Volkswagen sales fall 5.3% in first full month of scandal

In the meantime, VW announced that as many as 11 million vehicles worldwide were affected by the emissions scandal. It is now in the process of retesting those vehicles. New real-time tests are being conducted in all sorts of vehicles and some emissions discrepancies have been found in many cars, though the KBA has yet to name which models these discrepancies were found in.

VW has started to feel a commercial impact.

It revealed on Friday that auto sales in its core VW brand had fallen 5.3 per cent in October to 490,000 vehicles. 5 % from the same month a yr earlier.Sales fell 26 % in Russian Federation & 50 % in Brazil.

Volkswagen’s automotive division had €27.8bn in net liquidity at the end of the third quarter, with the auto maker categorising about €10bn of that as a buffer to support credit ratings.

VW’s mass market brands suffered falls in sales last month, with Seat sales down 11.4%, Skoda’s down 2.6%, and the carmaker’s own-brand vehicles down 0.2%.

Instead it has set aside €2bn.

The so-called defeat devices turn on pollution controls when the vehicle is undergoing testing, and off when it is back on the road, allowing it to spew out harmful levels of nitrogen oxide. The emission scandal affected company’s turn over and its credibility. VW has said that some of the €2bn would go towards compensating governments that had lost out on tax receipts.

In the company’s first substantive ad campaign since it was rocked by controversy in September, Volkswagen is running a stark print ad with a simple letter to its customers in about 30 newspapers around the United States including the NY Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal . The federal agency learned from researchers and the California Air Resources Board (CARB) of a potential problem with VW’s about the time that the automaker came forth to confirm what they already knew.

Initially, when VW admitted they’d faked the emissions and economy of up to 800,0000 cars, they pointed the finger at just the 1.4 litre cylinder on demand engine in the Polo. It has replaced its CEO and offered $500 cash payouts to owners hit by the scandal in the U.S.

Richard Blumenthal, a Democratic senator from CT, said that offer was “insultingly inadequate”. In the VW case, we did our own testing and discovery.

“It’s still too soon to say”, a spokeswoman said.