Volkswagen U.S. CEO Michael Horn on Thursday is planning to apologize for the company’s emissions scandal in testimony before a Congressional committee, but he’s not expected to offer many answers on how it occurred.
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Diesel cars with the newer generation of the engine are less complex and Horn said that fixes for those could begin as early as the beginning or middle of next year.
The auxiliary emissions control device would be in addition to the engine software exposed last month that switched on emissions controls during testing conditions but turned them off during real-world driving.
“These events are deeply troubling”, Horn planned to say, according to a copy of his prepared remarks. The software made those emit higher levels of nitrogen oxides when the vehicles were driven in actual road use than during laboratory testing.
“This was not a corporate decision, from my point of view, and to my best knowledge today”, Horn said, as reported by the Wall Street Journal.
He also said that Volkswagen did not plan to replace the almost half-million cars in the United States equipped with the cheating software.
It said it had notified Australian authorities of the recall.
The shocking revelations have wiped more than 40 percent off Volkswagen’s market capitalization, but the direct and indirect costs are still incalculable as the company risks fines in several countries and possible damages from customers’ lawsuits.
VW expects it will take at least one or two years to fix the affected American cars. “I was told that there was a possible emissions non-compliance that could be remedied”, Horn, President and CEO of Volkswagen Group of America, said in his statement published on a U.S. House of Representatives website.
Multiple media sources are reporting that German prosecutors raided a number of Volkswagen offices on Thursday as a part of their investigation into cheating on the emissions tests of their diesel vehicles.
Knowing that any alterations to the emissions system could cause a change in horsepower and fuel economy, Mr. Horn told committee members Volkswagen would consider a buy-back program for all affected vehicles.
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Volkswagen told U.S. authorities on 3 September this year about the “defeat device” in emissions software in diesel vehicles for the model years 2009 to 2015. An estimated 482,000 of those vehicles were sold and registered in the USA, about 15% of them in California.
