Head of Volkswagen Group of America, Michael Horn added to prepared written testimony at the start of the congressional hearing to emphasize he was not aware of the company’s intentional deception on USA regulatory tests even though he reported hearing about issues with emissions compliance as early as spring 2014 in his written statement, The Wall Street Journal reports.
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He also said that Volkswagen did not plan to replace the almost half-million cars in the USA equipped with the cheating software. Horn said fixing the diesel cars will take years and require approval from regulators.
He told the House of Representatives Oversight and Investigations panel that he knew in 2014 the company might be breaking U.S. emissions rules, because a study by West Virginia University had shown a few of its diesel vehicles had high toxic emissions on the road.
The company told regulators only on september 3 that it was using defeat devices in diesel cars since the 2009 models, Horn said.
Stanley Young, a spokesman for the California Air Resources Board said the agency was investigating the nature of the second device but declined to provide specifics because VW’s application “is still pending”.
Horn will face questions from members of commerce for about two hours on Thursday morning.
The firm said, however, the limited impact was due to sellers of affected vehicles holding off from lowering prices, and instead preferring to delay sales in the hope the scandal would blow over.
German police have swooped on Volkswagen’s headquarters, carrying away files and hard disks in their investigation into a massive pollution cheating scandal engulfing the auto giant.
The company has confessed that up to 11 million vehicles sold worldwide with the EA189 diesel engine have code in them that’s created to help it fraudulently pass emissions testing. Horn also explained that the company was working to fix the exhaust systems in three separate groups of cars that had the devices and to ensure that this would never happen again.
German prosecutors last week launched an investigation to determine who was responsible for suspected fraud committed through the sale of vehicles with manipulated emissions data.
Horn says he was informed that the “possible emissions non-compliance” issue could be remedied, and that VW engineers would work with regulators to resolve the issue.
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Mr Horn said: “My understanding is that it was a couple of software engineers who put these in”. According to the EPA, Volkswagen vehicles emit nitrogen oxides, or NOx, at nearly 40 times the standard amount.
