Martin Winterkorn:
I am shocked by the events of the past few days. Above all, I am stunned that misconduct on such a scale was possible in the Volkswagen Group.
As CEO I accept responsibility for the irregularities that have been found in diesel engines and have therefore requested the Supervisory Board to agree on terminating my function as CEO of the Volkswagen Group. I am doing this in the interests of the company even though I am not aware of any wrong doing on my part.
This isn’t a huge surprise given the mess the company is in after the Environmental Protection Agency discovered the company illegally rigged their vehicles’ pollution-control systems to run cleaner during emission testing.
This whole story is terrible for lots of reasons, but is interesting as well. It’s fraud on such a large scale, it’s hard to grasp. I think VW will survive this, but it’s going to be painful for the company, as it should be.