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Volkswagen, shortened to VW, is a German motor vehicle manufacturer founded in 1937 by the German Labour Front, known for the iconic Beetle and headquartered in Wolfsburg. It is the flagship brand of the Volkswagen Group, the largest car maker by worldwide sales in 2016 and 2017. The group's biggest market is in China, which delivers 40% of its sales and profits. Popular models of Volkswagen include Golf, Jetta, Passat, Atlas, and Tiguan. The German term Volk translates to "people", thus Volkswagen translates to "people's car".
Volkswagen AG, known internationally as the Volkswagen Group, is a German multinational automotive manufacturing corporation headquartered in Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony, Germany and indirectly majority owned by the Porsche and Piëch family. It designs, manufactures and distributes passenger and commercial vehicles, motorcycles, engines, and turbomachinery and offers related services including financing, leasing and fleet management. In 2016, it was the world's largest automaker by sales, overtaking Toyota and keeping this title in 2017, 2018 and 2019, selling 10.9 million vehicles. It has maintained the largest market share in Europe for over two decades. It ranked seventh in the 2018 Fortune Global 500 list of the world's largest companies.
The Volkswagen Golf is a compact car produced by the German automotive manufacturer Volkswagen since 1974, marketed worldwide across eight generations, in various body configurations and under various nameplates – including as the Volkswagen Rabbit in the United States and Canada, and as the Volkswagen Caribe in Mexico (Mk1).
The Volkswagen Touareg is a mid-size luxury crossover SUV produced by German automaker Volkswagen since 2002 at the Volkswagen Bratislava Plant. It is currently at its third generation.
European emission standards define the acceptable limits for exhaust emissions of new vehicles sold in the European Union and EEA member states. The emission standards are defined in a series of European Union directives staging the progressive introduction of increasingly stringent standards. The final standard is Euro 7, which is expected to end phase-out of fossil fuel vehicles in order to stop climate damage.
BlueTEC is Daimler AG's marketing name for engines equipped with advanced NOx reducing technology for vehicle emissions control in diesel-powered vehicles. The technology in BlueTec vehicles includes a selective catalytic reduction (SCR) system that uses diesel exhaust fluid, and a system of NOx adsorbers the automaker calls DeNOx, which uses an oxidizing catalytic converter and diesel particulate filter combined with other NOx reducing systems.
The Green Car of the Year is a Car of the Year award from the Green Car Journal. The winner is selected by an 11-member panel comprising automotive and environmental experts. Invited jurors have included Mario Andretti; Carroll Shelby, Jay Leno, Carl Pope, Christopher Flavin, Jonathan Lash and Jean-Michel Cousteau.
Martin Winterkorn is a German former business executive who was chairman of the board of management of Volkswagen AG, the parent company of the Volkswagen Group, chairman of the supervisory board of Audi, and chairman of the board of management of Porsche Automobil Holding SE.
A portable emissions measurement system (PEMS) is a vehicle emissions testing device that is small and light enough to be carried inside or moved with a motor vehicle that is being driven during testing, rather than on the stationary rollers of a dynamometer that only simulates real-world driving.
The Volkswagen Passat for the North American and Chinese markets is a mid-sized sedan that debuted in January 2011 at the Detroit Auto Show. It replaced the Passat B6 in the North American market. The Passat NMS is marketed in the North America, Middle East, and China, with no wagon/estate version available. In China, it is sold alongside the long-wheelbase version of the European Passat known as the Magotan.
TDI, an abbreviation for "Turbocharged Direct Injection", is a marketing term used by Volkswagen Group for its turbocharged diesel engines that have direct fuel injection.
The Volkswagen Golf (Mk7) is a small family car, the seventh generation of the Volkswagen Golf and the successor to the Volkswagen Golf Mk6. It was introduced in Berlin on 4 September 2012, before a public launch at the 2012 Paris Motor Show. Cars reached Volkswagen dealers in the Golf's European domestic market on 10 November 2012.
The Volkswagen emissions scandal, also known as Dieselgate or Emissionsgate, began in September 2015, when the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a notice of violation of the Clean Air Act to German automaker Volkswagen Group. The agency had found that Volkswagen had intentionally programmed turbocharged direct injection (TDI) diesel engines to activate their emissions controls only during laboratory emissions testing, which caused the vehicles' NO
x output to meet US standards during regulatory testing, while they emitted up to 40 times more NO
x in real-world driving. Volkswagen deployed this software in about 11 million cars worldwide, including 500,000 in the United States, in model years 2009 through 2015.
The International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) is an independent nonprofit organization incorporated under Section 501(c)(3) of the US tax code. It provides technical and scientific analysis to environmental regulators. It is funded by the ClimateWorks Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Energy Foundation, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.
Michael Horn is a businessman who was the chief executive officer and president of Volkswagen Group of America.
A defeat device is any motor vehicle hardware, software, or design that interferes with or disables emissions controls under real-world driving conditions, even if the vehicle passes formal emissions testing. The term appears in the US Clean Air Act and European Union regulations, to describe anything that prevents an emissions control system from working, and applies as well to power plants or other air pollution sources, as to automobiles.
In 2014 onwards, software which manipulated air pollution tests was discovered in vehicles from some car makers; the software recognized when the standardized emissions test was being done, and adjusted the engine to emit less during the test. The cars emitted much higher levels of pollution under real-world driving conditions. Some cars emissions were higher even though there was no manipulated software.
Electrify America operates an electric vehicle DC fast charging network in the United States, with more than 500 charging locations and over 2,200 individual charging units as of November 2020. It is a subsidiary of Volkswagen Group of America, established in late 2016 by the automaker as part of its efforts to offset emissions in the wake of the Volkswagen emissions scandal.
The Volkswagen Jetta (A5) is a compact car, the fifth generation of the Volkswagen Jetta and the successor to the Volkswagen Bora. The fifth generation debuted at the Los Angeles Auto Show on 5 January 2005. After the New Beetle, it was the second Volkswagen product to make its world debut at a U.S. auto show. The Mark 5 sedan went on sale in the USA prior to any other country, reflecting the importance of the car in that market for Volkswagen. VW spent US$800 million to upgrade its Puebla facilities for this model's production. This included a US$290 million new engine production line for the 5-cylinder power plant, a US$50 million investment in the press shop, as well as a US$200 million purchase of 460 robots, which increased automation by 80%.
Herbert Diess is the chairman of the board of management of Volkswagen Group as well as the chairman of the board of management of the Volkswagen Passenger Cars brand. In 2018 he was named one of the "Best CEOs in the World" by the CEOWORLD magazine.
References
- 1 2 3 Harry Kretchmer (13 October 2015) "The man who discovered the Volkswagen emissions scandal" BBC Business. Accessed 15 October 2015.
- 1 2 Rupert Neate (26 September 2015) "Meet John German: the man who helped expose Volkswagen's emissions scandal" The Guardian. Accessed 15 October 2015.
