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El Reg reports
Former engineer James Robert Liang took a plea deal with the US federal government to cooperate with its ongoing investigation of how the German car maker cheated American emissions tests and passed off its "clean diesel" engines as meeting state and government clean air standards.
While VW executives have claimed that the use of a defeat device to artificially limit emissions during tests was the work of a "couple of software engineers", Liang's plea deal shows that the conspiracy dates back roughly a decade and has roots in the team that designed the engines.
In other words, Liang claims the design team was in on it, not just a couple of bad apples.
Liang told the government that in 2006, engineers knew the EA 189 diesel engine would not be able to meet clean air emission standards on its own. Rather than attempt to redesign the engine, he and other members of the design team deliberately cheated the testing system.
[...] He said that the device was used to get the clean air certification on VW's "clean diesel" models from 2009 to 2016, and that the group continued to lie about the emissions output of the engines even after the US government began its investigation.
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(Score: 2) by bd on Wednesday September 14 2016, @11:09AM
Sadly, the article is completely wrong and misleading. The plea agreement says
nowhere that the _entire_ team is in on it. Only that two or more persons of the
EA189 design team were involved. We may find out how many were involved
years later, when the legal proceedings against them actually start.
The prosecutor's office in Braunschweig told the press they are investigating
against 21 people right now, and have not yet worked with the testimony
of this guy.
From the perspective of VW, this still could qualify as "a couple", I guess.
Maybe the number will rise some more... but if that team was as big as I assume
it was, I would guess that not the entire design team was involved.
Just think about it. Nobody could ever be fired from a large group of people
(you would have to keep track of) for several years, for whatever reason.
One leak and the career of the management involved is over.
Does that sound like a likely management decision to you?
(Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday September 14 2016, @12:55PM
If it was possible to cheat because the testing procedure was monolithic, the engineers might have inferred the entire thing was just for the show. The auto industry is full of things done for the show, after all. If they really cared for the environment the industry would look very different.
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