France to hold random engine checks after Volkswagen scandal

Mueller, the head of VW’s Porsche sports-car division, had been widely expected to be Winterkorn’s replacement.

Müller’s name had been floated in recent days as a potential replacement for Martin Winterkorn, who resigned as CEO in light of Volkswagen’s ongoing emissions scandal.

The software at the center of Volkswagen’s emissions scandal in the USA was built into the automaker’s cars in Europe as well, Germany said Thursday, though it isn’t yet clear if it helped cheat tests as it did in the U.S.

Germany’s transport minister has announced that VW has manipulated test results for about 2.8 million cars there – pointing to cheating on a bigger scale than initially thought.

The California Air Resources Board is notifying vehicle manufacturers that it will enhance its testing of diesel engine emissions.

Analysts hope that on Friday it may at last say which models and construction years are affected, and whether cars will need to be refitted.

Mueller brings long-standing experience of several of Volkswagen’s 12 brands to his new job at the head of a sprawling group that has almost 600,000 employees worldwide.

The chairman of Porsche AG on Friday became CEO of the Volkswagen Group, which is caught in an emission cheating scandal.

The ICCT called for urgent regulatory action in Europe, where there are more diesel cars than anywhere else in the world thanks to incentive schemes in the 1990s designed to reduce carbon emissions more strongly associated with petrol vehicles. During the test, the cars meet the standard; under normal driving conditions, emissions are up to 40 times higher.

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.

“Through many conversations with Matthias Mueller, I know that he will preserve the autonomy of Porsche”, Mr Hück said. Proportionately, this suggests that between 1million and 1.5 million diesel cars in the United Kingdom are likely to be affected.

“This was so clearly a deliberate act by executives at Volkswagen that there needs to be criminal penalties”, said Clarence Diltow, who runs the Center for Auto Safety.

“My priority is to protect the public as we go through the process of investigating what went wrong and what we can do to stop it happening again in the future”, he adds.

The German transport authority has launched an inquiry into the scandal and is conducting static and road tests on VW models and spot tests on cars made by other manufacturers to discover the extent of the wider problem.