Last week, Volkswagen brand CEO Herbert Diess laid out a global recovery plan for Volkswagen. The plan, Transform 2025+, includes company restructuring, turnaround plans for some regions including the United States, and a goal of becoming the world market leader in e-mobility by 2025. Diess also disclosed one surprising footnote: that the company has effectively dropped all plans for future diesel models in the U.S.
“At the moment, we assume that we will offer no new diesel vehicles in the U.S.,” Diess told the German-language European business publication Handelsblatt. The story was reported in English by Reuters.
That’s quite different from what Volkswagen Group of America CEO Hinrich Woebcken said just days earlier—that while there would be no diesel models for the 2016 or 2017 model years, diesels may be considered for 2018 and beyond on a case-by-case basis. Woebcken then said that changing priorities toward electrification would mean “diesel will not come back to the same magnitude.” Diess himself showed a more sympathetic attitude toward diesels less than two months ago. At the Paris auto show, when the company teased its I.D. long-range EV concept, he said that the company could continue to offer diesel models in the U.S. market.
The new focus of Volkswagen, under Transform 2025+, doesn’t contain a single mention of the company’s diesel-emissions scandal—or even of diesel or TDI. Instead, it includes a lofty goal of selling a million electric cars per year—roughly one-tenth of the brand’s current global sales—by 2025. Volkswagen’s TDI-branded diesel vehicles in recent years have accounted for 20 percent or more of the brand’s sales volume in the U.S.
Although Mazda confirmed U.S. diesel plans with a version of its redesigned CX-5 crossover at the Los Angeles auto show earlier this month, even longtime diesel proponent Mercedes-Benz is pondering pulling diesel models from the market, and U.S. diesel availability in general looks extremely limited from here on.
If you’re holding out for a TDI version of the upcoming Volkswagen Atlas SUV—which, ironically, will be built in diesel guise in Chattanooga to be shipped to other markets—you’re probably out of luck. While Diess’s statement doesn’t completely slam the door on diesels, it appears there’s little likelihood they’ll be back for many years, if ever.
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