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Winterkorn vacates chairs on Audi, Truck & Bus boards

The last remaining vestiges of Martin Winterkorn's power within the Volkswagen Group are slowly melting away. The former chairman of the group's management board resigned as CEO nearly two months ago in the wake of the diesel emissions scandal. He held onto other roles within the group, but one by one he's been vacating those as well. Last month Winterkorn resigned from his role at Porsche SE – Volkswagen's largest shareholder. Now the latest development comes from Bloomberg, which reports that Winterkorn has stepped down from his role as chairman of the supervisory board at Audi. Prior to his promotion to run the entire group, Winterkorn served as chief executive of the Audi division, and prior to his resignation served continued to serve as its board chairman. No date was given for his resignation from that capacity, nor any successor named at this point. Repeated requests for clarification from Audi have gone unanswered. In correspondence with Autoblog, however, spokespeople for VW's commercial vehicle operations confirmed that Winterkorn has also stepped down as the chairman of the board at Truck & Bus GmbH. The newly established division encompasses truck manufacturers Man and Scania. Winterkorn also served as chairman of Scania's board, but requests for confirmation of his departure from that role also went unanswered. The Swedish truck manufacturer, however, named Henrik Henriksson as its a new chief executive only a few days ago.

Audi imagines a world where mechanics are zombies

Warewolves, vampires, lab-created monsters... they've all come and gone from the silver screen, but the latest trend in apocalyptic popular media centers around zombies. And that's the theme Audi has tapped for its latest ad. The television commercial is called "Mechanics," and as you may have guessed by now, they're the zombies the German automaker is depicting. The spot was created to encourage Audi owners (like the one in this A5) to have their vehicles serviced at authorized dealers rather than taking them to independent garages that may not be after your brains, but might like a crack at your pocket book, at least (as if dealerships aren't). The commercial was created for Audi by Thjnk Berlin GmbH and directed by Sebastian Strasser for RadicalMedia, and is worth a watch for the laugh alone. Related Video:

Audi A3 E-Tron could launch in October in US

When we test drove the Audi A3 E-Tron plug-in hybrid in Europe last summer, Audi was talking about the vehicle's introduction in the US, but left the exact date up in the air. Summer or Fall 2015 was as specific as anyone was willing to get. Now it looks like the plug-in will arrive in October. One of the rumors we heard over the last few months was that the A3 E-Tron was not ready for the US because of poor cold-weather performance. From what we've heard, under a certain temperature limit, the engine needs to kick in at all times, no matter what the battery state of charge is, and some European A3 E-Tron owners are disappointed that their EV sometimes isn't all that electric. Audi's solution needs to take into consideration how to balance utilization of battery power in less-than-optimal temperature ranges with passenger comfort and how any excess battery use impacts longevity. Audi's "fairly conservative" position will "ensure the long-term credibility of the E-Tron platform and plug-in technology." - Brad Stertz Brad Stertz, the corporate communications manager for Audi of America, told AutoblogGreen that, "Audi is taking a fairly conservative position to ensure the long-term credibility of the E-Tron platform and plug-in technology, while still creating the best experience for our drivers in each region. Overall, I think it is safe to say low temps affect performance in all vehicles to some degree, but that plug-ins face unique challenges that we will continue to work through with the A3 e-tron and other plug-in models to follow." Stertz also said in April that the US configuration for the A3 E-Tron was still being fine-tuned. For example, there were some software differences under consideration to meet US driving preferences. Looks like we only have four more months to wait and see. Related Video: