VW: CEO Learned of Diesel Emissions Tests in May 2014
CARS.COM — Embattled in a massive diesel scandal, the Volkswagen Group said Wednesday that it sent a memo about tests conducted by the International Council on Clean Transportation on its diesel vehicles to then-CEO Martin Winterkorn on May 23, 2014. That was more than 15 months before VW admitted to regulators that it had cheated on diesel emissions testing for hundreds of thousands of cars on U.S. roads.
Related: VW Diesel Crisis: Timeline of Events
But the German automaker says it bundled the ICCT notice to Winterkorn with his “extensive” weekend memos, and it’s unknown how much the CEO — who resigned in September 2015, just days after the scandal broke — noticed. It plays into VW’s broader narrative of the scandal, which it framed as an issue that received no special attention from its leadership for more than a year.
VW disclosed the details in a statement this week that responds to allegations that it violated German law by failing to disclose information before the crisis broke.
The automaker says the problem began when it decided to push diesels in the U.S. in 2005. In developing its EA189 four-cylinder diesel — the basis for both the Generation 1 and Generation 2 diesel engines now cited for emissions cheating — a group of powertrain employees decided that by changing “only a small number of an approximate total 15,000 individual algorithms” in the engine management software, the diesel engines could meet emissions targets “within the budget that was available for the development of the engine management software and without the need to involve superior levels.”
VW says those employees are “still being determined” but were below the automaker’s management board.
“According to current knowledge, the diesel matter, as it was treated as one of many product issues facing the Company, did not initially receive particular attention at the management levels of Volkswagen,” the automaker said in the statement. It assigned the problem to a “committee for product safety” that did not establish a diesel task force until summer 2015; it was a topic of peripheral discussion until August, when VW realized it had violated U.S. law.
