The conversion to a new emission standard could be expensive for Volkswagen. According to Spiegel information, the VW Group faces delays in the production and delivery of hundreds of thousands of vehicles.
VW production in Wolfsburg
Friday, 08.06.2018
19:41 clock
The new exhaust test called WLTP sets Volkswagen increasingly under pressure. The Group does not manage to get its model range right on time for the launch on September 1st according to the new, stricter standard to certify. Therefore, there are some months of delays in delivery.
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According to Group sources, the VW Group now calculates the risk of potential losses compared to the original production and sales planning to a mean six-digit number of vehicles. This means that these new vehicles are the dealer possibly late or not reachbecause they did not receive a WLTP certificate in time. For the group this is a billion risk.
Similar to its competitors, VW underestimated the problem: as late as the end of 2017, the Group expected to be on schedule with almost all vehicles. In internal presentations it was said: Only a five-digit number of cars, one-twentieth of today’s size, was affected by possible delays.
At a works meeting on Wednesday, VW CEO Herbert Diess had already announced that the group must expect in the third quarter with failures in production. After the plant holidays in July, Volkswagen is building vehicles in Wolfsburg that meet the new WLTP standards. However, the Group expects bottlenecks because it claims to have not enough test rigs. The deliveries of the vehicles, according to Diess, were “gradually, as soon as the necessary approvals are available”.
VW explains that it has planned countermeasures to reduce the impact on production. It is expected in the second half of 2018 with an effect of about 200,000 to 250,000 vehicles, which would later built as intended. Temporary production bottlenecks can not be ruled out. Overall, the goals for 2018 but confirmed.
For weeks, large parts of the car industry have problems with the new emissions test WLTP. This is why many models, including BMW or Porsche, are experiencing supply bottlenecks. Many manufacturers currently offer only a limited range of products because model variants do not yet have a WLTP certificate.
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