Friday’s appointment by the supervisory board meeting comes after the previous CEO, Martin Winterkorn, quit the job this week over the scandal, which has damaged the company’s reputation and threatens its business.
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Germany’s transport minister says that light commercial vehicles at Volkswagen appear to be affected by the scandal over software used to cheat USA emissions test. Fallout from this will spread far and wide, and well into the future – the EPA will nearly certainly levy fines against the company, and owners will likely be bringing a class-action lawsuit VW’s way as well.
Authorities from India to Norway have announced new probes, while the U.S. environmental regulator said it would test all diesel vehicle models.
In a statement issued to announce his resignation, Winterkorn said that he accepted his “responsibility for the irregularities that have been found in diesel engines”, but insisted “I am not aware of any wrongdoing on my part”.
Pylas contributed from London.
“Volkswagen needs a fresh start – also in terms of personnel”.
Regulators in Europe and the United States said on Friday they would take a harder line on enforcing compliance with pollution standards and would be less tolerant of gaps between real world emissions and laboratory results.
By 2007, Mueller was named head of product management for Volkswagen Group and the VW brand, general representative.
Mueller began his career with Audi AG in Ingolstadt in 1971 as a trained toolmaker, prior to attaining his Master’s degree in Computer Science at the University of Applied Sciences of Munich in 1974, and then rejoined Audi AG in 1978.
After Winterkorn disclosed on Wednesday that he had asked the board to terminate his role, company spokesman Claus-Peter Tiemann declined to comment on how much money the departing chief executive stood to gain.
Mueller, born in Chemnitz in the former communist East Germany, was appointed chief executive at Porsche in 2010 and enjoys the backing of the Volkswagen group’s family shareholders. His sports auto brand grows from record to record, earns close to 3 billion euros a year, and – best of all – barely relies on diesels for sales.
Another potential candidate may be Winfried Vahland, the 58-year-old head of Skoda, the Czech brand owned by Volkswagen, said Sascha Gommel, an analyst with Commerzbank AG in Frankfurt.
“I want to be very clear, the manipulation of tests for diesel engines is a moral and political disaster”, Mr Huber said. It did not specify who they would be.
To succeed he’ll also have to dismantle “fortress Wolfsburg”, Pieper said, referring to the automaker’s centralized oversight, which funnels decisions through its headquarters.
Winterkorn, who claimed to know nothing about the cheating, apologized twice and said he was stunned by the scale of the misconduct.
The crisis has shaken the trust of consumers and investors in one of Germany’s engineering icons, which employs some 600,000 people worldwide and accounts for roughly one in 10 vehicles sold globally.
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The 62-year old Muller will have the responsibility of guiding Volkswagen through this period of difficulty and winning back the trust of its customers and dealers.
