Volkswagen (NASDAQ: VLKAY) is looking to rebuild its withered image after its ongoing emission scandal. On Tuesday, the German automaker confirmed with the Wall Street Journal that it plans to build electric cars in North America by 2020 are in progress.
This also means they might be pushing the breaks on selling diesel-powered cars in the U.S.
Last November, President Obama and President Xi made the historic announcement of the climate targets for the 2020 decade. Needless to say, it was the first China committed to limit its greenhouse gas emissions and to increase its share of non-fossil consumption to around 20 percent by 2030.
“We have to accept that the high percentage of diesels that we had before will not come back again”, VW of America CEO Hinrich Woebcken told the journal Automotive News.
Post-2020 climate changes and the Volkswagen struggle
Speaking in an interview near the company’s factory in Tennessee, Woebcken showed confidence in this electric impulse and stated that the firm is heavily investing in the enterprise.
“We believe that this country, especially in urban mobility, will have a steady shift from petrol engines into the hybridization and electric cars,” said Woebcken.
But there is more to that, as it seems the decision was less by choice and more by circumstances.
The ambitious program is set to cut U.S climate pollution by 26-28 percent from 2005 levels steers to the vehicle production as well with increasingly federal standards. Mr. Woebcken already said that future regulations will be hard to meet and that VW will have to find an alternative to their diesel technologies.
Tesla Motors Inc will be their direct competition in this new quest, although VW does sell an electric version of the small Golf that has limited appeal in a market where the gasoline is still generally the cheapest fuel.
No more ‘clean-diesel’ from VW
A lot to do for an enterprise that has long promoted diesel engines in a U.S market where gasoline is already the king of the road. Furthermore, VW paid $14.7 billion in a settlement with a San Francisco court to remedy its emissions, in which many of its engines used a software to cheat on emissions test.
Complicated task amist a Dieselgate that is not over: on Tuesday, New York, Massachusetts and Maryland filed separate lawsuits in state courts, accusing the world’s second largest automaker of violating pollution laws, alleging company executives covered the “clean-diesel”-cheating scheme. Meanwhile, VK has to deal with over 500.000 polluting cars in the U.S.
Source: Wall Street Journal