New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said Volkswagen’s diesel nitrous oxide bypass program has been in use for much longer than the Germans are trying to imagine. Not only did former boss Winterkorn, who retired, know about the fraud, but former Porsche boss Müller, who succeeded him during the exposure, was also a top manager at Audi. VW bosses and engineers kept everything under wraps until the last moment, even as U.S. regulators were already on the lookout for rogue software after a series of complaints about non-compliance with repealed harmful rules.
Deception programs had several options, their creation was started by Audi specialists (http://www.audimanual.ru/en) in 1999, they were also loaded on European diesel cars of the concern since 2004, and in the USA — since 2008 . They are also used in VW and Porsche.
Interestingly, their original goal was to reduce annoying noise from the engine, and they sought to fix the fuel injection programs. But the result of their action was an increase in emissions of nitrogen oxides /Nox/. Then a «cunning» program was added that makes the «anti-sound» «fall asleep» if the steering wheel is stationary. Namely, these are the conditions for testing the engine at the stand.
Schneiderman called the trick of using the program «deliberate deep hiding». Naturally, the Germans deny the guilt of the top leadership, talk about the wrong interrogation and assure that they are cooperating as much as possible with the federal authorities to clarify all sides of the scandal. They suggest that it is better to wait for the results of the federal investigation than at the state level.
VW is already working on fixing engine issues in the US and Europe. But while fixes for four-cylinder engines have been accepted by the authorities, the Germans have problems with V6 engines and regulators are not accepting engineering fixes proposed for them.
In the United States, Volkswagen will have to pay roughly more than $15 billion in unprocessed bills due to the «dissolve» and in Europe they are unwilling to pay anything, hiding behind differences in legal requirements on both sides of the ocean. However, if a longer duration of fraud is confirmed, claims for a higher amount may follow. According to the latest estimates, the necessary costs to disclose the scandal are more than 18 billion euros.
This amount puts the German automaker in a very difficult financial position, despite the positive results of its sales this year. Profit for the first half of this year is estimated at 7.5 billion euros against 6.99 billion euros for the same period last year. But the prospect of losing annual dividends within two or three years due to the misconduct of the elected leaders of the concern will not please the owners of shares in it. Moreover, because of the scandal, the value of their shares fell by 8%.