000 Volkswagen and Audi vehicles might have been manipulated in South Korea by the same software found by the US environment regulators and be subject to a recall.
“The way this is all coming out…is incredible”, Bernstein analyst Max Warburton said. Volkswagen has confirmed that the “auxiliary emissions control device” operates differently from the “defeat” device software included in the company’s 2009 to 2015 models disclosed last month. “Perhaps they can change their advertising slogan from “Das Auto” to “Das Motor: Engines so complicated even we don’t understand how they work!”
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Volkswagen will freeze managerial promotions next year at its VW division as part of a savings drive to help meet more than 30 billion euros of costs arising from the diesel emissions tests scandal, a German business magazine said on Saturday.
