Volkswagen stated on Tuesday it would drop diesel automobiles in the United States and once again concentrate on sport energy and electrical automobiles, as the car manufacturer wants to reboot method for its core brand in the Americas in the following diesel emissions cheating scandal.
The decision, revealed by Volkswagen brand chief Herbert Diess, breaks with previous ideas it might go back to the once-popular innovation after it overcomes emissions scandal.
The choice to drop diesel lorries – which previously comprised a quarter of the brand’s U.S. sales – is simply one component of a tactical overhaul that Diess yielded could take 10 years to close the gap with competitors in the United States.
Volkswagen has consented to pay billions of dollars in charges and compensation payments to U.S. clients after confessing in 2015 to unfaithful on federal diesel emissions tests.
“For several years we have been lacking a plan for success in the United States, while we are losing ground to competitors in markets like Brazil or India,” stated Diess, a previous BMW executive who signed up with Volkswagen in July 2015. Volkswagen had missed out on “the SUV boom,” he stated.
The brand now prepares to have 19 SUV designs internationally by 2020, up from simply 2 now, and consisting of some electrical ones. It intends to sell 1 million electrical automobiles a year by 2025.
“At the moment we presume that we will provide no brand-new diesel automobiles in the UNITED STATE,” Diess informed Handelsblatt.
Volkswagen previewed its Atlas SUV, developed specifically for the United States market, at the Los Angeles Car Show recently.
Diess stated success in the Americas was crucial to restoring the core Volkswagen brand that represented 59 percent of the German group’s automobile sales in last year however just 16 percent of group underlying operating profit.
The CEO of Volkswagen Group of America, Hinrich Woebcken, informed press reporters recently in Los Angeles that Volkswagen wishes to move from being a “niche” player into a “family-oriented SUV business.”
