Is there too much emphasis on carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions?
There is too much emphasis. Politically, it’s very popular to say that you’re going to ban cars that emit over 225g/km of carbon dioxide in London, but it won’t make any difference to the ambient atmosphere. It’s more important to make sure that all cars are fitted with particulate filters than to reduce the CO2. Is there still a future for large, powerful cars? The new RS6 is a very powerful car, but if we only produce 3,000-4,000 each year, the ambient will not be hurt at all. But we are also working on the VW up!. If we do 500,000 of them that emit less than 100g/km of CO2, then this will help the ambient. We have a big fleet and we are working to reduce fuel consumption, but we should also have the freedom to develop big cars with small volumes. The VW Group produces over 6 million cars each year and big cars represent only a small percentage. We only build 30,000 A8s each year. Saying that we should only drive small cars is like saying that we should all live in tiny apartments. I
