VW fights back with new Tiguan

Tuesday, 22 September 2015 00:03 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

FRANKFURT (Reuters): Volkswagen is using the redesigned Tiguan, its top-selling sport utility vehicle (SUV), to fight back in a slowing Chinese market and elsewhere as it grapples with doubts about its leadership.

VW’s most significant new model in 2015 may provide relief to the German carmaker, whose focus this year has been deflected by a rare power struggle and public discussion about cost cuts at its troubled Volkswagen car division.

VW proposed earlier this month to extend the contract of Chief Executive Martin Winterkorn and to make finance chief Hans Dieter Poetsch its next chairman.

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The move was criticised by some analysts as a missed opportunity to steer Europe’s biggest automotive company into the era of digitalisation with new leaders, five months after Chairman Ferdinand Piech quit in a power struggle with Winterkorn over strategy.

The first overhaul of the Tiguan since its 2007 launch, to be unveiled at the Frankfurt auto show on Monday, heralds a raft of new SUVs and crossovers VW plans to field in the coming years in the fastest-growing vehicle segment, two sources at VW said.

“New product is key in tough times,” said Stefan Bratzel, head of the Center of Automotive Management think-tank near Cologne. “The new Tiguan is giving VW a good break, also from the strife in management.”

“VW is buying time until it has resolved its structural problems,” Bratzel said. “They are almost in crisis mode.”

Volkswagen reinvention

The Wolfsburg-based carmaker is redrawing its structure to overcome underperformance abroad and boost profits and will reveal the steps it plans to take later this year.

“We are in the middle of setting the course for the next decade,” Winterkorn said an interview with Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung published on Saturday. “That is nothing less than the reinvention of Volkswagen.”

The hope is that the new Tiguan will steer the focus away from leadership issues, and back to cars.

With 2.7 million unit sales, the Tiguan is the most successful of any model introduced during Winterkorn’s eight-year reign as VW brand chief.

Volkswagen orders investigation into breach of US environment rules

VW CEO says is “deeply sorry” about rule violation
CEO says company is fully cooperating with authorities
EPA says violation could result in fines of up to $ 18 b

FRANKFURT (Reuters): Volkswagen has ordered an external investigation after US regulators found software the carmaker designed for diesel cars gave false emissions data, its CEO said on Sunday, adding he was “deeply sorry” for the violation of US rules.

“I personally am deeply sorry that we have broken the trust of our customers and the public,” Martin Winterkorn said in a statement published by the carmaker on Sunday. “Volkswagen has ordered an external investigation of this matter.”

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said on Friday the software deceived regulators measuring toxic emissions, adding Volkswagen could face fines of up to $18 billion as a result.

“We do not and will not tolerate violations of any kind of our internal rules or of the law,” Winterkorn said, adding the company was fully cooperating with the relevant agencies.

He gave no details on who would carry out the external investigation.

Cynthia Giles, an enforcement officer at the EPA, said on Friday the cars in question “contained software that turns off emissions controls when driving normally and turns them on when the car is undergoing an emissions test”.

The feature, which the EPA called a “defeat device”, masks the true emissions only during testing and therefore when the cars are on the road they emit as much as 40 times the level of pollutants allowed under clean air rules meant to ensure public health is protected, Giles said.