Authorities were not laughing at the VW Voltswagen disaster.
A new Der Spiegel report claims that Volkswagen’s late-April renaming stunt has attracted the attention of the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The agency opened an investigation into VW to see if the April Fools’ Day joke that it would change its name from Voltswagen was poorly executed.
The investigation is still under wraps. However, the company confirmed to the German publication that the US Agency had asked for information from its subsidiary Volkswagen Group of America (VWoA) and that it is cooperating with authorities.
A few days prior to April 1, the company published a press release in which it announced that it was changing its name. The company followed up on March 30th by updating its social media and changing its logos. A press release was issued about the change. It also included comments from Scott Keogh, the President and CEO of VWoA.
However, VW did not issue an apology for the PR stunt on March 31. Many news outlets saw the company’s deceit and published the name-change as fact. The breaking news was published by Motor1.com, but we were misled like many other news outlets. The stock price of the company during the fake name-change shows that it climbed 12.5 percent after the record was broken.
This was bold for a company that is focusing on electrification, after it lost the trust of consumers as well as regulators following the Dieselgate scandal. The company has been fined billions. VW has invested a lot in its ID line of electric cars, with ID.4 delivery starting in the US last Month. If VW had done it differently, the cheeky name change might have been a joke. It is now under investigation by US regulators, and it is doubtful that they are laughing about it.