Volkswagen Will Recall, 'Refit' 11 Million Cars in Coming Days
New Volkswagen CEO Matthias Müller told about 1,000 high-level managers Monday that the company had a “comprehensive” fix for its cars, and that the solution would be forthcoming.
“We are facing a long trudge and a lot of hard work,” Müller said, according to Reuters.”We will only be able to make progress in steps and there will be setbacks.”
Müller said the company would ask consumers “in the next few days” to bring their cars in to be refitted. It’s unclear if the recall program would be a software or ECU fix, or if it would include a selective catalytic reduction system (urea or AdBlue) to bring the diesel Volkswagens down to a legal emissions level.
Volkswagen faces an Oct. 7 deadline by the German federal transportation authority to present a plan to bring its cars up to compliance or be banned from German roads.
Recalling 11 million cars — 5 million VWs, 2.1 million Audis, 1.2 million Skodas and 1.8 million light commercial vehicles — would be one of the largest roundups in automotive history. Volkswagen set aside $7.3 billion to deal with the scandal last week.
Müller also pointed to VW’s eventual restructuring, according to Reuters. The company may be decentralized and given more autonomy, similar to Porsche and Audi, which are under the same Volkswagen parent group.
After they stop hemorrhaging money, of course.
More by Aaron Cole
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Poor Müller. He got saddled with a huge albatross hatched by Winterkorn. It's like having two kids and one is playing quietly in their room while the other breaks a lamp on the other side of the house. Then the parent makes the first kid minding their Ps and Qs clean up the other's mess after being sent to time out. I understand why a regime change would be ideal as soon as possible, but executives that create a crapstorm should have to clean up their own mess. It almost seems like a mercy to release them right away.
That factory needs more flying pig.
I'm watching a movie on FX and a "Truth in Engineering" Audi commercial came on, hahaha hilarious!!! I had forgotten about this iconic and now ironic slogan. :-)
If VW can repair 3000 cars per day, it will still take over 10 years (working 7 days a week without holidays) to fix them all. Most likely they will be just writing a bunch of checks. Maybe they will offer VERY generous trade allowances...