Still recovering from an emissions cheating scandal, Volkswagen AG agreed to improve oversight of its engine-software department to prevent future manipulations, Reuters reported Thursday.
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Hans Dieter Poetsch, the company chairman, said the external investigation by USA law firm Jones Day was making good progress but would need time to reach conclusions. He said cooperation with those authorities is now “excellent” after earlier misunderstandings on both sides.
Volkswagen admitted in September that the cheating software had been installed on 11 million cars, including 500,000 diesel-powered vehicles sold in the United States.
Potsch said engineers should have persevered until they found a solution. His departure was announced by the carmaker last week, but VW did not provide any reason.
Shares for the German carmaker were up 2% to 134.4 euros, which was still lower than their pre-scandal price of 162 euros.
Despite the scandal, orders so far this year were up by 3.5 percent and Chief Executive Matthias Mueller said he was confident drivers would get over their reluctance to buy the group’s vehicles in the coming weeks.
The company was not considering the sale of any units to simplify the group structure or raise money, and was happy with having 12 brands. The costs associated with the scandal – fixing the cars, paying fines, dealing with legal challenges – were estimated to be worth tens of billions of dollars. The group’s operating business “is meeting expectations, and the 2015 annual forecast, which was updated at the end of October, remains unchanged”, the 62-year-old executive said. He said “the situation is not dramatic, but as expected it is tense”. “I will look ahead optimistically and confidently”.
While understating Carbon dioxide emissions was the smaller of the two scandals engulfing VW, some analysts had said it could have a bigger impact on sales, arguing drivers might be more anxious about fuel economy than pollution.
He added today: “This is not only about direct but overall responsibility”.
According to VW Chairman Hans Dieter Poetsch, an investigation into the scandal is continuing and it has identified a “chain of errors” that led to the installation of the cheating technology.
About 450 external and internal experts are involved in ongoing investigations, the company said.
Later on, exhaust-gas treatments to reduce nitrogen oxide became available, but VW says it didn’t use them to their full extent.
It said also said there was no indication that board members were involved in the affair.
The company is still unsure how, exactly, this could happen, he said.
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He said the investigation has so far analyzed data from laptops, phones and other devices from 400 employees. In any case, the company was unaware at the time that there was a problem.
