Volkswagen To No Longer Highlight Diesel Technology In US Market

Volkswagen will take a step back from the diesel powertrains that defined its U.S. vehicle lineup for the better part of a decade amid a repositioning of the brand in the aftermath of the automaker's emissions scandal, VW's top U.S. official says.

Hinrich Woebcken, CEO of Volkswagen Group of America, told Automotive News this week that VW won’t relaunch “clean diesels” as a core element of its brand identity in the U.S., where VW dominated diesel passenger car sales before being consumed by its emissions cheating scandal.

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MDarringer - 7/20/2016 9:43:18 AM

+2 Boost

It's encouraging that someone at VW publicly admits the Tiguan was overpriced. I really do not think VW will be out of the woods anytime soon no matter what they do.

TheSteve - 7/20/2016 12:02:36 PM

+1 Boost

Big yup! A Touareg is currently priced higher than a similarly equipped, more luxurious, and more attractively styled Audi Q5. I occasionally see them on the road and think, now there goes a devoted VW fan!

mre30 - 7/20/2016 10:45:08 AM

+1 Boost

VW has layers and layers of problems. Dieselgate is the most obvious problem. However, the ultimate flaw that will hinder VW's forward progress is the "socialist" worker structure that it has embraced in Germany.

More so than any of its German peers, VW has gone to bed with the "workers state" of Saxony with the result that VW autoworkers and management are so mired in work rules and bureaucracy that both their working style and the wages/benefits/fringes that they get, make VW's labor pool like a worker who is digging a hole and simultaneously throwing the soil into the hole of the worker behind him/her.

Its like the DMV and the Post Office on steroids.

VW will have problems for a long time to come - it is a true "Government Motors".

MDarringer - 7/20/2016 11:22:47 AM

0 Boost

I wonder at what point VW will stop selling cars in the USA. With the civil suits just beginning to pop up state by state, there has to be a tipping point at which VW cannot afford to do business anymore in the US market. We all know how precipitously sales of the Chrysler 200 have fallen, but it outsells the Passat handily. Then come reports that the CrossBlue is delayed until April and that the new Tiguan may come 3 months AFTER that. I wonder if the blood-sucking union is trying to pull production of those crossovers to Germany.

TheSteve - 7/20/2016 11:20:05 AM

+2 Boost

VW's move makes marketing sense. What they're saying, in more sanitized terms than mine: We've lost consumer trust and confidence with respect to our diesel products, and we believe it'll be hard to earn that trust back in the US market, but in Europe, where diesel sales were never stopped and consumers weren't as upset, we'll keep on selling them there.

As an (affected) Audi Q5 3.0L diesel owner, I'm mightily pissed at VW/Audi Group for this :-( Love the car, but don't like the company.