VW To Halt Production At Main Plant Due To New Emission Standards

Starting September 1, new emission testing and standards – the Worldwide Harmonized Light Vehicle Test Procedure (WLTP) – will go into effect. Those new standards are proving to be a hiccup in production at Volkswagen's main plant in Wolfsburg, Germany. Just last week, Porsche announced it would halt the sale of several models because of the new standards and testing procedures. VW will stop production as the company only builds vehicles that meet the new rules.

WLTP tests vehicles on real-world driving data as opposed to the previously tested hypothetical driving scenarios, meaning the test will award higher CO2 readings than the previous NEDC testing cycle. This could force some automakers like VW to delay road certification and sales.

"Within the Volkswagen brand alone, we need to test more than 200 model variants and have them type-approved within a very short space of time," said Group CEO Dr. Herbert Diess. The new standards begin September 1.

The testing procedure is much more complicated, and the volume of work was three to four times higher, according to Diess.

"To master this challenge, our test rigs have been and will be operated virtually round-the-clock," said Diess. "After the works holidays in Wolfsburg, we will only be making vehicles that meet the new standards. Vehicles will be delivered step-by-step as soon as the type approvals required are available. Nevertheless, we will need to store a large number of vehicles on an interim basis. To ensure that this number does not become too large, we will need to plan closure days for production in Wolfsburg during the period between the works holidays and the end of September."

The planned halting in production does not appear to sit well with Volkswagen's labor boss Bernd Osterloh.

"It is not the fault of our colleagues that the company has built too few test rigs over the years and can suddenly not handle the test volume required," said Osterloh. "We will not allow this burden to be borne by the workforce alone at the end of the day. Our colleagues in production are not responsible for this situation."

VW did not specify which models would cease production during the switchover and certification or when the factory would be operating again at full capacity. The company did say it would notify workers about specifics in the coming days.