Volkswagen board suspends R&D heads of core brand, Audi, Porsche

Meanwhile, reports from Germany suggest that a few senior management at Volkswagen may have known about issues relating to the software product, produced by Bosch, that was used to distort emission-testing results.

Volkswagen has been in the dock for allegedly forging documents pertaining to US pollution tests on 500,000 diesel engine vehicles.

The former Porsche chief (62), who began his career in Audi and enjoys the trust of VW’s influential Porsche and Piëch shareholder families, was appointed by the board two days after the resignation of Martin Winterkorn.

The criteria, outcomes and engineering of cars that missed emissions targets were overseen by managers at Volkswagen’s base in Wolfsburg, according to the people who asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. At the time, VW insisted the problem was only a technical glitch.

AVL List spokesman Michael Ksela confirmed that the company supplied equipment for the Oxnard, California site.

“This is one of the fixes they presented to us as a potential solution”.

“My most urgent task is to win back trust for the Volkswagen Group – by leaving no stone unturned and with maximum transparency, as well as drawing the right conclusions from the current situation”, Müller, 62, said in a statement.

“If the [light] illuminates for any reason, your vehicle will not pass an IM emissions inspection in a few regions”, the letter warned.

It noted that California owners required the update before the state would renew vehicle registrations.

Though Volkswagen Group of America officials were vague, at first, about what that number meant, the goal more recently was said to encompass all the automaker’s brands sold in the US, which include Audi, Porsche, Bentley, and Lamborghini.