A day after long-time chief executive Martin Winterkorn resigned over the scandal, a member of VW’s supervisory board said he expected more executives to step down.
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Sixty-two-year-old Müller previously worked as Volkswagen‘s head product strategist before taking the reins at Porsche – owned by Volkswagen Group – in 2010.
Rohrbach said the ban could potentially affect 180,000 vehicles in Switzerland that have 1.2-liter, 1.6-liter and 2.0-liter diesel engines.
The EPA said Friday it will test emissions at every automaker to make sure no other company is trying to dodge pollution regulations like Volkswagen did.
In response to “Dieselgate”, the EPA head of transportation and air quality, Chris Grundler, says the agency is sending letters to automakers promising that the agency is “upping our game”, by improving its ability to detect defeat devices and software such as those used by Volkswagen.
The new procedure comes a week after the EPA announced that Volkswagen had programmed many of its diesel cars sold since 2009 to figure out when they were undergoing EPA tests and change their pollution output to comply with the tests.
Calling the cheating a “moral and policy disaster”, the company’s supervisory board chief Berthold Huber said on Friday that the group is now looking to Mueller, who “knows the company and its brands”, to tackle the crisis.
The devices, essentially software code, curbed emissions of smog-creating nitrogen oxide and other pollutants while the vehicles were being tested but not while the cars were actually in use.
On Thursday (Sept. 24), German transport minister Alexander Dobrindt announced that Volkswagen had also cheated in tests in Europe, listing the number of affected vehicles in Germany at 2.8 million on Friday. But the company later said it extended to 11 million cars worldwide, although the issue only applies to United States emissions standards.
The scam that could lead to fines worth more than $18bn in the USA alone.
Daimler AG, the maker of Mercedes cars, is rejecting claims by a German environmental group that it appears to have been involved in manipulation of emissions data.
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The agency said it is still working on a plan for recalling the affected Volkswagen and Audi vehicles.
