Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn resigned from his position following the scandal around the emission control of its clean diesel cars sold in the US and Europe. The company has decided to fire the R&D chief of its luxury brand Audi and Porsche, Ulrich Hackenberg and Wolfgang Hatz, and VW’s top executive in the United States, Michael Horn.
The impact of the scandal is that it has sent shock wave across the company and will cost VW a wooping $18 Billion imposed by the US Environmental Protection Agency. VW was unable to meet the tight emission norms and at the same time give better performance and mileage VW installed a “defeat devices” in the software code of the control module of their diesel vehicles. These “defeat devices” would be automatically active by sensing the pedal and steering movement which would suggest that the vehicle is being testing for emission control in the lab. While, on-road the pollution control would be turned off, this would give a satisfactory performance but at the cost of high emission of nitrogen oxides.
Following the scandal the companies shares have lowered to as low as 40% and it be the prime responsibility of the new CEO to restore the confidence in the company, its dealers and customers.
This scandal has put a serious question to all the auto makers, although Clean diesel concept proves to be promising on paper, but can such vehicles achieve excellent mileage and lower emissions in practice.
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Also see: Volkswagen fined USD 18,075,000,000 for cheating on EPA
Source: EconomicTimes
