Winterkorn Denies Prior Knowledge of Dieselgate

In his first public appearance since the TDI scandal broke in September 2015, Martin Winterkorn, former CEO of the Volkswagen Group, maintained that he had no knowledge of emissions cheating before the company admitted to it.

According VW, the top brass were informed of diesel emissions manipulation in August of 2015, and told the world in September. Winterkorn’s reputation for attention to detail, though, has raised questions about how in the dark he was.

When asked by the German parliament’s inquiry committee whether he knew about the cheating before August 2015, he responded by saying “That is not the case.”

According to Winterkorn, who stepped down a day after publicly admitting to the manipulation, a “rogue group” of software engineers were responsible for the emissions cheating. He went on to say that “software applications represent a very specific area of work in engine development,” an area about which he had little knowledge.

“It’s incomprehensible why I wasn’t informed early and clearly,” Winterkorn continued. “I would have prevented any type of deception or misleading of authorities.”

Winterkorn was allegedly twice made aware of discrepancies in US emissions testing, but maintains his ignorance of a conspiracy to deceive testers.

What happened makes people furious—me too,” says Winterkorn. “I am deeply upset that we disappointed millions of our customers. For that I apologize.”

[source: Automotive News]

The post Winterkorn Denies Prior Knowledge of Dieselgate appeared first on VWVortex.

from VWVortex http://ift.tt/2jdk00y
via IFTTT

Comments

Project SportWagen: Going Stage 2 with APR

When we last left you, the humble little SportWagen was fresh from the development process with our friends at AWE Tuning, sporting a new downpipe, exhaust and intake, allowing things to breathe a bit easier. The car sounded great, but there was no getting around the fact that our wagon was still quite, well, slow. While we realize that nothing we do to the Golf SportWagen at this point will make it a race car, we still felt compelled to do something . To put it bluntly, we had a fever, and the only cure was more power. Flash forward a few hours, and we found ourselves at Waterfest, staring down APR’s palatial spread and the numerous tuned vehicles surrounding it. Earlier in the year, APR had hinted to us that their 1.8 TSI files would be quite impressive, and based on what they were able to do with the 2.0 TSI found in the new GTI and our time in their Golf R, we knew it’d be worth the wait. So with this in mind, we lined our G...

Project Golf SportWagen- Intro

I’ve never really been one for SUVs and crossovers. The current offerings aren’t the body-on-frame, go-anywhere specialty tools I remember from my youth, and what they lack in capability, they also lack in on-road performance. The current crop isn’t terribly good at handling or being efficient, which in my opinion are major components of our ideal driving experience. So when it comes to space or utility, I usually look for something of the wagon variety- and it seems that I’m not alone. We hit quite a few shows around the east coast each summer, and we see modified Jetta SportWagens at nearly every event. Even amongst common consumers, these cars are highly sought-after. They don’t depreciate much, making even early Mk 5 2.5 versions expensive in comparison to other Jettas or Golfs of the same vintage. This year, Volkswagen launched their latest SportWagen, which is now billed as a Golf. In many ways, this latest SportWagen is the best yet and it has certai...

Volkswagen Group Records Best Ever First-Half-of-Year Sales

With 5.5 million vehicles in customer hands after the first six months of 2018, the Volkswagen Group is seeing the best performance of its history. Group deliveries increased significantly in all core regions,” said Fred Kappler, head of sales for the Group. “Our core brands recorded strong growth in the first half year.” For the year-to-date, all of Volkswagen’s brands had sales bumps. MAN, SEAT, and Skoda led the sales charge with performances 24%, 17% and 11% better than the previous year. The big sellers, too, had strong sales periods, with Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles, Audi, and Volkswagen sales rising 3.5%, 4.5% and 6.3% respectively. That last figure is particularly good new for the board, since Volkswagen alone sold more than 3 million vehicles in the first half of 2018. As Kappler stated, the numbers are equally good when you break sales down by region. Brazil and Russia were the most improved markets (22% and 20%, respectively), while strong sales in Europe and China (u...

Vorderman Volkswagen

Search This Blog