"This was not a corporate decision," VWoA CEO Michael Horn told lawmakers.
During a hearing on Capitol Hill Thursday, Volkswagen of America CEO Michael Horn told lawmakers that the German automaker’s emissions cheating scandal was the work of a handful of rogue employees and not a high-level corporate conspiracy.
His comments drew a skeptical response from members of the House Oversight and Investigations panel looking into the discovery that Volkswagen rigged the software controlling its four-cylinder diesel engines so that they would sharply reduce emissions while being tested. In real world use, however, they were allowed to produce as much as 40 times the U.S. mandate for smog-causing oxides of nitrogen.
The Oversight panel has joined a growing list, including the U.S. Justice Department, the EPA and German federal prosecutors, trying to find out just how high up the command chain at Volkswagen the emissions rigging project was approved or, at least, known about. But some experts suggest the real question is whether VW management simply set the tone that made such subterfuge possible, even necessary.
“This was a couple of software engineers who put this in for whatever reason,” Horn declared during his testimony Thursday, later adding, “This was not a corporate decision. There was no board meeting that approved this.”
NY Cong. Chris Collins believes VW engaged in a "massive cover-up."
But could a handful of “individuals,” in Horn’s words, really have taken the steps necessary to install a so-called “defeat device” into 11 million diesel-powered vehicles, including 482,000 sold over the last seven years in the U.S.? The significance of the subterfuge becomes more apparent when one realizes diesels account for about half of the VW products sold in Europe, and a quarter of those sold in the U.S. – where they would otherwise have been banned for failing to meet emissions standards.
(VW says it will fix diesel emissions problem. Click Here for more on its plan.)
Rep. Chris Collins, a New York Republican, was one of those on the Oversight panel to express his skepticism, countering Horn by saying he believes the scandal is the result of “a massive cover-up at the highest levels that continues to this day.”
In a bid to find out who said what to whom, or in Watergate terms, who knew what and when, German prosecutors on Thursday raided various VW offices. But officials have cautioned it will take time to pull together the facts of the case – as VW itself also has said as it gets its own, internal investigation underway.
Lawmakers aren’t the only ones skeptical of the comments VWoA’s Horn made. But David Cole, a veteran of the auto industry and chairman-emeritus of the Center for Automotive Research, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, said he strongly doubts the cheating was ordered by top Volkswagen management.
“They just don’t do this,” said Cole, adding that senior managers know that if such a situation were to leak out, “the cover-up would be worse than the crime.” That said, Cole suggested that top management might not be entirely innocent. “You have to understand the German culture,” he added. “They’re used to getting what they want.”
That was made clear when Ferdinand Piech, who retired earlier this year as Volkswagen AG Chairman, was first appointed CEO. In 1992, he hosted a small group of reporters, including this correspondent, at VW’s Wolfsburg headquarters, inviting them to look at a prototype of a new sedan that was intended to leapfrog all competitors. After explaining the long list of new features and technical breakthroughs he wanted, Piech was asked what would happen if the engineering team said they couldn’t deliver?
“Then I will tell them they are all fired and I will bring in a new team,” Piech, the grandson of Ferdinand Porsche, founder of both Porsche and Volkswagen, declared forcefully. “And if they tell me they can’t do it, I will fire them, too.”
That management tone has been a clear factor in the way Volkswagen has been run in the intervening decades, even after Piech moved into the chairman’s role, replaced by his hand-picked – and equally driven — successor Martin Winterkorn.
So, while there may have been no direct order from the top, it is likely that the team charged with developing the EA 189 engine knew that failure was not an option. And that was all the more worrisome when it became clear they could not deliver the seemingly impossible blend of good performance, high mileage and low emissions.
A former engineer, Rep. Collins later said in an interview he finds it “inconceivable” that such a complex plan could have planned and executed by a few lone wolves, especially considering the extreme importance of the diesel engine to VW. He believes top managers would have been closely watching the project, and would have demanded to know how the development team pulled things off.
Who knew that the engineers and software programmers directly involved in the diesel project were cheating? That’s likely to take some time to answer. But to CAR’s Cole and many observers, top VW managers set the tone, whether they are legally culpable or not.
(VW planning to cut diesel line-up in U.S. For more, Click Here.)
It is totally believable that a small group fearful for their jobs slipped this through. Why do people not believe a small group in an organization as large as any auto manufacturing company can’t do this? Have they not heard of one person embezzling a couple hundred thousand from a business with only fifteen or twenty employees? How tough in an organization with a couple hundred thousand employees on several continents?
Here’s the problem: have you ever spent time in and around an automotive engineering operation? The number of people involved in even the most mundane tasks — say designing door handles and locks — is huge. And they closely interface with countless others. Few operations are more complex than powertrain, and it’s not like two engineers pull a new design together, assemble the parts, program the engine controls, truck the assembly over to the dyno room and run all the tests. That can involve 100s of people.
Meanwhile, in a conversation I had with Rep. Collins – an engineer himself — he made a very important point: VW was originally planning to use Daimler’s BlueTec diesels, switching relatively late to a concept of its own intended to obviate the need for urea injection. This was a potentially huge breakthrough that could have saved the company countless $millions. Can we believe that in a company run almost entirely by engineers — including the notorious micro-managers Ferdinand Piech and Martin Winterkorn — that no one wanted to have a clear understanding of how the development team made it work? No one raised difficult questions or looked at the numbers? Living in Detroit I routinely see mules and camo’d cars with plenty of data monitoring technology. No one got the slightest inkling of a problem?
As I tried to stress, it IS possible that this did not go all the way to the top — despite Cong. Collins’ claim of a “massive cover-up,” but was all this the result of a failure-is-no-option corp. culture and a top-down policy that made it clear targets were to be met one way or the other?
Paul A. Eisenstein
Publisher, TheDetroitBureau.com
Ditto You are totally correct. When I worked as a prototype tech for a independent prototype engineering company when providing tech support to a oem manufacturer for emission software developement there was at least 15 engineers on their laptops all day that came with the vehicle being developed and tested.
At the other end of the pipeline, when ford came out with SHO Taurus with a Yamaha engine there was a unusual drivability after high speed runs and then driving around town. Turns out a fast idle kept the catalytic convertors from melting. No trouble codes. The engineer that I talked to said that they thought it would never be needed on the highways just the race track. Where did I live? Nevada, he just laughed. After that we knew. Just a example of sometimes only one person knows. Or at least from my expirience
Was VW actually planning to use Daimler diesel engines, or just license their BlueTec urea-injection technology which is what I’ve read elsewhere?
Licensing deal, Lee.
Paul E.
seen some stuff coversd up and ongoing for a good While at fortune 100 automotive ,transportation,
aviation companies in my 40 + years in the business sometimes unintended and known faulty product gets to the end user and later outed in the field , sometimes not and you never know how that is going to happen when it does .
OTOH I would have thought the VW engineers could forseee this and if at the least the EPA and NHTSA were halfway competent and or VW and GM had adequate oversight this and the GM ignition lock detent defects would have been outed and acted upon much sooner !
If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.
I see Cole’s point and your quote is very enlightening as well, Paul.
Someone in Germany certainly engineered this “solution” and forced it on the US group. Did anyone in the US engineering staff question how the engine passed emissions without a urea tank?
veh wrote:
Yes, but it took a few years. That’s how veedub got caught, as I recall how the story broke.
Having worked in advanced engine development for many years, I can attest to the fact that not only is it unlikely that anyone outside the 4 cyl. VW diesel emissions group new about the illegal software, there is no reason for them to have cheated other than for cost savings or mpg marketing claims. In other words since all of the VW diesels do pass the emissions requirements when properly tested and operated on a chassis dynamometer EPA test cycle as the EPA and other authorities have confirmed, the reduced duty cycle of some emissions controls in normal customer use, that results in a gradual increase in tailpipe emissions that finally exceeds EPA requirements, even when the CAT is up to full operating temp, was for better performance/mpg.
(The EPA specifically noted the above gradual increase in emissions as the vehicle is driven and wants VW to modify their software so that the duty cycle on the necessary emissions controls maintains the maximum or lower emissions when in normal user driving. This info. is included in the EPA published website documents.)
If you ask any knowledgeable engineer from any of the major car manufacturers they will tell you that each engine group has it’s own little empire in which they develop their own ECU software strategies and they do not share this info. with any of the other engine groups. As an example the GM six cylinder engine development engineers do not use the same ECU strategy as the eight or four cylinder engine development engineers. That is considered proprietary software and not shared by the different engine groups within the very same company and brand. Chevy, Cadillac, Pontiac, Buick and any of the former brands also did not/do not share ECU software code or strategies. Having actually worked with this code and the respective engineering groups I know this as a reality, (even if it is dumb, IMO).
I am not at all surprised that the executive level of any major auto manufacturer would not know about the improper software, the GM ignition switch issue or any minutia that the engineers deal with daily. Management doesn’t even want to be bothered by this stuff as they have their hands full trying to direct the growth of the brand, no matter how good of engineer they were before becoming an executive manager. BTW I have also had extensive conversations with numerous management executives at the major auto companies and none of them were aware of the details of the engineers “working in the trenches” daily. Only when a new technology or significant engineering design is developed do they get involved as they need to be marketing people for the brand all of the time.
As I explained in a prior post, the subsidiaries of any major brand are at the mercy of the main company. Unless VW Germany tells VW U.S. about the illegal software, they have no means to know. Being skeptical is fine as long as one understands the realities of working as a subsidiary to a parent company. VW U.S. can’t even get much of the engineering info. they request from VW Germany.
You actually don’t need UREA to pass emissions tests – it is really a stopgap solution which as morphed into long-term / permanent solution. A lot can depend on EGR / SCR as well as accepting changing performance criteria.
In reality it’s not saying the engines couldn’t pass emissions tests but really the times when it is not being tested, the engines spew increased NOx due to needing to hit the performance and fuel efficiency criteria set forth by el presidente. So, if these system were not deactivated it would have met the emissions requirements 100% of the time, just with lower performance and fuel economy – by how much it has not been stated.
Who received the letters from Bosch in 2007 and 2011 telling VW that the software was illegal to use on a production vehicle? Isn’t it likely that this letter should have gone to executive management? Isn’t it reasonable to expect whatever level of management who received the letter to investigate further and raise the issue to higher levels of management or try to remedy the problem? If they did not then that level of management clearly is mostly responsible and criminally liable. Where was the legal staff? Did the engineering group not ever ask legal for advice? If Bosch knew in 2007 that it was illegal and told VW before any of the vehicles were produced and then discovered that their warnings were ignored and hence wrote another letter in 2011, then how should they also be held accountable ?
Generally any technical engineering correspondence regardless of subject matter is sent to the appropriate engineering group, IME. In addition what Bosch engineers may have been doing is covering their arses more than anything. Without knowing all of the details of exactly what happened, when and by whom, it’s all speculation. It’s possible that no one may be able to determine the exact circumstances and who knew what.
I’d like to see those actually responsible go to jail but I don’t want to see scapegoats. In other words if a certain executive ordered his engineers to do whatever was required or be fired, then the executive is the one who should go to prison and the engineers perhaps fined and dismissed. Misuse of power and intimidation should be severely punished IMO. Holding a gun to an engineer’s or other subordinate’s head is unacceptable to me when they would not violate law unless threatened.
As other folks have mentioned in posts here, the emissions regs/test procedures are typically written in an imprecise manner and as such lead to a lot of interpretation. As a result Bosch may have been responding to one aspect of the regs based on their interpretation vs. VW’s different understanding of the regs at that time. I can tell you that there are very real language barriers when it comes to technical subjects and engineering. In other words what the EPA might dictate in the regs may be unintentionally translated to mean something slightly different in German or other languages.
Software detection of an emissions test likely being performed however IMO should have been crystal clear. Actual real world operation emissions are often higher than the EPA dynamometer test results because there is no known test that can accurately simulate the many variables in real world operation.
The same issues exist in the EPA fuel economy dynamometer tests. As a result some drivers achieve the EPA results, some see lower and some enjoy higher mpg results, yet all of the vehicles comply with the EPA dynamometer test results.
What makes matters a lot worse is the fact that this problem was known by upper management for over one and a half years after it was reported by the WVU team in Morgantown, WV – not last month. If VW would have reacted and reported at that time this wouldn’t be so bad but covering it up for that long is what is going to seriously damage VW. They need to file for bankruptcy like Gm and Chrysler did and then be bought out by Chrysler for pennies on the dollar.
If you are the head of a corporation importing smog death into countries, and you make more than a million dollars a year, and you don’t know what is going on with your products, you are not doing your job, period, or you are a liar.
I believe the vw brand will not survive and Volkswagen itself either. It they drop the brand right away and change VWs corporate name to “Wolfsburg”, “Piech” or something else and do the same to the company name inmediately, they have a chance to survive.
Audi brand and company are also seriously damaged and perhaps Audi should be renamed “Auto Union” or “NSU”.
Here is my reasoning.
People will be embarrassed to buy a “vw” and even “Audi” vehicle anywhere. This will affect future sales seriously. Less sales means less resources to pay the following financial tsunamis about to crash over VW and Audi;
Government’s penalties around the World worth billions and billions of Euros for violating their laws.
Economic compensation to owners for the drop in value of their cars. Also worth billions and billions.
Billions in economic compensation to its dealers who will incurr in billions of dollars of income losses.
Perhaps several additional billions for moral damage to car owners and dealers.
Penalties for damaging the environment with excess tons of NOX. BP has been fined 21 000 million dollars for the UNINTENDED spill in the Gulf of Mexico. VW could also be fined billions and billions.
Economic compensation to people who will claim their health has been damaged by the excess tons of NOX. produced by VW cars. You can be sure there will be lots of lawyers, particularly in the US, as well as medical experts, that will argue the point on behalf of hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps millions.
Billions in costs to fix-retrofit-scrap the cars with the “defeat device”.
Billions in fines for violation of competition laws. It is obvious that by cheating vw gave itself and unfair advantage. Competitors may also sue vw for unfair competition.
VW will have no money left for needed investment on new facilities and R&D.
But more tsunamis are coming that will destroy VWs image and reputation;
Hollywood will produce an endless stream of movies about VW’s corporate culture and leaders.
Hollywood will also put out a stream of comedies portraying VW people as a bunch of “nazi-like” unprincipled idiots.
You canebe sure the ridiculed VW and Audi execs in those movies will drive Audis and VWs spewing out clouds ofe moke and “gassing” people as they drive around the World.
Both types of movies will make it impossible for millions of people aroun the World to be caught driving a VW or Audi, SEAT or Skoda.
It does not help VW either that Volkswagen was Hitler’s idea. This will be a golden opportunity to kill another legacy of Hitler and the Nazis.
The talent of Hollywood screenwriters, movie directors and the money of Hollywood producers will destroy VW because it is a tempting target and money can be made.
Given the reportedly authoritarian figures of Winterkorn and Piech the parallels with Hitler will be tempting; “again, the Germans followed a crazy leader…”
The decision to install the “defeat device” in the cars to “invade the US” will be compared to Hitler’s crazy decisions to invade Poland and Russia.
Now, just like the never ending stream of Hollywood movies not only destroyed Nazi imagery and tenets but also left the self esteem of most Germans dented, to the point that even some Germans speak of the “ugly Germany” as if there was something in the German people that makes them prone to do crazy horrible things. An irrational idea in my view. All peoples with some power did and do some crazy cruel things. There is no need to give examples. Even the Jews of Israel show particular cruelty towards Palestinians. Goes without saying if Palestinians had the power they would kill all IsraelieJews, perhaps even babies.
Americans are no saints either with their fire bombing of Geman cities killing perhaps millions or innocent Germans, and also knowinly volatilizing hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
No need to mention the millions of Chinese and Russians murdered by Mao and Stalin.
Many of the Hollywood movers are Jewish and, quite understandably, wille not be able to resist giving “the land of the Nazis” who killed millions of Jews, a “cultural bloody nose” for a few years.
To that you can add the negative attention VW and, to some extent Germany, will receive in book after book.
Same goes for magazine articles, talk shows, etc.
The hearings in the US Congress, with politicians going after VW for months will further dent the brands and the company.
For the politicians in the US and elsewhere there is no downside because if one VW factory closes perhaps Gm or Ford will pick up market share and create the jobs lost at VW.
Other car companies and countries happy to see VW cut down to size, even broke.
The name VW is an embarrassment to Germany around the World. “German engineering” will from now on have “richer” connotations…
As Dr Seuss would say:
The time has come.
The time has come.
The time is now.
Just go.
Go VW
GO!
I don’t care how.
You can go by foot.
You can go by cow.
VW will
you please go now!
You can go on skates.
You can go on skis.
You can go in a hat.
But please go.
Please!
I don’t care.
You can go by bike.
You can go on a Zike-Bike if you like.
If you like you can go in an old blue shoe.
Just go, go, GO!
Please do, do, DO!
VW, I don’t care how.
You can go on stilts.
You can go by fish.
You can go in a Crunk-Car if you wish.
If you wish you may go by lion’s tail.
Or stamp yourself and go by mail.
VW!
Don’t you know the time has come to go, Go, GO!
Get on yout way!
Please, VW.!
You might like going in a Zumble-Zay.
You can go by balloon…
…or broomstick.
OR Yous can go by camel in a bureau drawer.
You can go by Bumble-Boat…
…or jet.
I don’t care how you go.
Just GET!
Get yourself a Ga-Zoom.
You can go with a……………..
BOOM!
VW:
Will you leave this room!
VW!
I don’t care HOW.
VW!
Will you please GO NOW!
I said GO and GO I ment….
The time had come.
SO…
VW WENT.
> It does not help VW either that Volkswagen was Hitler’s idea. This will be a golden opportunity to kill another legacy of Hitler and the Nazis
Yes, but it’s the people who defeated the Nazis who took over the Volkswagen plant and started the company we have today.