Getting to Grips with Cheating Debacle

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18 December 2015 | Updated 01 January 1970

In its most recent statement on the emissions scandal that first broke in the USA, VW has declared it is ‘making progress’ on all five of the priorities it set at the end of October.

The technical options for customers in Europe have been devised, presented to the authorities and ‘positively evaluated’ by them and the car manufacturer confirms they will begin to be implemented in January 2016. The emissions investigation is producing results, and initial consequences have already been drawn based on the findings to date.

Initial results of the emissions investigation have been:

• Approximately 450 external and internal experts involved in the investigations.

• 100 terabytes of data secured – equivalent to information in approximately 50 million books.

• VW will have future emissions tests evaluated independently.

• Technical answers for customers in Europe have been developed with implementation to begin in January 2016.

• Group realignment is reportedly making ‘good progress’.

The Chairman of the Board of Management, Matthias Müller, insisted that VW was “doing everything to overcome the current situation but we will not allow the crisis to paralyse us. On the contrary, we will use it as a catalyst to make the changes Volkswagen needs.”

On the important point of investigating what had gone so drastically wrong to allow for the cheating of emissions in some VW models, the company said that approximately 450 internal and external experts were involved in the investigations which are being conducted in two phases.

An internal review, being conducted by a task force of experts from various Group companies with a clearly defined mandate and a deadline, is focused on the mandate to Group audit by the Supervisory Board and the Management Board to investigate relevant processes, reporting and monitoring systems and the associated infrastructure. The Group audit will provide its findings to the external experts of Jones Day. The Supervisory Board has given this ‘internationally respected’ law firm a parallel mandate to completely clarify the facts and responsibilities, i.e. among other things, it has been asked to conduct a forensic investigation. In connection with its work, Jones Day is being provided with operational support by the audit firm Deloitte.

There has already been three areas that VW admits went wrong with the software-influenced NOx emissions which was due to the ‘interaction’ of three factors:

• The misconduct and shortcomings of individual employees.

• Weaknesses in some processes.

• A mindset in some areas of the company that tolerated breaches of rules.

VW states that the software on the affected models will be updated and there will be a recall of the highest volume variant, the 2 litre TDI that will begin in January 2016. The recall of the 1.2 litre TDI is currently scheduled to begin in the second quarter. The implementation phase for the 1.6 litre models is planned to begin in the third quarter to allow time to prepare for the hardware modification.

VW will inform the owners of the affected vehicles individually as to when their vehicles will be updated. It guarantees that the changes will be implemented free of charge and the company has waived any statute of limitations for the technical alterations and will provide an appropriate replacement vehicle if required.

There will also be management restructuring to allow for greater autonomy within the Group and what appears to be a commitment to purge any who are found to be culpable in the scandal.

“Volkswagen will not rest until this matter has been resolved once and for all to our customers’ satisfaction,” assured Matthias Müller.

Picture: The VW headquarters in Germany where much reorganising and damage limitation are in progress over the emissions scandal

Article written by Robin Snow | Published 18 December 2015

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