Late Monday, Volkswagen Group’s new CEO, Matthias Müller, told a group of about 1,000 managers at Volkswagen headquarters that the company had a plan to refit vehicles involved in the company’s recent emissions scandal.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Müller said that a special team spent the weekend coming up with a “comprehensive action plan” to deal with the fallout from the US Environmental Protection Agency’s discovery that Volkswagen Group had been fitting its diesel vehicles with software to game emissions tests. The software would fully engage the emissions control system during laboratory testing and reduce the effectiveness of the system when the car was operating under normal driving conditions, spewing nitrogen oxide at levels far above federal limits in the US.
Volkswagen’s CEO did not detail what technical fixes would be involved in the refit, but he said that the plan would be submitted to the relevant authorities in October for approval.
The Wall Street Journal reviewed a copy of Müller’s prepared remarks that he used to address the managers. In it, he reportedly told the group that "Nothing can justify deception and manipulation,” and the CEO noted that a “long way and a lot of hard work” lay on the road ahead.
To Reuters, Müller commented that "We will only be able to make progress in steps and there will be setbacks."
Originally, the EPA implicated more than 480,000 diesel vehicles in the US, but Volkswagen later admitted that over 11 million vehicles worldwide carry the software to hinder the emissions control system. According to the WSJ, Müller said on Monday that the software wasn’t activated in all 11 million vehicles.
This week, German authorities opened an investigation into possible fraud at Volkswagen after claims surfaced that a parts supplier for the company warned it in 2007 not to sell cars with the problematic software. Today, Volkswagen will meet with the EU Industry Commissioner to "explain the situation,” according to an EU spokesman.
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