Rise of Volkswagen

Volkswagen group or Volkswagen AG is a german automobile giant founded by German government in 1937. Volkwagen has quite an interesting history, providing cheap cars to german people and at some point of time getting into emissions scandal too. Volkswagen is a public company, and it is in the name Volkwagen AG, where A stands for Aktien meaning stocks and G stands for gesellschaft meaning business.

Volkswagen started its journey from its headquarters in Wolfsberg, Germany. Volkswagen started its first factory for mass production in 1938 in Lower Saxony and was operated by the German Labour Front. The factory was earlier used by the military to store pieces of equipment and vehicles and hence it’s image got it ransacked by bombers. It was then, restored by the Britishers in 1946 and the control was given to the west german government and the state of Lower Saxony. Maass production led to good exports to various countries, except in the US due to lack of good relations. Later in 1955, Beetle was introduced and it became a success in the US followed by the Golf and more sportier cars also.

2015 has been a year of worry for Volkswagen. The company was the 2nd largest car manufacturer following Toyota Motor Corp. It rose so high not under the only name of Volkswagen but with its other brand names such as Audi, Porsche, SEAT, Skoda, Lamborghini, Bugatti. Despite having a good name in the market, Volkswagen was caught in the emissions scandal using a defeat device. In September 2015, EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) of the US issued a notice against Volkswagen for programming their ECUs in a way that the TDI engine (Turbocharged Diesel Injection) would activate its emissions control only during emissions testing. While in real-world normal driving mode, NOx emissions were found to be 40 times more than US regulatory emissions. This update of the defeat device was available in about 11 million cars around the world. It was called as a clear case of cheating by many national automotive organizations from various countries. This led to Volkwagen recall it’s 10 million automobiles worldwide and had to pay $4 billion in fine.

All these ups and downs in the history of Volkswagen have not led to slow down its sales. Volkswagen is still a competitive leader in the automobile market, although it has ended the production of its legendary Beetle and the number of engine variants available with Volkwagen aren’t any less in number yet. It still echoes around the world, Volkswagen – Das Auto.