Volkswagen's Philippine distributor, Automobile Central Enterprises (ACE), is clarifying what has been reported in various local media outlets, that it would not be bringing in gasoline-powered vehicles because of the presence of manganese in some of our petrol fuels.

Manganese is an additive used to boost a fuel product's octane rating. (We did point out in our story that "ultimately, Volkswagen will sell gasoline variants in our market after this issue with petrol fuels has been properly dealt with.")

"ACE announced that its first batch of models will be diesel-powered and the entry of petrol variants is delayed due to the findings of the independent research firm commissioned by Volkswagen AG," ACE said in a statement.

"Volkswagen has already cleared the petrol variants on condition that customers will be advised to use only fuels with no metallic additives." According to our source from within the distributor, the manganese issue was simply blown out of proportion.

"When the issue on manganese was raised, that's what everybody focused on," shared our source. "Everything snowballed from there."

Our source revealed that ACE will bring in Volkswagen's gasoline-powered vehicles next year as we have already reported here. Asked if the delay in the introduction of these models could be attributed to technical issues, our source would only say that there was only a "minor hiccup".