VW names veteran insider as new CEO during scandal

In April of 2015, Volkswagen of America, Inc. sent letters to California owners of diesel-powered Audis and Volkswagens informing them of an “emissions service action” affecting the vehicles.

“My most urgent task is to win back trust for the Volkswagen Group, said the new CEO, “by leaving no stone unturned and with maximum transparency, as well as drawing the right conclusions from the current situation”.

“We stand by our responsibility”, said, adding, however, that “carefulness is even more important than speed”. The temporary move comes amid a deepening scandal over VW’s rigging of diesel vehicle emissions tests and could affect 180,000 cars not yet sold or registered in Switzerland.

Authorities will continue working with Volkswagen to determine which cars exactly are involved.

The device switched engines to a cleaner mode during official tests, but once on the road, the cars produced nitrogen oxide pollutants at up to 40 times the legal standard.

And in the USA, the Justice Department said it is taking the allegations against the company “very seriously” and announced an investigation.

As per the sources, after the team had tampered with the auto for a week, the vehicle would then pass the emission test. They claim that the company’s manpower in the United States did not have any engineers who had the ability to form the mechanism that helped the company to deceive on the test.

Embattled carmaker Volkswagen has named Matthias Mueller to take the wheel after CEO Martin Winterkorn stepped down earlier this week in the wake of a growing scandal involving some 11 million diesel vehicles equipped with software that cheated emissions testing.

On Thursday, attorneys general in at least 27 USA states and Washington, D.C. announced they would jointly investigate VW’s representations to consumers and would send subpoenas to the company, according to the Michigan Attorney General’s Office. “We need a guarantee that cars of German manufacturers are in line with the norms, without manipulation”, he told Der Tagesspiegel in an interview to be published on Sunday.

The German Chancellor Angela Merkel has asked the Volkswagen group to act in a swift manner to restore the confidence in the company. “The BMW group does not manipulate or rig any emissions tests”.