CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (AP) - Volkswagen's new SUV comes with a feature that automatically controls braking to each wheel as the seven-seater descends on slippery off-road terrain. The German automaker is staking its hopes on the new model being just as adept at arresting the company's sales woes in the United States.
The midsized SUV was seen as key to reviving flagging U.S. sales even before the Volkswagen's diesel emissions cheating scandal rocked the company to its core and caused one of the world's largest automakers to reassess how it does business around the globe.
The new SUV is scheduled to begin production at Volkswagen's lone U.S. plant in Tennessee toward the end of this year, with the yet-to-be-named vehicle arriving in dealer show rooms early in 2017.
Volkswagen sales through the first seven months of the year were down by 13 percent compared with the same period before the news of the emissions scandal broke in 2015. The Tiguan compact SUV has been one of the company's few bright spots in the U.S., with sales growing by 49 percent over the same period.
The company hopes to build on that success with the new midsized SUV. Following a test drive of a camouflaged prototype of the new vehicle, Matthias Erb, the chief engineering officer for Volkswagen's North American region, said the new SUV fills a gap that Volkswagen had when it came to growing families.
"If someone already had a Passat but wanted something bigger after having two kids, we didn't have anything to offer them," Erb said in an interview with the Associated Press, conducted in German. "The Tiguan was too small because a compact SUV offers essentially the same space as a midsized sedan."
Volkswagen officials also promise that the new model will be priced competitively with existing SUVs, a segment of the market where Volkswagen has struggled in the past. The company is also keen to avoid repeating mistakes it made with the U.S. version of the Passat, which made an initial splash but then fizzled as the buyers were left underwhelmed compared with the European version.