The ‘defeat device’ at the root of Volkswagen AG’s Dieselgate scandal may have been originated from Audi in 1999.
Remember Dieselgate? The scandal that broke last year about how cars made under the Volkswagen Group were fitted with special ‘defeat devices’ to adjust itself during an emissions test in order to pass?
News about that topic hasn’t stopped dripping from the vine despite breaking in September 2015, and in the most recent development, German newspaper Handelsblatt reports that the fateful cheat was developed at Audi all the way back in 1999.
It is claimed that engineers over at the Ingolstadt automaker had come up with software that, under certain circumstances such as an emissions test, would disable certain engine functions to make it seem a lot more efficient and much less polluting than it actually is in the real world.
However, the software was left dormant until, the report said, in 2005 when Volkswagen engineers could not bring nitrogen oxide emissions below legal thresholds, they began fitting engines (usually larger and thirstier ones supplied to their luxury division) with the cheat software Audi had previous developed.
Both Volkswagen and Audi have made comments in response to the German publication's report, in which Handelsblatt cites unnamed industry insiders.
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