Mueller officially named new Volkswagen Group CEO

Volkswagen’s supervisory board appointed Mueller, a longtime company insider, at a daylong meeting on Friday.

Volkswagen on Friday tried to move beyond the emissions cheating scandal that has threatened to cripple it, naming Matthias Müller, the head of the company’s Porsche unit, as chief executive.

VW has seen its long established reputation as symbol of German engineering excellence tarnished by a scandal affecting 11 million vehicles worldwide that broke a week ago. The company issued a profit warning and announced it was taking a €6.5 billion ($A10.4bn) provision against earnings to cover the costs of fixing the software.

“Today we are putting vehicle manufacturers on notice that our testing is going to include additional evaluation and tests created to look for potential defeat devices”, said Christopher Grundler, director of the EPA Office of Transportation & Air Quality.

“Under my leadership, Volkswagen will do all it can to develop and implement the strictest compliance and governance standards in the whole industry”, Mueller said in a statement.

In his last statement as CEO of the Volkswagen Group, Martin Winterkorn declared “I accept responsibility for the irregularities that have been found in diesel engines and have therefore requested the Supervisory Board to agree on terminating my function as CEO of the Volkswagen Group”.

Regulators in Europe and Asia have said they will also investigate, while Volkswagen faces criminal inquiries and lawsuits from cheated customers.

Volkswagen America CEO Michael Horn will keep his position, despite reports this week that he would be ousted.

Mr Mueller, a close lieutenant of Mr Winterkorn, officially joined Audi in 1978 after studying computer science.

An Italian consumer group, Altroconsumo, said Friday a class action suit was planned and called on Volkswagen to either correct the software employed in the emissions-rigging or substitute the vehicle.

The automaker will also appoint an individual U.S. firm to probe into the matter and trim down the management board to adopt a more decentralized structure.

Environmental group Greenpeace wrote to the Government to ask if it knew about the cheating of emissions tests before this month.

“When it comes to our vehicles, there is no difference in the treatment of exhaust emissions whether they are on rollers (eg. test bench situation) or on the road”, BMW said.

VW shares crashed 37% in 48 hours following the accusations, which have devastated the company and its shareholders.

The new CEO will also need to understand whether incentives were built into the system that encouraged people to lie – and change them, if so, said Bogosian. This is the only way to win back trust.