Volkswagen’s deception of the American EPA did not stem from Volkswagen’s American operations alone — VW’s cheats went all the way back to headquarters in Wolfsburg, according to a new report citing sources within the company.
Executives at VW’s main HQ controlled the actions of the company’s diesel emissions trickery here in America, Bloomberg reports based on the admissions of “three people familiar with the company’s U.S. operations.”
Bloomberg describes the process for these deceitful American tests, relayed by one of their sources.
- First, instructions on how exactly the cars were to be tested were sent from Germany to California, where the cars were evaluated. These instructions were in German, then were translated to English.
- The tests were carried out in California.
- The results were sent back to Germany.
- Finally, the results were sent from Germany back to America to the EPA.
If a car failed to pass its EPA inspection, VW would fly over an engineer from Germany to adjust the car, the story says. The troubled vehicle would then pass. Interestingly, these engineers were flown not only from VW but also from Ingolstadt, where Audi is located. It should be noted that Audi’s head of R&D may be forced out by VW over this dieselgate scandal.
Also on the chopping block is Wolfgang Hatz, who used to be head of engine development at VW Group.
Based on this, it appears that VW’s centralized structure was very much at play through the dieselgate development. VW USA might not even have been fully cognizant of what was going on back in Deutschland with their mysterious test cars.
Photo Credit: VW (Volkswagen’s head center in Wolfsburg, Autostadt, pictured)
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