“New appointments will be put before the supervisory board’s meeting this coming Friday”, it said Wednesday, adding that besides changes in the top job, it was expecting other personnel shifts.
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He said he would tighten up procedures at the company: “At no point was the safety of our customers in danger”.
Volkswagen’s scheme was discovered by USA regulators, who last week ordered the automaker to recall almost 500,000 diesel-powered vehicles and modify their emission systems.
Martin Winterkorn said that although he was “not aware of any wrongdoing on my part”, he accepted responsibility for the scandal and said that the company needs “a fresh start”.
Thomas Rohrbach, spokesman for the Swiss federal office of roadways, said the ban applied to all cars with diesel engines in the Euro 5 emissions category.
After VW admitted to false emission readings that would affect over 11 million vehicles worldwide, experts predict that this scandal could spell doom for the diesel auto engine. Other makes in the VW group, including Seat and Skoda, are also being banned from sale.
Michael Horn will remain as president and CEO of Volkswagen Group of America, but its US Canada and Mexico markets will be “combined and significantly strengthened” to form a new “North America region”.
Alexander Dorbrindt, Germany’s transportation minister, said Volkswagen’s deceptive software, known as a “defeat device“, might also be present on cars with 1.2-liter engines, Bloomberg reports.
The European Commission urged all member states to investigate into how many cars use illegal “defeat” devices to cheat emissions tests in light of the scandal at Volkswagen. “His ascendency is backed by a history of successful leadership at Audi, Lamborghini and Porsche, making him the obvious choice to replace Winterkorn”, said Karl Brauer, senior analyst at Kelley Blue Book’s KBB.com.
“The artificial gaming of emissions tests threatens to become the vehicle industry’s Libor moment”, he told the newspaper. Once on the road, they would pump out up to 40 times the allowed level of nitrogen oxide.
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The emissions issue, to which Volkswagen has admitted, has quickly evolved into an global scandal, with government officials in Europe, Germany, the United Kingdom, France and elsewhere taking action.
