Follow live: VW’s USA chief faces Congress on diesel scandal

He told the House of Representatives Oversight and Investigations panel that he knew in 2014 the company might be breaking United States emissions rules, because a study by West Virginia University had shown a few of its diesel vehicles had high toxic emissions on the road.

He said: “Let me be very clear: we at Volkswagen take full responsibility for our actions and we are working with all the relevant authorities in a co-operative way”. “Later in 2014, I was informed that the technical teams had a specific plan for remedies to bring the vehicles into compliance and that they were engaged with the agencies about the process”.

Altogether, buyers of Volkswagon cars and the company itself may have benefitted from more than US$50 million in these subsidies under the 2005 Alternative Motor Vehicle Tax Credit, in its 2009 and 2010 models, the committee said. The software would then shut off allowing emission levels to climb 10 to 40 times above EPA levels.

The minister said he believes that even if the scandal causes a drop in production, the Hungarian plant will be less affected by repercussions because the facility is “one of the Volkswagen Group’s most modern plants”.

As Horn sat behind the microphone on Thursday, Reuters reported that German prosecutors raided Volkswagen’s headquarters in Wolfsburg for information for their investigation.

The company’s new chairman said on Wednesday it would take “some time” to get to the bottom of the matter.

The German auto giant sank into the deepest crisis of its history after revealing that it equipped 11 million of its diesel vehicles worldwide with software that switches the engine to a low-emissions mode during tests.

That is about 18 months before the company admitted to us regulators it used software to cheat tests, and is likely to add to criticism it has not acted swiftly enough to tackle its wrongdoing. Horn said Volkswagen has withdrawn its application to certify its 2016 diesel vehicles.

Horn, testifying under oath, told lawmakers that he believes the emissions rigging was not an organized undertaking by the company, but rather a small group of individuals. The defeat devices were created to turn on pollution controls to reduce nitrogen oxide output when the EPAs dynamometer tests were under way.

It’s important to note that Horn never specifically says he knew about the installation of the “defeat devices”.