Volkswagen board suspends R&D heads of VW, Audi, Porsche

Labelling the manipulation of data as “unacceptable” and “illegal”, Alexander Dobrindt said vehicles with 1.2 litre engines may also have been involved in the fraud.

However it’s believed that Porsche’s chief executive Matthias Muller is the frontrunner for the position of Volkswagen AG chief executive, replacing Martin Winterkorn who resigned on Wednesday.

Those goals will have to take second place to a more basic need to rescue the Volkswagen group from a crisis that threatens to destroy its reputation for reliability and engineering excellence. “It (the scandal) can have a big impact on the German economy”, Deputy Finance Minister Jens Spahn told a conference. Hatz is the VW Group’s head of engines and transmissions, as well as being the research and development boss of Porsche.

Under his leadership, Porsche has expanded and expects to increase sales to 200,000 vehicles this year, hitting a long-held target three years early.

Audi, VW and Porsche declined remark.

“Volkswagen needs a fresh start – also in terms of personnel”.

An environmental group said Monday that it had found evidence that several new gasoline-powerd models of Volkswagen cars, as well as models from Mercedes, BMW and other automakers, consumed significantly greater quantities of fuel than lab tests claim, according to the Associated Press (AP).

The highly centralized structure is what could be hurting efficiency, and could also be why the use of the defeat device continued without seemingly much scrutiny. But it said the gap between lab and road tests had grown to such an extent for emissions of both carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides that further investigation was needed to discover what carmakers were doing to manipulate results.

Volkswagen dealers and owners are expressing anger and frustration as word spreads about how the carmaker rigged diesel emissions to pass U.S. tests.

On Tuesday, Volkswagen disclosed that as many as 11 million cars were affected and possibly subject to a global recall.

This week Volkswagen revealed it had misled regulators about the diesel emissions from its cars, which were not as clean as promised.

“VW is in a dramatic situation”.