In the wake of a huge emission scandal, Volkswagen has announced that the company is planning to cut investment by €1bn a year.
The company is facing up to $18bn in penalty after it was accused of designing software for some of its diesel cars that defrauds regulators measuring toxic emission norms.
However, the company said that it is now focusing on efficiency and technology, and will be fitting its cars in Europe and North America with only diesel drives with SCR and AdBlue technology, which is used to reduce NOx emission.
The company's board of directors highlighted that the next generation Volkswagen Phaeton would be a purely electric car, capable of driving long distances on a single charge and will have connectivity and next-generation assistance systems as well as an emotional design.
Volkswagen is also planning to develop an MEB electric toolkit, which will be a multi-brand toolkit suitable for both passenger cars and light commercial vehicles and will leverage synergies from other electric vehicle projects in the group.
It is expected provide cars with an all-electric range of 250km to 500km.
Volkswagen CEO Dr. Herbert Diess: "The Volkswagen brand is repositioning itself for the future. We are becoming more efficient, we are giving our product range and our core technologies a new focus, and we are creating room for forward-looking technologies by speeding up the efficiency program."
"We are very aware that we can only implement these innovations for the future of the Volkswagen brand effectively if we succeed with our efficiency program and in giving our product range a new focus."
