Volkswagen AG’s profit jumped 23 percent in the second quarter as vehicle deliveries climbed in the run-up to expected production bottlenecks stemming from new emissions tests in Europe.

The world’s largest automaker is bracing for a challenging second half of 2018. Tougher emissions testing procedures ­ aimed at preventing a repeat of Volkswagen’s cheating scandal ­ are expected to delay deliveries after they take effect next month. The German manufacturer is also bracing for trade barriers, which would particularly hit Audi and Porsche, the group’s main profit earners.

Issues for the rest of the year include increasing competition, the ongoing diesel scandal and “a new, more time-consuming test procedure” in the European Union, Volkswagen said Wednesday in an emailed statement.

“We cannot rest on our laurels because great challenges lie ahead of us in the coming quarters,” Volkswagen Chief Executive Officer Herbert Diess, who just completed his first 100 days in office, said in a statement on Wednesday.

Diess is grappling with political challenges alongside an internal overhaul in the aftermath of the three-year-old diesel crisis, which continues to burden the industrial giant. German authorities fined the company 1 billion euros in the second quarter taking the total damages to more than 25 billion euros, and Rupert Stadler, the now-suspended head of the Audi luxury unit, was arrested in June by Munich prosecutors and remains in custody.

In a sign of the company’s effort to be more transparent, Diess will buck with past practices and face questions from reporters and investors at briefings at headquarters in Wolfsburg later on Wednesday. In the past, Volkswagen’s CEO only appeared at the annual earnings press conference.

“This indicates that VW and its new leader are opening up to the capital market in a way that we haven’t seen in the past,” Arndt Ellinghorst, an analyst with Evercore ISI, said in a recent note.

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