The head of Volkswagen’s (VLKAY) US business was told about possible emissions trouble affecting millions of the German company’s diesel vehicles early previous year, but said he was not aware that so-called defeat devices were involved until last month.
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In the written testimony published on Wednesday, Horn said Volkswagen had withdrawn its US certification application for a few model year 2016 vehicles over a software feature that should have been disclosed to regulators as an auxiliary emissions control device.
The devices, which were actually code contained within the vehicles’ software, allowed the cars to meet emission requirements while they were being tested but far exceed them in regular use.
However, Horn claimed he did not know until “a couple (of) days” before September 3 that “defeat devices” had been installed deliberately in the vehicles to help them cheat pollution tests.
“I was informed that EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] regulations included various penalties for non-compliance with the emissions standards and that the agencies can conduct engineering tests which could include “defeat device” testing or analysis”, he said.
“I did not think that something like this was possible at the Volkswagen Group”, Horn told lawmakers.
The prosecutor’s office in Braunschweig is the lead agency in the investigation, and noted that three state attorneys and over 50 state police officers raided several Volkswagen offices and private homes across Germany.
“This was a couple of software engineers who put this in for whatever reason”, Horn claimed.
Horn said Volkswagen takes full responsibility for its actions and is “working with all relevant authorities in a cooperative way”.
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.
“The American people, the EPA and their counterparts around the world have been defrauded by Volkswagen”, said Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill.
Horn admitted that Volkswagen, even after hearing in the spring of 2014 about an independent study that showed emissions irregularities in two of its diesel cars, told us air regulators that the higher emissions data was the result of technical problems with the tests. It’s estimated that based on current values, the cost for such a program could reach $7 billion just for the Volkswagen vehicles on USA roads.
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Volkswagen said that it will begin installing fixes in January in the first of almost 500,000 of its 2009-2015 vehicles.
