Mueller, VW’s former head product strategist who joined the group’s top management board in March, is favoured by a majority on VW’s 20-member supervisory board, which will endorse him as new CEO at a meeting on Friday, the source said. “We will therefore continue to work intensively, together with Volkswagen, to find out exactly which vehicles are involved”, said Dobrindt Thursday, as reported by the Financial Times.
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On Tuesday, Volkswagen said that as many as 11 million cars were affected and possibly subject to a global recall.
In addition to investigations from France to South Korea, public prosecutors in Germany said they were examining information and evaluating legal suits already filed against the company by a number of private individuals to decide whether to launch a full criminal inquiry against those responsible. Volkswagen chief executive Martin Winterkorn resigned Wednesday, saying he is taking responsibility for the “irregularities” detected in the diesel engine tests, but was “not aware of any wrongdoing”.
“There will be further personnel consequences in the next days and we are calling for those consequences”, board member Olaf Lies told a German TV station.
The heads of Volkswagen’s Porsche brand, Matthias Mueller; Audi brand, Rupert Stadler; and VW brand, Herbert Diess, are seen as the front-runners to succeed Winterkorn, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters on Wednesday.
Volkswagen acknowledged last week it had deliberately deceived officials about how much its diesel cars polluted.
A “defeat device” in the vehicles made it so that they would pass emissions tests. German rival BMW said on Thursday it had not manipulated emissions tests, after a magazine reported some of its diesel cars were found to exceed emissions standards.
“As CEO I accept responsibility for the irregularities that have been found in diesel engines and have therefore requested the Supervisory Board to agree on terminating my function as CEO of the Volkswagen Group”.
Volkswagen has admitted to using the devices.
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“We are getting lots of phone calls asking ‘What is the likely impact of this?'” said an insider at a major Volkswagen dealership in Britain, who declined to be named. “Above all, I am stunned that misconduct on such a scale was possible in the Volkswagen Group”, read the statement published on Volkswagen’s website. Germany said it won’t limit its spot checks to VW.
