In one such meeting, Liang and other VW personnel met March 19, 2007, with EPA officials in Ann Arbor, Mich., where the agency has its emissions testing lab. Liang and others from VW described software functions of the EA 189 engine that affected emissions controls but concealed the existence of the cheat software from the EPA, according to the indictment. Lawyers are still working on settlements for another 80,000 vehicles with 3-liter diesel engines.
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A Volkswagen engineer pleaded guilty today in a USA court for his role in rigging emissions software on 2.0-liter diesels sold in the US, marking the first criminal charge in the US government’s probe into the VW scandal.
James Liang, who has worked for VW for 33 years, is the first person to enter a plea in connection with the scandal.
James Robert Liang, 62, of Newbury Park, California, pleaded guilty in Detroit Friday to one count of conspiracy to defraud the government and agreed to cooperate with investigations in the USA and Germany. He faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Liang admitted that beginning in about 2006, he and his co-conspirators started to design a new “EA 189” diesel engine for sale in the United States.
In 2008, Liang moved to California to help launch Volkswagen’s “clean diesel” vehicle lineup. So instead, they programmed and installed software that would recognize when the vehicle was being tested for emissions level, and manipulate the Volkswagen car’s emissions accordingly.
“Almost from the beginning of VW’s process to design its new “clean diesel” vehicles, Liang and his fellow co-conspirators designed these VW diesel vehicles not to meet USA emissions standards, but to cheat the testing process”, said prosecutors in Liang’s indictment.
But the Justice Department is continuing its criminal investigation into Volkswagen’s actions. The German automaker has already agreed to spend up to $16 billion to address state, environmental, and customer claims. Regulators discovered the devices – which permit the cars to emit up to 40 times more nitrogen oxide than is allowed under federal law – previous year.
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The plea marks the first time an individual has faced sanctions in the sprawling USA investigation into the emissions scandal. He and other VW employees developed a complex software system to keep emissions low when a auto was undergoing testing to demonstrate environmental compliance, but to allow them to spew higher emissions on the road while boosting fuel efficiency, the indictment said. So they changed the software to reduce stress on the emissions controls and told customers it “was meant to improve the vehicles”, the indictment said.
“I know VW did not disclose the defeat device to USA regulators in order to sell the cars in the US”, said Liang on Friday.
The scheme began to unravel in 2014 when a nonprofit group discovered that the cars polluted too much in real-world driving conditions. The Department of Justice (DOJ) [official website] stated that Liang and other employees designed [press release] the engine in 2006 after they were unable to design an engine that met U.S. emissions standards.
“We must be sure to prevent the authority from testing the Gen 1!” a VW employee emailed in June 2015, referring to the first generation of VW models using the “clean diesel” engines.
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The indictment noted multiple email exchanges involving Liang and other Volkswagen employees.
