Following the emission cheating scandal, Volkswagen decided to stop offering clean diesel-powered automobiles in the United States.
Recently, the German group has announced its intentions to concentrate on a brighter, eco-friendly future, saying it wants to accomplish a set of goals by 2025. In the next 10 years, Volkswagen plans to introduce more than 30 new electric vehicles and build a manufacturing that will allow the company to produce between 2 to 3 million electric vehicles a year.
The company has already begun to rethink its strategy stateside, repositioning the brand in the aftermath of the notorious “Dieselgate” scandal and this move is just one the many steps Volkswagen has to go through in order to achieve its objective.
According to Automotive News, VW’s top U.S. official, Hinrich Woebcken, CEO of Volkswagen Group of America, said that VW won’t relaunch “clean diesels” as a core element of its brand identity in the US.
Since the EPA announced the emissions violations, VW withdrew requests for approvals needed to sell 2016 model diesels. Furthermore, it hasn’t yet asked for EPA permission to begin selling new diesels again.
However, this decision doesn’t mark the end of Volkswagen’s diesel engines: “We are not stopping diesel. Wherever diesel makes sense as a package to the car, we’ll continue,” Woebcken said. “But in reality, we have to accept that the high percentage of diesels that we had before will not come back again.”