Coverage: Volkswagen blames “chain of mistakes”

Officials for Volkswagen held a press conference Thursday to update the public on the ongoing investigation into its emissions scandal. The German automaker is fighting to redeem its reputation worldwide after reports of intentional cheating on emissions testing rocked the company in September.

Jack Ewing of The New York Times summed up the day’s news:

The chairman of Volkswagen said on Thursday that the decision by employees to cheat on emissions tests was made more than a decade ago, after they realized they could not meet United States clean air standards legally.

Hans-Dieter Pötsch, the chairman of Volkswagen’s supervisory board, said the cheating took place in a climate of lax ethical standards.

“There was a tolerance for breaking the rules,” Mr. Pötsch said here on Thursday during his first lengthy news conference since the company admitted in September that 11 million cars with diesel engines were rigged to fool emissions tests. The fallout from that decision has confronted Volkswagen with “the biggest test” in its history, Mr. Pötsch said.

Mr. Pötsch and Matthias Müller, the chief executive of Volkswagen, presented the results so far of an internal inquiry that is still underway. Although the company is not ready to identify culprits, the preliminary findings confirmed widespread suspicion that the scandal occurred because the company’s ambitions in the United States collided with air quality rules that were, and still are, more stringent than Europe’s.

“It proves not to have been a one-time error, but rather a chain of errors that were allowed to happen,” Mr. Pötsch said on Thursday.

David Rising and Kerstin Sopke of The Associated Press provided more detailed on VW’s investigation into the cheating scandal:

Volkswagen is “relentlessly searching for those responsible” for the software, Poetsch said. “We still do not know whether the people who were involved in this issue from 2005 to the present day were fully aware of the risks they were taking and of the potential damage they could expose the company to, but that’s another issue we will find out,” he said.

CEO Matthias Mueller said the investigation so far had revealed that “information was not shared, it stayed within a small circle of people who were engineers.”

Poetsch confirmed the company had suspended nine managers for possible involvement in the scandal. He said there are so far no indications that board members were directly involved, but the company’s probe is ongoing and broad.

“This is not only about direct, but overall responsibility,” he said.

He said the investigation has so far analyzed data from laptops, phones and other devices from 400 employees. More than 2,000 have been informed in writing that they cannot delete any data in case it becomes relevant to the investigation, he said.

External auditors have already gone through 102 terabytes of data, which he said was the equivalent of 50 million books.

“I’m not saying all of those people are under suspicion, but what it means is that on computers, SIM cards, or USB sticks there might be information that could be important,” he said. “We still believe that only a comparatively small number of employees was actually actively involved in the manipulations.”

Mueller said that the scandal had so far not caused the massive slump in business that some had feared earlier. “The situation is not dramatic, but as expected it is tense.” Sales in the U.S. fell nearly 25 percent in November, the first month to show the full impact of the scandal. Figures for the European Union are due next week.

“We are fighting for every customer and every car.”

Jay Ramey of Autoweek wrote about how some employees “tolerated” the blatant breach of regulations:

Volkswagen Group chairman Hans Dieter Poetsch faced the press on Thursday to deliver an update on the automaker’s investigation into the creation of emissions-cheating software, Automotive News Europe reports.

The eagerly anticipated update on the report, which itself is expected to be issued in April, followed revelations in recent weeks that not only did VW 2.0-liter TDI engines contain so-called defeat devices which allowed them to pass emissions tests, but that other diesel engines within the lineup, specifically those used by Audi and Porsche models, were also affected.

The update by Poetsch reiterated the assertion that only a small group of engineers and managers were involved in the creation of the software, with Poetsch citing three main factors that allowed the emission-test cheating to happen on such a wide scale.

One factor named by Poetsch was a “a mindset in some areas of the company that tolerated breaches of rules.” Poetsch said that the second factor was determined to be “the misconduct and shortcomings of individual employees,” while a third and final factor named by chairman was vaguely described as “weaknesses in some processes.”

Poetsch also revealed that the company determined that the goal of those who created the emissions-cheating software was to enable the EA 189 engine to pass U.S. diesel emissions limits within the budget and time frame allotted.

“Initially, it proved impossible to have the EA 189 engine meet, by legal means, the stricter nitrogen oxide requirements in the United States within the required timeframe and budget,” the company said in a statement reiterated by Poetsch during the press conference. “This led to the incorporation of software that adjusted nitrogen oxide emission levels according to whether vehicles were on the road or being tested. Later, when an effective technical process was available to reduce NOx emissions, it was not employed to the full extent possible. On the contrary, the software in question allowed the exhaust gas treatment additive ‘AdBlue’ to be injected in variable amounts such that the NOx values were particularly low when vehicles were in the test bay, but significantly higher when vehicles were on the road.”

Nils Pratley of The Guardian explained how VW’s apologies are reminiscent of bankers’ excuses:

Terrific news, Volkswagen says it is making good progress with its investigation into how it cheated nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions tests. Approximately 450 experts have been working flat out for three months to sift through 100 terabytes of data, which the German carmaker helpfully tells us equates to 50m books. So, tell us: who authorised the scam, whose heads will roll, and whose bonuses will be retrieved?

Surprise, surprise, the word from Wolfsburg is that it’s not that simple. The “interaction” of three factors was to blame, apparently. There were indeed “misconduct and shortcomings” on the part of individuals, but none were named in the report and Volkswagen offered no clues as to their seniority. There were also “weaknesses in some processes”, a wonderfully vague phrase. Finally, a “mindset” in some quarters of the company tolerated breaches of the rules.

Processes and mindsets? This is feeble. Volkswagen seems to be taking its cue from the bankers’ book of excuses. “The main problem was that responsibilities were not sufficiently clear,” say the report. We’ve heard that plea many times – the notion that job descriptions were somehow so loose that nobody knew precisely what they were supposed to be doing.

The emissions scandal “proves not to have been a one-time error, but rather a chain of errors that were allowed to happen”, continues the report. That’s an old favourite too: one thing led to another so it’s impossible to apportion blame.

Being scrupulously generous, it is (just about) possible to believe that the final report will be less wishy-washy than this interim effort. Criminal charges remain a possibility and nine managers have been suspended from duties, so the report’s authors had to tread carefully.