By Christoph Rauwald
(Bloomberg) — Volkswagen AG fell the most in two months after the U.S. government filed a lawsuit seeking multi-billion dollar penalties and faulted the German carmaker for a lack of progress fixing cars with rigged engines.
Chief Executive Officer Matthias Mueller and Herbert Diess, head of the VW brand, will visit the U.S. for the first time since the scandal broke in September. Diess will work to repair the brand’s tarnished image with appearances at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week and at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit starting Sunday. Mueller is set to meet politicians and possibly other officials next week, though his schedule hasn’t been published.
“It’s a clear signal that the U.S. is not happy,” said Ingo Speich, a fund manager at Union Investment. “It’s a new step that they now have civil litigation in US. It could have been avoided with more openness.”
The U.S. Justice Department sued Volkswagen Monday for installing illegal devices meant to defeat emissions tests. The claims could push penalties in theory to $46 billion, based on four violations of the Clean Air Act for each of the 580,000 cars affected, according to Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Kevin Tynan.
Read also: How a US NGO’s persistence breached Volkswagen’s deceitful defences
The penalties sought are expected to be far less, but would still be in the billions of dollars, according to Justice Department officials. The Environmental Protection Agency said talks on how to deal with vehicles sold with defeat devices haven’t produced an acceptable path forward.
The shares fell as much as 7 percent, the most in two months, and traded down 6.7 percent to 117.90 euros at 12:58 p.m. in Frankfurt. Volkswagen has lost about 14 billion euros ($15 billion) in market value since Sept. 18, when the EPA first said the company admitted to cheating.
