“Regaining trust is our biggest challenge”, Chairman Hans Dieter Poetsch said at a press conference at Volkswagen’s headquarters in Wolfsburg, Germany.
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The emissions scandal came to light after researchers discovered acceptable levels of nitrogen oxide (NOx) and environmentally damaging gases were only being emitted by Volkswagen diesel engines in laboratory settings.
Volkswagen’s chairman indicates that the investigation into the German carmaker’s emissions scandal will not spare top managers.
However, Poetsch admitted that it would take months to say which individuals were to blame.
The VW boss said it was still the case that only a relatively small number of people were involved in the deception, which happened because engineers developing the EA 189 engine couldn’t find a permissible way to meet United States diesel emissions limits.
He said VW would be “relentless in seeking to establish who was responsible” for the scandal.
Later, VW actually had the ability to install systems to make those cars run cleaner – but it stuck with the test-cheating software, which the automaker says was ultimately installed in 11 million cars worldwide. Overall, the situation is not dramatic, but, as was to be expected, it’s tense.
The carmaker announced that it had agreed steps to improve oversight of engine-software development to avoid any future emissions test manipulations.
Volkswagen has placed the emission scandal, which has all but ruined the firm’s reputation, at the feet of a poor company mindset and a “chain of mistakes” in company culture.
He said VW was working on a new company structure to give more power to its regional divisions and brands.
‘Our emissions testing will in future be verified by internal and external third parties and we are also introducing universal real life tests in on-road driving’. However, it now believes that only about 36,000 vehicles are affected. In total, 450 experts are involved in the investigation, but the equivalent of 50 million books – 102 terabytes of data – needs to be scrutinized.
The investigation has so far analyzed data from laptops, phones and other devices from 400 employees. The reason was that the technology for the fixes was not available when the cars were built, and the problem was not known at the time.
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“No business transaction justifies overstepping legal and ethical bounds”, Potsch said.
