VOLKSWAGEN AG The company supplies a whole range of parts for car engines, including gaskets, battery and fuel cell parts and shielding components for engine, transmission and exhaust systems.
Volkswagen accounts for 8 percent of ElringKlinger's roughly 1.3 billion euros ($1.47 billion) of annual sales. The company attributes about 4 percent of its sales to parts for diesel engines.
"It would be really unfair to try to get something from suppliers in this situation to compensate the damages, which will be immense," Stefan Wolf told Reuters in an interview on Thursday.
He said VW would risk further damage to its reputation if it demanded price cuts from suppliers in negotiations.
Wolf also said: "We would see it in our sales figures, though not dramatically, if the proportion of diesel among new cars declined."
Volkswagen has set aside 6.5 billion euros to help cover the cost of the scandal, but some analysts think the final bill could be much higher.
Its incoming supervisory board Chairman Hans Dieter Poetsch said last week that he saw the scandal as a threat to the firm's viability albeit a surmountable one.
(Reporting by Ilona Wissenbach; Writing by Maria Sheahan. Editing by Jane Merriman)
