VW’s diesel cover-up may have been "open secret"

Volkswagen’s emissions-cheating diesel software may have been an open secret within the company for nearly a decade, a new report finds.

Even after admitting late last year that nearly 11 million of its diesel-powered vehicles sold worldwide were equipped with “cheating devices” that allowed them to artificially pass emission tests, VW maintained that the illegal software was the result of a few rouge engineers. However, a new report from Germany’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper indicates that the cheat was an open secret within VW’s engine development department.

According to the report, which cites results from VW’s own internal investigation, staff and managers within VW’s engine development department came up with the idea of a defeat device in November 2006 as a way to meet the management board’s charge of selling a cost efficient diesel engine in the United States. Achieving that task within the boundaries of U.S. law wasn’t possible, so the software cheat was devised without informing VW’s upper-management or board members.

“Within the company there was a culture of ‘we can do everything’, so to say something cannot be done, was not acceptable,” Sueddeutsche Zeitung said, according to Reuters, quoting the VW internal report.

“Instead of coming clean to the management board that it cannot be done, it was decided to commit fraud.”

Those involved in the fraud would receive engine management software from supplier Bosch and then manipulate the code at VW’s headquarters in Wolfsburg, according to the findings.

It remains to be seen how many people were in on the cover-up, but it sounds as though the problem was more widespread than just a few people. If the entire department was in on it, the number of people in-the-know could have been in the hundreds or even thousands.

VW is expected to publicly reveal the finds of its internal investigation this April at its annual shareholders’ meeting.