The German industrial titan sparked global outrage when it admitted that 11 million of its diesel cars, including 2.8 million in Germany, are fitted with so-called defeat devices that activate pollution controls during tests but covertly turn them off when the vehicle is being driven.
The appointment came as Swiss authorities said they were suspending sales of Volkswagen diesel vehicles that could contain devices capable of cheating emissions tests, including Audi, Seat, Skoda and Volkswagen brand vehicles built between 2009 and 2014.
A Volkswagen technician warned the company about cheating over its emission tests as early 2011, a German newspaper reports.
Volkswagen has named Porsche chief Matthias Mueller as its new boss as the German carmaker deals with an emissions scandal.
Volkswagen is under heavy pressure to show it can get to grips with the biggest business-related scandal in its 78-year history.
Discovery of such devices in Volkswagen’s “clean diesel” cars, announced last week, has shaken the world’s largest automaker, slashed its market value, raised the specter of criminal investigations and fines and forced its CEO to resign.
“My most urgent task is to win back trust for the Volkswagen Group – by leaving no stone unturned and with maximum transparency, as well as drawing the right conclusions from the current situation”, Mueller said in a statement released by the automaker.
The case also threatens to tarnish the reputation of a company that prides itself on strict regulations and even stricter enforcement.
“We’re going to continue to aggressively pursue this issue with VW“, she said.
At that event Volkswagen America’s chief executive, Michael Horn, said the company “totally screwed up”, candidly admitting wrongdoing.
But it expects cars in the 2015 model year will be patched “relatively quickly”, Grundler said.
Winterkorn, who had been CEO since 2007, said he took responsibility for the “irregularities” found by U.S. inspectors in VW’s diesel engines, but insisted he had personally done nothing wrong. The weekly also cited VW’s internal investigators.
VW, which has seen its stock plummet since the scandal broke, has set aside more than $7 billion to remedy the problems with its cars.
Shares of Volkswagen have been plunging ever since the news of the scandal became public.