One guess what dominated just-auto's news, analysis and comment this week. VW, emissions, diesel and recalls, natch. Early in the week we asked: "Where will 'emissionsgate' end?" Well, for a start, some work with the slide rules by our own analysts swiftly concluded: "The expected decline of the popularity of diesel-fuelled vehicles in the European car market has been significantly accelerated."
And not just Europe. VW, whose USP in the tough US market is 'clean diesel', is expected to take a sales hammering there even before regulators start thinking again about environment fines and enforcing an expensive recall. Speaking of recalls, the UK, surprisingly, was first out of the gate with a staggering 1.2m unit callback though the announcement was more a statement of intent, at this point. Supplier Bosch, meanwhile, was remaining defiant in the current storm swirling around Volkswagen, insisting diesel technology is “indispensable” in achieving European emissions targets.
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Some relief for beleagured former VW AG chief Martin Winterkorn as Germany backtracked and the Lower Saxony prosecutor’s office issued a fresh statement saying it was investigating accusations of fraud at VW, and removed a statement from earlier in the week. The latest statement said that must be "concrete facts" before a probe into Winterkorn is opened.
Away from all of that, Ray Hutton interviewed PSA Peugeot Citroen's CEO and Tesla launched its new Model X prompting this comment from our resident product evaluation guru Glenn Brooks.
Have a nice weekend.
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Graeme Roberts, Deputy Editor, just-auto.com
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