FRANKFURT — Volkswagen has vowed to be the company that will make electric cars affordable for the masses.

But an earnings report published on Friday showed how the cost of an emissions scandal could interfere with those plans.

Net profit in the third quarter fell about 50 percent, to 1.1 billion euros, or $1.3 billion, after the company set aside €2.6 billion to cover the unexpectedly high cost of repairing diesel cars in the United States that contained illegal emissions-cheating software. The automaker had warned last month that the emissions scandal would cut into earnings.

One way that Volkswagen was able to still report a profit in the quarter, though, was by cutting spending on research and development. That may not be a wise strategy during what Matthias Müller, the chief executive of Volkswagen, described in a statement Friday as a “profound structural transformation” in the auto industry.