Since then, the company’s fortunes – and its share price – have crashed amid a scandal over rigged emissions tests.
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This week Volkswagen said 11 million cars were fitted with engines that had shown a noticeable deviation in emissions levels between testing and road use.
Working to recover from a widespread cheating scheme to evade emissions regulations, Volkswagen named the top manager of its Porsche subsidiary to head the German automaker.
“I assume this responsibility with confidence and will do everything personally to regain the trust of our customers, our employers and partners and investors and the whole public”.
Federal regulators are putting USA automakers on notice.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will introduce new tests to detect devices like the one Volkswagen used to cheat on its emission test to comply with the Clean Air Act, agency officials said today. VW already has taken a $7 billion charge to set aside money to cover the cost of the scandal.
The next day, Martin Winterkorn quit as the company’s CEO, with Muller (pictured below) expected to be his replacement. If not, he failed to properly oversee the company.
In addition to naming Mueller CEO, the Volkswagen Group’s supervisory board also announced a sweeping structural reorganization plan. It didn’t detail where in the world the 5 million Volkswagens were sold.
The EPA initially identified the problem in less than 500,000 cars with Volkswagen and Audi branding. But it expects cars in the 2015 model year will be patched “relatively quickly”, Grundler said.
Grundler said that all automakers would “face severe penalties if they are found to have misled the agencies”.
At that event Volkswagen America’s chief executive, Michael Horn, said the company “totally screwed up”, candidly admitting wrongdoing. The wider vehicle market has been affected too, with manufacturers fearing a drop in sales of diesel cars and tougher testing.
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“From what we know now, not only passenger cars but small utility vehicles by Volkswagen are also affected”, Dobrindt said, adding that diesel engines involved include 1.2 litre, 1.6 litre and 2.0 models.
