To regain relevance Volkswagen hadn’t enjoyed in the USA since hippies painted flowers on their microbuses and “The Love Bug” was playing at the local drive-in, Winterkorn had bet that Americans, who were rapidly shifting to Japanese-made hybrids, could be persuaded to try diesel.
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Following his appointment, Mueller said that his top priority was to restore the company’s reputation.
The country has stopped the sale of any VW cars in the Euro5 category, which contains the majority of the cars that the company has admitted have defeat devices.
But it depends in large part on how Volkswagen decides to fix the problem and whether the fix severely impacts the fuel economy and fun-to-drive nature of diesel, for which new-car buyers paid a premium from $1,000 to $6,855 over the cars’ gas-powered counterparts.
Transport authorities in several countries – including the United Kingdom and Germany – have announced their own investigations. It’s also possible Volkswagen could decide not to fix the affected cars but buy them back from customers, which is what the U.S. Public Interest Research Groups is calling for the company to do. Cars sold and already on the road will not be subject to the ban.
The Japanese corporation’s decision to sell amid the scandal came as a new sign of distrust in VW after it lost a third of its market capitalisation – over 20 billion euros – this week.
Since the EU banned defeat devices in 2007, the European Commission has attempted to introduce legislation to test diesel cars in a more realistic “real-world” environment.
“If US auto buyers were smarter and better informed”, said a highly-placed Volkswagen powertrain executive to this reporter, “they’d buy our clean diesels instead of all this hybrid nonsense”. The automaker eventually did a recall late past year, without much improvement, the EPA says. Emissions and mileage standards are a central component of vehicle and engine design, affecting weight, performance and price. Earlier this year the agency updated gas mileage tests after some automakers were caught with inflated window sticker estimates.
Winterkorn is likely to have many more opportunities to practice his English as American prosecutors, regulators and lawyers round on Volkswagen.
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A week ago the watchdog revealed that Volkswagen had used engine management software to detect when a motor was undergoing emissions testing, and temporarily change the engine output to pass the examination.
