“VW needs to be very open about what has happened, how it was possible that this could happen to make sure that this never happens again in the future”, said a leading Volkswagen shareholder, underlining the importance of the board meeting.
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The scandal led to VW CEO Martin Winterkorn’s stepping down on Wednesday evening.
Mr Winterkorn resigned as a outcome of the global pollution cheating scandal that has rocked the automobile sector over the past week.
Reorganization is also coming to VW’s workings in North America. He originally joined Audi back in 1977 but if he is indeed given responsibility for the Volkswagen Group, it could be his toughest job so far. Horn and group sales chief Christian Klingler are seen as potentially vulnerable. The Supervisory Board said it was a part of “long-term planned structural changes”.
VW is careful to point out that Klingler’s leaving is “not related to recent events”. The production department has been abolished.
Labor representatives, occupying half of the 20 board seats, would “only accept a personality with great technical and entrepreneurial expertise as well as great social competence”, VW works council chief Bernd Osterloh said in a letter to employees published on Thursday.
Regulators in Europe and Asia have said they will also investigate, while Volkswagen faces criminal inquiries and lawsuits from cheated customers.
Volkswagen will fire three top executives on Friday, a senior source told Reuters, as the German carmaker tries to recover from a scandal over its rigging of US vehicle emissions tests. Porsche AG is an owned subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group, but then VW itself is mostly owned by a different holding corporation, Porsche Automobil Holding SE. The models include Jetta, Beetle, Golf, Passat and Audi A3.
On Friday, the German transport minister Alexander Dobrindt said Volkswagen rigged emission tests on about 2.8 million diesel vehicles in Germany, almost six times as many as it has admitted to falsifying in the United States.
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Around 11 million vehicles worldwide are involved and it is setting aside 6.5 billion euros to cover costs of the scandal.
