Following the on-going dieselgate crisis enveloping the world’s top-selling carmaker, Volkswagen, it is reported that the company’s shares have plummeted by more than 20% on Tuesday, representing the company’s highest one-day decrease ever. This also represents a market value decrease of €15.6 billion (RM74.8 billion) for the company.
Earlier this week, Volkswagen admitted they’d been using software tricks to cheat during the EPA emissions tests, thus breaching the Clean Air Act. It is considered a serious violation, not only because illegal “defeat devices” result in excess emissions many times the allowable standard, 40 times to be precise, but also because Volkswagen was concealing the facts from EPA, the State of California and consumers.
The so-called ‘Clean Diesel’ engine in question is a 4-cylinder 2.0-litre turbodiesel found in several models including the Beetle, Golf, Jetta and Passat. EPA says the nitrous oxide emissions in the real world are 10 to 40 times greater than the maximum limit permitted by the law, even though the cars passed the tests with flying colours. However, this issue does not only effect vehicles sold in America, as the company says the “defeat devices” have been installed on approximately 11 million cars from all over the world.
Volkswagen is allocating about €6.5 billion (RM31.4 billion) to fix the problem and since the investigation is still ongoing, the amount is not final as the number of cars equipped with the defeat device could be even higher. That being said, the company mentioned that for most of the cars in question this software does not have any effect.
Amid the crisis, rumor has it that Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn will step down from his position on 25th September. Besides issuing a public statement regarding the diesel emission scandal, he also released a video statement publicly apologizing for the company’s current controversy.
Winterkorn claims that he still doesn’t have the answers to all of the questions yet but promises a thorough investigation to makes things right. He asked forgiveness from customers all over the world and asked people not to blame all of the company’s 600,000 employees for this lapse. However, there was no mention about him resigning.
You can watch the entire English translation version in the video below.
