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Volkswagen Won't Focus On Selling Diesel Engines In USA Anymore

Volkswagen has decided to shift its strategy on the U.S. market after the whole Dieselgate situation. You know, that little scandal of theirs, no big deal.
2015 Volkswagen Golf TDI - US model 5 photos
Photo: Volkswagen
2015 Volkswagen Golf TDI - US model2015 Volkswagen Golf TDI - US model2015 Volkswagen Golf TDI - US model2015 Volkswagen Golf TDI - US model
Volkswagen is planning a repositioning on the market, and will focus on crossovers and all-wheel-drive instead. However, Hinrich Woebcken, the CEO of Volkswagen Group of America, stated that the German brand will still offer diesel engines if they “make sense as a package to the car.”

It is worth noting that the Volkswagen representative specified that he and his colleagues had accepted the fact that the popularity of TDI engines in the United States of America will probably never come back to the levels it once reached.

While Volkswagen has not submitted an application to the EPA for diesel engines in 2016 model year vehicles, required to sell them in the USA, the German automaker does intend to have diesel engines in its American portfolio in 2017.

It is unclear whether Volkswagen will apply for the EPA’s approval in 2016, or if it will wait until next year for this step, which will take longer than it normally would because of Volkswagen’s past actions. Nobody could blame the EPA for being extra careful when testing models from an automaker that has recognized employing a cheating scheme in the past.

As Automotive News notes, Volkswagen’s U.S. range used to have diesel engines for six of its eight nameplates, and the “oil burners” accounted for over 20% of its sales. Instead of diesels, the German automaker will try to sell more all-wheel drive systems, as well as its newly introduced crossovers.

More product launches are planned, and the brand will probably focus on its turbocharged gasoline engines instead of diesels, probably until they add more hybrids on the market.

Volkswagen was also the leader of diesel sales in the USA, a situation that appeared in the context of other automakers not introducing diesels on the market because they could not meet the EPA’s tough specifications.

Now we know why others could not launch diesel engines in the USA, while the Volkswagen Group managed to pass its cars through homologation procedures with flying colors. “It was the defeat device,” says Captain Obvious.
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About the author: Sebastian Toma
Sebastian Toma profile photo

Sebastian's love for cars began at a young age. Little did he know that a career would emerge from this passion (and that it would not, sadly, involve being a professional racecar driver). In over fourteen years, he got behind the wheel of several hundred vehicles and in the offices of the most important car publications in his homeland.
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