“To my understanding, this was not a corporate decision”.
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Horn said the scandal over those detected defeat devices was “deeply troubling”, promising VW would fully cooperate with authorities to ensure “this will never happen again”.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Volkswagen has withdrawn its application to US regulators to certify their 2016 diesel model vehicles, which Mr. Horn pointed out in his testimony as an example VW is taking the situation very seriously.
He also said that to his “best knowledge today”, no one in company’s US operations knew about the defeat device until last month, after a group of scientists at West Virginia University brought the issue to light.
The German automaker has already admitted that its diesel cars were programmed to limit emissions when they were tested.
Volkswagen has acknowledged that about 11 million diesel cars worldwide – including 482,000 in the US – were rigged with the so-called defeat device.
“This includes accepting the consequences of our acts, providing a remedy, and beginning to restore the trust of our customers, dealerships, employees, the regulators, and the American public”, Horn will say, according to his written testimony.
However, while numerous affected consumers have voiced concerned that changes made to the cars would affect their fuel efficiency or power, Horn assured the committee that the updated cars will deliver the same miles per gallon that they were originally advertised with, and that any power reduction would only result in a loss of 1 or 2 miles of top speed.
German police raided the headquarters of Volkswagen on Thursday as part of an investigation into the automaker’s diesel emissions scandal.
Volkswagen’s shares plummeted, its CEO resigned, and prosecutors got to work on digging into the scandal.
Horn told the congressional committee that although he found out that the emissions of VW diesel cars did not meet U.S. regulations in early 2014, “I was not then told nor did I have any reason to suspect or to believe that our vehicles included such a device”.
Kelley Blue Book analyst Karl Brauer said that wouldn’t reassure current owners waiting to know what can be done to make their vehicles compliant – a simple software update or the retrofitting of more complicated hardware.
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The company faces billions in fines from environmental agencies, lawsuits from affected customers, and a criminal investigation from EPA and US Department of Justice.
