Volkswagen’s US Chief Testifies About Emissions Scandal

Republican Rep. Morgan Griffith said the university should receive part of any settlement or fine imposed on VW by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

VW was able to fool the EPA because the agency tested the cars on treadmill-like devices called dynamometers and didn’t use portable test equipment on real roads.

Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin has stressed the importance of protecting United Kingdom consumer interests in the wake of the admission by VW on its use of defeat devices.

Of the several members of Congress who recounted love affairs with their trusty VWs during the hearing, Rep. Morgan Griffith may be the one most directly harmed by the company’s emissions cheat. The California Air Resources Board also will certainly have to authorize any solution VW proposes. In the 1980s, he says he bought a Rabbit, and in the 1990s he bought a gas-powered Jetta. This could potentially mean VW will lose quite a lot of money in sales alone, while customers will have to wait even longer before new models arrive.

Griffith then bought a 2012 diesel Passat, one of the cars caught up in the scandal.

U.S. CEO Michael Horn tells lawmakers that the company may pay customers for a loss in resale values because of the scandal. Horn claims there is much he doesn’t know about the issue, but he said that Volkswagen needs to “bloody learn” from this mistake.

He conceded that the company is facing huge costs, from regulator fines to possibile civil and criminal complaints, and to compensating auto owners. He didn’t have an exact timeline on when the repairs might take place, but said it could take multiple years to develop the fix, get government approval and distribute parts to the company’s US dealers.

“This was not a corporate decision”. He also said he didn’t know why they did it. “This was a couple of software engineers who put this in for whatever reason”, he said, Automotive News quoted him as saying.

“I’m not going to blame our budget for the fact that we missed this cheating”, replied the EPA’s Christopher Grundler, who said his transportation and air quality office has an annual budget of roughly $100 million.

The chief executive of VW, Matthias Mueller, indicated in a news story that recalls for the 11 million vehicles affected by the emissions scandal could begin in January.

VW’s board of directors has actually employed USA law firm Jones Day to conduct an investigation. “I again apologize on behalf of everyone at Volkswagen”. I did not think that something like this was possible at the Volkswagen group.

Mr Horn said: “These events, and I fully agree on this, are deeply troubling”.

Lawmakers pressing Volkswagen’s top executive on an emissions cheating scandal are fondly recalling owning vintage VW Beetles early in their lives.

The additional 6444 VW passenger cars take the total number of Australian vehicles affected to almost 100,000, when Skoda cars and VW commercial vehicles are added.

What the company has done “represents a fundamental violation of public trust”, he said.