A silver lining for VW in China

Volkswagen sells most of its cars to China. So, it's a good job that China has hardly bought any diesel models. Of the three million cars that the German Wolfsburg-based company sells per year to China, only a thousand of them run on diesel, with the others running on petrol. Although VW would have gladly sold more diesel cars to China, the authorities resisted.

VW managers spent over a decade trying to obtain permission from Beijing to open a diesel car factory. In vain, however, because the Chinese authorities were concerned that diesel cars would further harm the environment and wanted to reduce air pollution, which is already high because of heavy industry that continues to release unfiltered emissions. At the same time, Beijing also wanted to retain its diesel reserves for use by agricultural equipment.

Few diesel cars in China

The result is that the only VW diesel cars in China are imported from Europe and used as taxis. VW managers in Wolfsburg can breathe a sigh of relief, especially as sales have already fallen by 7 percent in China this year. In the first half of 2015, VW only sold 1.3 million vehicles and had to lower its sales predictions for the whole year.

China's environment agency has long been in close contact with US experts, including the International Council on Clean Transportation, the non-profit organization that tested VW cars for pollutants and then informed the US Environmental Protection Agency about the results. VW CEO Martin Winterkorn admitted that the company manipulated the test results before stepping down on Wednesday.

The air is thick

Diesel engines produce emissions that have more carcinogenic fine particles than those from petrol engines. The particles are also one of the main sources of the smog clouds over Beijing and large parts of northern China. In the wake of the VW emissions scandal, the Chinese authorities have been vindicated with regards to their misgivings about diesel cars. Chinese customers are not great fans of diesel either, as they tend to associate them with vehicles for agricultural use.

Between 2000 and 2008, VW China advertised diesel cars, but afterward focussed on expensive but efficient petrol engines which satisfied Chinese norms. So, in China at least, VW has escaped scandal.

This is not the case in South Korea. On Tuesday, the environment ministry announced that it would test 4,000 of the cars that VW produced between 2009 and 2015." "If South Korean authorities find problems in the VW diesel cars, the probe could be expanded to all German diesel cars," a representative of the ministry said. The South Korean authorities had nothing against diesel. Over 90 percent of the 25,000 models sold this year run on diesel, including models that failed the test in the US.

DW's Frank Sieren has lived in Beijing for over 20 years.