Volkswagen to cut investment by EUR1bn a year to t

VW will, henceforth, only sell diesel drives that use SCR (selective catalytic reduction) and AdBlue technologies in Europe and North America.

“Unless we change our regulations now, we’ll be a place where other countries can dump their dirty cars”, said Richard Di Natale, leader of Australia’s Greens Party, which wields an influential voting bloc in the country’s Senate, where the conservative government needs support from others to pass laws.

At the moment, a total of 1,189,906 diesel vehicles (spread across different VW Group brands) in the United Kingdom are believed to have been affected.

In a press release Tuesday, the company’s new Volkswagen Brand Board of Management said they planned to ramp up efficiency programs and overhaul select vehicle models while cutting investments by around 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) per year.

The scandal is also forcing Volkswagen to accelerate plans to develop battery-driven and hybrid electric vehicles.

It’s no surprise VW is cutting investment.

Earlier, the governor of Germany’s Lower Saxony state, which holds a 20 percent stake in Volkswagen, said the automaker should have admitted earlier that it manipulated emissions data in the U.S. Volkswagen acknowledged the deception to US regulators on September 3, more than a year after researchers published a study showing the real-world emissions of two VW models were far higher than allowed.

There are about 67,000 of the cars – 2009 to 2015 VW and Audis with 2-liter diesel engines – in California, according to auto information company Kelley Blue Book.

At a special meeting, CEO Dr. Herbert Diess announced major product decisions: a reorientation of the diesel strategy, the development of a standardised electric architecture for passenger cars and light commercial vehicles, and a new approach for the next generation of the Phaeton.

However, the company did not provide details of where and how the cost cuts would be implemented. “Who decided this course of action and when is also something that’s being investigated”.

Volkswagen is to slice speculation spending by EUR1bn a year, change diesel discharges control innovation and dispatch an electric Phaeton lead, the brand’s administration board reported on Tuesday (13 October). Volume models will receive new hybrid tech as well, and VW wants to provide them with a range of at least 300 kilometers (186 miles), partly thanks to a 48-volt power supply system.