The Volkswagen group alone is responsible for around 2 per cent of global carbon emissions -- roughly the same amount as Germany -- one of the car manufacturer's senior figures said in an interview Friday.
"We have calculated how much the group represents among global CO2 emissions," said Michael Jost, Volkswagen's chief strategist told German business weekly magazine Wirtschaftswoche.
"It's almost 1 per cent for cars and 1 percent for trucks."
In comparison, Germany accounts for nearly 2.2 per cent of C02 emissions, the equivalent of 800 million tonnes, and was ranked 6th globally, according to 2017 figures from the Global Carbon Project.
Last week, Herbert Diess, boss of the Volkswagen group, told employees the figure is 1 per cent for the million cars the group has produced which are in circulation.
"This percentage, we want to reduce to zero by 2050," he said at company headquarters in Wolfsburg.
The German car giant has been struggling to restore its reputation since the 2015 "Dieselgate" scandal, when it admitted to fitting 11 million vehicles worldwide with a device aimed at cheating pollution tests.
In the face of stringent limits for C02 emissions from 2020, Volkswagen has vowed to introduce 70 electric models by 2028.
The German auto industry is late in shifting towards electric cars.
The Volkswagen group, which includes 12 brands, plans to sell 22 million electric cars in the next 10 years to escape heavy European fines and drastically reduce the carbon footprint of its factories.
