Volkswagen: CO2 emissions woes smaller than suspected

CHAIRMAN Hans Dieter Poetsch on Thursday said investigations into the affair were going well, but the incident was the result of a “chain of errors” and it would take months to say which individuals were to blame.

“This means that these vehicles can be marketed and sold without any limitations”, the company said in a statement.

“They said it started with the decision to launch this major diesel auto campaign in the U.S. But VW developers couldn’t figure how to meet U.S. emissions standards within the timeline and budget they’d been given, so they developed the software defeat device”.

“These measurements… will be conducted in full irrespective of the evaluation by VW that is now available”, Transport Ministry spokesman Ingo Strater said.

Poetsch said that the company still believes that a relatively small number was actively involved in the manipulation of emissions.

Volkswagen has seized laptops and mobile phones from nearly 400 employees as part of its probe into the emissions test cheating scandal engulfing the company. More than 2,000 have been informed in writing that they can not delete any data in case it becomes relevant to the investigation, he said.

External auditors have gone through 102 terabytes of data, which Poetsch said is the equivalent of 50 million books.

Mueller said that the scandal has not caused a massive slump in business that some people had feared it would. “Overall, the situation is not dramatic, but, as was to be expected, it’s tense”, said Mueller.

Taking the 11 months to November, worldwide sales of all of the group brands slipped by 1.7 percent to 9.256 million units and sales of the VW brand alone were down 4.5 percent at 5.336 million, VW said.

“He warned that no one, regardless of rank, would be spared from the ongoing investigations”, Esme says.

“We are fighting for every customer and every vehicle”, Mueller said. “If changes come to our production, then this may have an impact on the number of temporary workers”.

Volkswagen has announced a fix for vehicles in Europe, where nitrous oxide emissions requirements are less stringent than in the U.S., John says.

The emissions tests – which have provoked such huge controversy for Volkswagen around the world – will now be undertaken by independent third parties while road evaluating will be based on what Pötsch describes as “real life driving”.