The Volkswagen engineers who installed “defeat devices” in vehicles to cheat emissions tests started their scheme in 2005 because they couldn’t figure out how to pass U.S. tests, a company official said Thursday.
Hans Dieter Potsch, chairman of the supervisory board of Volkswagen, told reporters Thursday that the company’s investigation has revealed that engineers couldn’t find a way to get “clean diesel” vehicles past U.S. emissions tests. Instead, they cheated from the beginning of the program and didn’t stop when better solutions became available, he said.
“We regrettably have to recognize developers … quite simply could not find a way to meet tougher nitrogen oxide standards in the United States,” he said.
Almost 500,000 Volkswagen “clean diesel” vehicles in the United States, and as many as 11 million around the world, are estimated to contain the software that allowed them to cheat on EPA emissions tests.
Defeat devices are about 100,000 lines of software code written into vehicle software. The software identifies when vehicles are in testing conditions and then activates emissions controls on nitrogen oxide.
When not under testing, the vehicles can dump as much as 40 times the legal amount of nitrogen oxide into the atmosphere.
Potsch said the scandal was allowed to happen because of three flaws in the company. The first were the engineers who decided to cheat tests, the second were flaws in the company’s accountability processes, and the third was an attitude within the company that allowed employees to break the rules without punishment.
“I freely admit that this is the factor we all find the most difficult to accept,” he said.
Investigators from the Jones-Day law firm have sorted through 102 terrabytes of data, the equivalent of 50 million books, and done 87 interviews with employees. About 1,500 cellphones and other employee devices have been searched and 2,000 employees have been told to not delete or lose any of their data.
The fact that such a large number of employees have been told to not delete their data does not mean the company suspects all of them are involved, Potsch said.
“We still believe only a comparatively small number of employees were involved,” he said.
The company also said its November report that 800,000 vehicles may have skirted carbon dioxide emissions tests is not true.
Potsch said the company received information from an internal source that the carbon dioxide certifications on those vehicles may have been based on incorrect information. Through investigation over the last month “it became apparent this information was wrong,” Potsch said.
The majority of his press conference showed that company officials are desperate to win back consumer trust, which has plummeted since the scandal was revealed in September. U.S. sales dropped 25 percent in November froma year earlier ,and sales in other parts of the world are also slumping.
Potsch called the scandal one of the toughest tests the company has ever faced, but he promised to be open about what the investigations find.
“Our most important task and our biggest challenge now is to win back that trust,” he said.
No recall has been announced on the nearly 500,000 affected vehicles in the United States. Volkswagen, the Environmental Protection Agency and the California Air Resource Board are expected to release a plan for a U.S. recall early next year.
