VW publicly admits wrongdoing in emissions scandal

To help restore confidence in the company and “prevent something like this from ever happening again”, Poetsch announced that Volkswagen was instituting new, more stringent and transparent emissions testing for all of its vehicles.

VW said that in future, emissions tests will be evaluated externally and independently.

Chairman Hans Dieter Pötsch suggested the mistakes were the result of a corporate culture in which failure was not an option, not just a outcome of being unable to meet United States emissions tests.

This led to the incorporation of software that adjusted nitrogen oxide emission levels according to whether vehicles were on the road or being tested. The issue wasn’t a one-time mistake but a chain of mistakes involving individual misconduct, weak processes and partial tolerance when it came to breaching rules, he said.

Mueller, who has not been to the United States since becoming chief executive after the scandal broke, said he would visit the country for the Detroit motor show in January and contact authorities while there. Now Mueller faces the complicated task of wringing savings from a company unaccustomed to austerity, with a powerful workforce defending its privileges and the controlling Porsche-Piech family reluctant to introduce sweeping changes.

“Our emissions tests will, in future, be verified by external and independent third parties”, he said.

“It aligns with what many news outlets, including NPR, have reported”, John says.

“There is no doubt that on the one hand there were weaknesses in our procedures… and on the other hand we had an attitude of employees in middle management that was, as we say today, “non-compliant”, he told ARD TV. On Wednesday, Volkswagen said that only a small fraction of that number was actually affected and no more than 36,000 units. The reason was that the technology for the fixes was not available when the cars were built, and the problem was not known at the time. The company added that fuel consumption data on current production cars were not unlawfully changed.

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.