Juergen Stackmann

Volkswagen’s board member responsible for sales, marketing and after sales, wants India to be more than just a production hub and hints at advanced plans for a VW engineering centre in the country

‘LET ME START WITH A WRAP UP of where we are in 2016. Global sales have been completely stable in the first eight months. We have a net growth of 0.1 per cent today, so basically the growth is stable. We are making good progress in dealing with the diesel issue. We are looking for clarifications in the fourth quarter, and we will see final closure in the US this year. Technical solutions would be very different to European ones as regulations in the US is very different. So, now we have some new software that improves CO2. Precision is far more important than speed here.

‘We had agreed early on with the authorities to be one hundred per cent sure that whatever recall happens, it should not be a radical change for the customer. I think there is no difference to the cars in performance, fuel economy and no vibrations. The customers now measure fuel economy, they have never done it earlier. They are also checking the car's performance and its character. It’s a lot of work to make sure that the experience doesn't change for customers.

‘We took a very early decision to really commit the brand to electric cars about eight months ago. We decided to dedicate our resources to the car that you are seeing outside (I.D. concept). We are allocating resources to cars that are hundred per cent clean. The car is not meant to carry any combustion units, it should carry only batteries, the range is going to be minimum 400km to 600km. For India the range will drop by about 35 per cent realistically since the AC will be 100 per cent on, so this is about the real range you can expect from the car. Basically, people can do runs in the city and outside too without refuelling.