Volkswagen picks Porsche chief as new CEO

Following are responses from other national regulators.

The German government, meanwhile, revealed that the secret “defeat devices” were also built into the company’s cars in Europe as well as in the U.S., though it isn’t yet clear if it helped cheat the emissions tests, as was the case in the US.

“They will find ways to artificially lower the test results using flexibilities in the testing methods”, Greg Archer, a former director at Britain’s renewable-fuels regulator who now works at Transport and Environment, a Brussels-based advocacy group that has done its own testing, said in an interview.

D’Ieteren Auto, which imports VW cars in Belgium, on Saturday announced it had halted sales.

But Bernstein’s Max Warburton questioned whether a man who has spent more than three decades at the company was the right man to signal a break with the past.

Emissions measured in road tests of 15 new diesel cars were an average of about seven times higher than European limits, according to a study ICCT published last October.

“Volkswagen needs a fresh start, also in terms of personnel”, Winterkorn said. The committee is to speak with executives at Volkswagen’s headquarters in Wolfsburg and request access to documents, the ministry said in a statement.

Swiss authorities said, on Friday, that they had temporarily banned the sale of new Volkswagen brand diesel-engine models potentially equipped with software capable of tricking environmental tests.

“The BMW group does not manipulate or rig any emissions tests”. The company admitted that 11 million vehicles worldwide are affected by the software and agreed to pay a sum of US$7.3 billion (AU$10.37 billion) to cover the cost of the scandal. On Thursday, the company said that vehicles with 1.6- and 2-litre diesel engines sold in Europe have the same software.

“There is no difference in the treatment of exhaust emissions whether they are on rollers or on the road”, a BMW spokesman said.

Volkswagen employs 600,000 staff and brings together under a single roof twelve distinct car-making operations, turning out mass-produced brands such as VW, Skoda, Seat and Audi; prestige brands such as Porsche, Bentley and Bugatti; and Scania and MAN trucks.

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. No separate tests planned by the Dutch.

Asked to address the reports, Volkswagen spokeswoman Jeannine Ginivan said in an email to USA TODAY: “We are just reading this in the media as well”. Late in the 2000s, the company always had a chart on hand that looked like a hockey stick, with sales going up sharply the next year, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing internal matters.

A Czech transport ministry spokesman said the country was closely following the outcome of German investigations.

Mueller’s immediate priority is to clean up the mess in the United States, analysts said. “It will be important to find out whether such vehicles are also in Europe and what course of action Germany takes”.

“The challenge will be how to break up a bureaucratic culture, so that people can speak up when there’s a problem, even if it means they won’t meet a deadline and they won’t make market share”, said Lynn Wooten, associate dean at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business.