Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 21
By Azad Hasanli - Trend:
Suspension of sales of Volkswagen's cars throughout the world will not affect the Azerbaijani car market, a source in Euro Style, an official distributor of the VW cars in Azerbaijan, told Trend Oct. 21.
The source said the problems due to which Volkswagen temporarily stopped sales in the world involve only the car models with diesel engines, which are not delivered to Azerbaijan.
"We deliver to Azerbaijan only the models that run on gasoline, so there is no reason to suspend the sale of Volkswagen cars in the country," said Euro Style.
The distributor also said the only diesel-burning VW cars brought to Azerbaijan are the Amarok pick-up trucks, but these cars haven't been revealed to have any problems.
Accordingly, the sales of Amarok trucks on Azerbaijan's market continue.
The mentioned scandal erupted around Volkswagen after it was revealed that the company manipulated the US car emission tests for diesel-powered cars.
The onboard computers on Audi A3, Jetta, Beetle, Golf and Passat, manufactured by Volkswagen Group, were found to have software that turns on filters when the cars pass car emission tests. And while being operated in normal mode, the software automatically disables these filters.
So the actual emission of harmful substances by Volkswagen's diesel-burning cars is much higher than indicated in the test results. American authorities ordered half a million of VW cars to be withdrawn from the US market. As many as 11 million VW cars reportedly have the mentioned filtering software.
Therefore, Volkswagen has already suspended the sales of its diesel cars in Switzerland, Belgium and Turkey.
Some countries have also begun checking the VW cars. In case if any problems are revealed, all the German-made cars with a diesel engine will be subject to check ups.
Volkswagen can also face a fine of $18 billion, and will have to pay 6.5 billion euros (slightly over $7 billion) to cover costs associated with the replacement of the software.
The chairman of the VW board of directors, Martin Winterkorn resigned in aftermath of the scandal.