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VW Chairman: “European Emissions Standards Must Be More Realistic”
Hans Dieter Pötsch, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Volkswagen AG, is urging the EU to relax emissions standards quickly. According to Pötsch, this is not because Volkswagen does not want to, but because the market is not cooperating.
Pötsch, who has been at the helm of the body that supervises Volkswagen AG’s board of directors since 2015, says that European requirements for car emissions must be “adapted to reality,” according to Bloomberg. “Electric transport is the future, but – and I cannot stress this enough – politics has imposed targets without the necessary infrastructure and without considering whether the customer is also on board.”
The call comes amid serious misery at Volkswagen, which is currently struggling to make ends meet due to declining sales in China and a shrinking car market in Europe. The brand, part of Volkswagen AG that Pötsch oversees, is therefore in a quandary that other European car manufacturers also find themselves in. They have to invest heavily to electrify and meet the annually declining CO2 fleet average. That average of 93.6 grams per kilometre across all cars sold can only be achieved if a significant portion of those cars are electric, but that is precisely what consumers currently do not seem to be so keen on. That is why there is a threat of large fines, which would further increase the costs for car manufacturers.
Pötsch is not saying anything new here but is repeating what Volkswagen CEO Oliver Blume said earlier. At that time, we did not know how bad things were with Volkswagen, now we do.
Hans Dieter Pötsch, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Volkswagen AG
