Liang, 62, a VW engineer of diesel competence, is one of the company’s employees who developed the defeat device. It is the first criminal charge that has occurred in the year the Justice Department has been investigating the German automaker over the Dieselgate scandal.
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James Liang, 62, agreed to cooperate with USA prosecutors developing a criminal case against Volkswagen, after he was indicted in Detroit federal court for his role developing the emissions “defeat devices” equipped on more than a half-million cars sold in the United States.
We’re told Liang worked for Volkswagen in Germany from 1983-2008 and then came and worked in the United States.
He faces a maximum of five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.
His trial will be held in January.
Volkswagen past year admitted to misleading environmental regulators and consumers by installing illegal emissions- cheating software on almost 600,000 diesel-powered vehicles in the U.S. Volkswagen has said the software is on some 11 million vehicles world-wide.
In a statement released Friday, the Justice Department said Mr. Liang admitted to using the software while working on the diesel engine and “assisted in making the defeat device work”.
The German auto giant has admitted cheating emissions tests in the US. Regulators discovered the devices – which permit the cars to emit up to 40 times more nitrogen oxide than is allowed under federal law – past year.
Volkswagen has admitted that the 2-liter diesels were programmed to turn on emissions controls during government lab tests and turn them off while on the road. Liang’s plea bargain reveals that during the said meeting, they lied about meeting emission standards and complying with the Clean Air Act.
Liang and “co-conspirators” working on the engine soon realized it would not meet stricter USA limits on nitrogen oxide emissions that took effect in 2007 while also attracting “sufficient customer demand”, Liang’s indictment said. The Gen 1 was a new diesel engine for the US market, and CARB is the California Air Resources Board. Top executives at the company have blamed individual engineers for the defeat devices, but attorneys general in New York, Maryland, and MA claim that Volkswagen’s top officials knew much about the secret software.
The scheme began to unravel in 2014 when a nonprofit group discovered that the cars polluted too much in real-world driving conditions.
According to the indictment, the co-conspirators included “current and former VW employees and others”. Liang admitted that during these meetings his colleagues misrepresented VW compliance and hid the existence of the defeat device.
As a first step, VW offered a new “optimized” software update that was supposed to address the high emissions.
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In July 2015, another employee emailed Liang seeking guidance on how to respond to USA regulators, adding, in German, “the key word “creativity” would be helpful here”, according to the indictment.
