Martin Winterkorn is under criminal investigation, amid claims that VW had known for years it was breaking the law.
1. Prosecutors open investigation into Winterkorn
State prosecutors in Braunschweig, Germany, have opened a criminal investigation into disgraced ex-CEO Martin Winterkorn on suspicion of fraud, according to broadcaster ARD. Despite resigning as group CEO last week, he is still CEO of Porsche SE, the holding company that controls 52% of Volkswagen’s voting stock and reports to the descendants of company founder Ferdinand Porsche.
2. VW had known what it was doing for years
Robert Bosch GmbH, the company that provided the software at the heart of the scandal, warned VW in 2007 that its plan to use it to doctor regulatory emissions tests would be illegal, according to the newspaper Bild am Sonntag. An internal whistle-blower had reported the warning in 2011, according to Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. BaS said the company had chosen to fit the cheating software rather than install better emissions control technology, which would have added $300 per vehicle to production costs. VW hasn’t commented.
3. Audi says 2.1 million cars affected by scandal.
The group’s premium volume brand, Audi, said Monday that 2.1 million of its cars were fitted with the EA 189 engine that runs the cheating software, of which nearly 600,000 of which were in Germany and almost 13,000 in the U.S.
4. Germany gives VW a week to ready recall plan.
The German vehicle watchdog KBA (which hasn’t run independent verification of manufacturers’ claims regarding emissions and fuel efficiency) has given VW a week to say how many cars it needs to recall.
5. Everybody in Europe is at it, apparently.
The NGO Transport & Environment claims that Europe’s carmakers routinely make inflated claims about their performance regarding fuel efficiency (and, by extension, emissions). T&E said the latest Mercedes-Benz A, C and E-class models, BMW’s 5-series and the Peugeot 308 all consume around 50% more fuel than their lab results suggest. The average gap between real-world emission and lab tests rose to 40% from 8% in 2001, it said in a report.
Read more of the original article at Bloomberg.
