The New York and MA attorneys general on Tuesday directly challenged Volkswagen’s defense over its emissions deception, calling the decision to thwart pollution tests an orchestrated fraud that lasted more than a decade, involved dozens of engineers and managers and reached deep into the company’s boardroom.
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The New York suit stated that current CEO Matthias Mueller, then head of project management at Audi, and Winterkorn became aware in July 2006 of the effect of undersized urea tanks on the ability to comply with emissions standards. Mueller, according to the suit, was aware of a 2006 decision to not equip Audi vehicles with equipment needed to meet US clean-air standards.
In September, Volkswagen admitted to installing “defeat device” software on about a half-million vehicles with 2.0-liter diesel engines in the U.S. The software tricked lab tests to show the cars had passable emission levels, when in actual, real-world driving, the vehicles would emit up to 40 times the legal limit of pollutants.
Volkswagen was plunged into turmoil in September when it admitted to US environmental regulators that some of its vehicles used software that allowed them to pollute on the road up to 40 times the amount allowed. The company has said only a small number of people knew about the deception.
In 2006, Mr Winterkorn’s successor, Matthias Muller, became aware of the defeat device, according to the NY complaint.
Massachusetts Attorney-General Maura Healey said VW damaged the environment and “plotted a massive cover-up to mislead environmental regulators”.
The civil lawsuits come three weeks after Volkswagen agreed to pay around $15 billion to settle claims against it that were brought by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, along with California and other states.
In a statement, Volkswagen said it is already in talks with authorities regarding “a comprehensive national resolution of all remaining environmental issues arising from the diesel matter”.
The three companies have been accused of selling diesel cars with illegal “defeat devices” that were installed to hide the actual amounts of harmful emissions, as well as allegedly to try and cover-up their “corrupt behavior”.
It was at VW’s daughter company Audi where engineers tried to solve a noise problem in their cars’ diesel engine.
The lawsuit filings also claim that a senior attorney working for VW told engineers to destroy evidence a month before the dieselgate scandal broke.
VW said Tuesday in a statement that the latest allegations “are essentially not new” and that “it is regrettable that some states have made a decision to sue for environmental claims now, notwithstanding their prior support of this ongoing federal-state collaborative process”.
Speaking at a press conference the NY and MA attorneys-general stressed the importance of the lawsuit to send a message to other carmakers not to defraud the U.S. public.
Europe’s biggest auto manufacturer said it had seen an improvement in European vehicle markets and the return of orders from corporate fleets. Earlier this year, Volkswagen said it didn’t foresee any further costs from the emissions scandal but didn’t rule it out. The two leaders, the suit alleges, “had ample notice of the existence of unlawful illegal devices and did nothing to prevent both Audi and Volkswagen from repeatedly deceiving regulators, and the American public, for another 17 months”.
Schneiderman said “clean and green” was the center of VW Group’s false-marketing efforts in the U.S., including a Super Bowl ad highlighting its diesel vehicles’ environmental friendliness, in one of the most-watched television commercials in the U.S., Schneiderman said called the scam “appalling”.
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Schneiderman and Healey argue that settlement did not resolve claims regarding violating state environmental laws and did not cover all the affected vehicles.
