VW official: Company’s existence is under threat
Carmaker launches media campaign to regain trust
Amid what Volkswagen ‘s chairman-to-be is calling an “existence-threatening crisis for the company,” the German carmaker is begging for the public’s trust and promising to repair both its vehicles and its own integrity.
Bloomberg News reported Sunday that Chairman-designate Hans Dieter Poetsch warned managers that the diesel-emissions scandal could threaten the company itself, and Reuters reported that Volkswagen’s supervisory board will hold a special meeting Wednesday to appoint Poetsch as its new head.
Volkswagen has admitted to installing “defeat devices” on some 11 million diesel cars that allowed them to pass vehicle
emissions inspections while spewing tailpipe pollution at up to 40 times U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards.
Reuters said VW must submit by Wednesday a plan to fix some 2.8 million vehicles in its home market.
Poetsch’s appointment was supposed to happen Nov. 9, Reuters reported, but Volkswagen said on Thursday that would be pushed back.
The New York Times on Sunday quoted sources saying VW installed the cheating software in 2008 after realizing its new diesel engine, developed at great expense, could not meet pollution standards in the United States and other countries.
Rather than stop production of the engine and throw out years of work and investment, managers decided to cheat, the sources said, confirming a report in Bild am Sonntag, a German newspaper. They did not want to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue, the Times reported.
The fallout since then has included the Sept. 22 resignation of former CEO Martin Winterkorn. The Times said Volkswagen late last month suspended three top managers who played prominent roles in engine development, but has not publicly disclosed the reasons for the suspensions. The managers were Ulrich Hackenberg, head of development for all Volkswagen Group brands, including Audi, and previously head of development for Volkswagen-brand cars from 2007 to 2013; Heinz-Jakob Neusser, currently head of development for the Volkswagen brand; and Wolfgang Hatz, head of engines and transmissions development for all Volkswagen brands.
The three suspended executives could not be reached for comment on Sunday, the Times reported.
“We are working intensively to clarify what occurred,” a company spokesman said in a statement to the Times. “Thoroughness comes before speed. We will provide information as soon as we have facts.”
The illegal software is installed on 11 million vehicles worldwide, primarily in Europe but including some cars in the United States.
In the U.S., almost all of the approximately 500,000 cars affected are Volkswagen-brand cars like the Passat, Golf, Jetta and Beetle with 2-liter diesel motors. About 14,000 Audi A3 diesels, beginning with the 2010 model year, are also affected, the company has said.
In Berlin on Sunday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel called Volkswagen’s emissions-rigging scandal a “far-reaching event” and demanded the world’s largest automaker quickly investigate it, according to The Associated Press.
Merkel told German public radio Deutschlandfunk on Sunday she hopes “that VW quickly establishes the needed transparency and clear things up,” the AP reported.
She said she expected a limited impact on the German economy. “I believe that the reputation of the German economy, the confidence in the German economy, is not so shaken that we do not continue to count as a good business location,” she told German radio.
Several news agencies reported the automaker has begun what Reuters called a media campaign that included a full-page mea culpa advertisement published in major German newspapers to mark the 25th anniversary of the country’s reunification.
Instead of lauding a quarter century of German unity, the company used fine print on a broad white field to say it would dispense with celebratory expressions, instead assuring the public that it will resolve the crisis.
“We just want to say one thing: We will do everything to win back your trust,” the carmaker said in the ad Sunday.