 "Volkswagen")
Volkswagen AG's former Chief Executive Officer Martin Winterkorn resigned from his post as supervisory board chairman of the manufacturer's Audi premium-car division, further scaling back his ties with Europe's largest automaker amid an investigation into cheating on diesel-emissions tests that took place under his watch.
Winterkorn has stepped down as chairman with immediate effect, a spokesman for Audi said by phone. He resigned as CEO of Volkswagen in September, and Porsche Automobil Holding SE, its biggest shareholder, said on October 17 that he'll depart as head of that company as well. Winterkorn's reluctance to give up all posts related to the company immediately sparked criticism from analysts over poor corporate governance.
Volkswagen is reeling from revelations in September that a line of diesel engines was equipped with software designed to fool emissions testers, affecting about 11 million vehicles worldwide. Audi is among the group's passenger-vehicle brands that, along with the Volkswagen commercial-van nameplate, is faced with the recalls. The upscale marque accounts for about 2.4 million affected cars. Wolfsburg, Germany-based Volkswagen owns almost all of Audi, with less than one per cent of the unit's stock publicly traded.
Additionally, Volkswagen admitted last week that 800,000 cars largely in Europe might have wrong emissions labels. It however rejected US Environmental Protection Agency allegations that its cheating on diesel-emissions tests included a Porsche model and other high-end vehicles. Volkswagen pledged to cooperate with the EPA to clarify any questions regarding the 3.0-litre diesel engines. The additional investigation centres on the Porsche Cayenne and Volkswagen Touareg sport utility vehicles and as well as larger sedans and the Q5 SUV from Audi, according to the EPA.
Volkswagen's new CEO, Matthias Mueller, has proceeded with a plan Winterkorn drafted to decentralise management, giving more responsibility to brands and regional heads. The efforts have been complicated by the widening cheating scandal as the financial fallout from fixing the cars as well as fines from regulators and lawsuits in the US and Europe are difficult to predict.
Lower ranking
Audi is poised to be overtaken this year as the world's second-largest maker of luxury cars by Daimler AG's Mercedes- Benz marque after holding the No 2 ranking since 2011. Premium- market leader BMW AG is attempting to fend off their efforts to take the top spot by the end of the decade.
Audi's global deliveries edged up two per cent to 149,200 cars in October, the manufacturer said in a statement on Thursday. That lagged behind a 6.3 per cent gain to more than 164,900 vehicles at BMW's namesake brand and a 10 per cent surge to almost 155,200 cars at Mercedes. In the first 10 months of the year, Audi's sales were up 3.6 per cent at 1.5 million vehicles, compared with a 5.8 per cent increase at BMW to 1.56 million cars and a 15 per cent jump at Mercedes to 1.53 million.
"Despite the imminent model changeover with our best- seller, the A4, Audi sales continued to develop positively," Dietmar Voggenreiter, the new sales chief at the Ingolstadt, Germany-based brand, said in the statement. Audi, which is introducing the revamped A4 sedan and station wagon in Europe this week in advance of rollouts elsewhere next year, anticipates sales will pick up as "pre orders for the model have already reached a very high level."
