Dieselgate: Volkswagen loses Euro share
Troubled brand gains but falls behind climbing European market as emissions cheating investigation deepensIt might be fighting the Dieselgate scandal in seemingly every country on earth, but buyers haven’t abandoned Volkswagen Group brands, according to the latest sales figures from Europe.
Volkswagen lost almost half a per cent of year-on-year market share across Europe, slipping to 23.3 per cent of the continent’s new car sales in September as the scope of 11 million-car Dieselgate saga began to be revealed.
Its share of the European market was crunched though, slipping from more than 26 per cent in August.
Volkswagen sales still rose by 8.3 per cent year-on-year in September, according to figures released on Friday by the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA), but the market outstripped it, streaking forward by 9.8 per cent.
So far this year Volkswagen is still the biggest car maker in Europe by some margin, with a 25 per cent market share compared to PSA (Peugeot and Citroen) with 10.4 per cent.
The figures will be regarded as a much-needed win for the embattled car-making giant, which is being officially investigated in many European countries, has had its regional bosses hauled before government committees in the US and the UK, and has been ordered to recall 2.4 million cars in Germany.
Volkswagen meanwhile has moved to quell reports stemming from Germany’s Der Spiegel newspaper that more than 30 engineers had been involved in creating, approving and building the 'defeat device' into the EA189 four-cylinder diesel engines at the heart of Dieselgate.
“That number is completely unfounded,” a Volkswagen spokesman said on Friday, without confirming a number that might be better founded.
He did confirm that the head of Volkswagen’s Kassel plant, Falko Rudolph, had been suspended based around a professional timeline that saw him as head of Volkswagen diesel engine development from 2006 to 2010.
The investigation into Dieselgate spread to Italy last Thursday, when Luca de Meo, the highly rated former global sales and marketing director of Audi, who has been sent to head up the Volkswagen Group’s Spanish brand Seat as part of the post-Dieselgate restructure, had his Italian offices in Verona raided by Italian police.
Though based in Wolfsburg and Ingolstadt in recent years, De Meo was nominally also the sales and marketing head of Audi Italia and one of six Italian executives to be placed under investigation, including Volkswagen Group Italy CEO Massimo Nordio, with raids conducted at Volkswagen Group Italia headquarters outside Verona and at Audi subsidiary, Lamborghini’s offices in Sant’Agata Bolognese.
It is unclear what Italian police are basing their investigations on, with Volkswagen Italia hosting no technical or development personnel and Lamborghini developing only V10 and V12 petrol-powered supercar engines.
German prosecutors have raided several Volkswagen offices, including those in Wolfsburg and Braunschweig, along with several private homes.
New car registrations in Europe in September sat at 1.39 million cars — up from 1.27 million in September, 2014, the ACEA reported. So far this year, Europeans have soaked up 10,413,675 new cars, which falls about two million cars short of the 2007, pre-GFC figure.
The big gains came from Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, mainly on the back of a surging Jeep, and premium brands BMW and Mercedes-Benz rode the SUV wave to push the volumes forward.
Other car-makers outstripping the average market growth included Jaguar Land Rover, Tata and Asian car-makers Hyundai, Mazda, Nissan and Honda.
Every major European market posted growth in September, with the major gains coming from Spain (up 22.5 per cent), Italy (+17.2%), France (+9.1%), the UK (8.6%) and Germany (4.8%).
Dieselgate related reading:
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