Mounting evidence suggests their claims to be ethical are hot air.
The Volkswagen Group faces yet another round of legal battle following the eruption of Dieselgate, an emissions and compliance scandal that has so far cost the enormous German conglomerate some US$30-billion ($38.29-billion) in settlements, buy-backs, and recall costs already, and the bill may not end there.
For those not familiar with Dieselgate, back in September 2015, the Volkswagen Group admitted to defrauding US emissions regulators by utilising complex engine management software that dials up emissions-regulating systems in its turbodiesel engines when it detects it’s being tested, and then rolling those systems back down again when the car was in day-to-day use. Testing revealed that affected vehicles could emit up to 40-times more Co2 in everyday usage than what the cars claimed to emit in testing.
By October that year, the Volkswagen Group had a new CEO in Matthias Müller, who took the reigns from outgoing-CEO Martin Winterkorn who resigned to make way for a “fresh start” at the Group without once admitting to any personal wrongdoing. Müller began his term as CEO by stating clearly:
“My most urgent task is to win back trust for the Volkswagen Group — by leaving no stone unturned and with maximum transparency, as well as drawing the right conclusions from the current situation. Under my leadership, Volkswagen will do everything it can to develop and implement the most stringent compliance and governance standards in our industry.” — Matthias Müller, Chairman of the Board, Volkswagen Group
However, as time progressed, it became clear that the defeat devices employed by Volkswagen were not only used on other engines (namely the 6-cylinder turbodiesel units used by Audi and Porsche), but that they were employed in countries outside of the US. Also, rather recently, it came to light that the Volkswagen Group had engaged a research firm to help prove the ‘harmlessness’ of its diesel engines, by subjecting a group of monkeys to fumes from a turbodiesel VW Beetle.
Naturally, these discoveries have called the ethical fabric of the Volkswagen Group into question, which has served as the motive force behind this new push to get senior Volkswagen executives to testify before the US Congress. Darrell Issa, a Republican representative of California (and the former chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee) said in a phone interview with Bloomberg that “there is a growing sense executives need to be held accountable,” and that there were elements of the Dieselgate scandal that the settlement that US regulators reached with Volkswagen back in 2016 did not fully encompass the “global conspiracy” that Dieselgate is now understood to be.
Volkswagen AG’s luxury arm Audi very recently issued a recall notice for some 5,000 Audi A8 limousines running turbodiesel mills to recalibrate their emissions-regulating software, affecting cars built as recently as August 2017. That came after a recall notice went out for some 22,000 V6 turbodiesel cars built by Audi and Porsche earlier in the year, after the outgoing transport minister for Germany Alexander Dobrint levelled accusations at the Group for having fitted its defeat devices to the 6-cylinder mills.
Since Dieselgate, and in keeping with CEO Müller’s intentions, Volkswagen AG has reinvented itself as a company deeply committed to sustainable mobility and green-vehicle solutions, or so they claim. Porsche has recently doubled their investment into electric vehicle platforms and systems, while Volkswagen (the brand) are planning a range of pure-electric vehicles for the very near future, with the aim to dominate the electric-vehicle space. This latest round of questioning will likely complicate the Group’s turnaround, but Representative Issa made it clear that “a criminal investigation is never over until the statue of limitation hits.”
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