VW responds to diesel scandal, says “the future is electric”

Right now, VW only has a single electric vehicle, the e-Golf. Expect that to change. (credit: Volkswagen)

We're almost at the end of the first month of the Volkswagen scandal, which now includes 11 million cars and Leonardo DiCaprio. VW's US boss has testified to Congress, blaming a few rogue software engineers. All the while, questions have raged about VW Group's future: which projects are safe, which ones are on the chopping block, and how exactly will the company recover from this?

VW Group sells more cars around the world than any of its rivals-overtaking Toyota earlier this summer-and almost three quarters of the company is owned by the Porsche family and the government of Lower Saxony, so no one expects the company to go under. At the same time, intentionally cheating on federal emissions regulations is going to seriously impact VW's bottom line. Estimates of up to $40 billion in liability are being thrown around after taking a number of pending lawsuits into account.

VW's board has finally started to answer some of those swirling questions. For starters, there's going to be much more emphasis on electrification. Electric vehicles and hybrids have played more of a bit part at VW, compared to Toyota, GM, and domestic rivals BMW and Mercedes-Benz. That's going to change with a standard electric architecture that can be used across multiple vehicles and brands.

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