VW’s United States boss knew of “possible emissions non-compliance” in 2014

But it wasn’t until last month, Horn said, that VW informed the EPA that it had installed “hidden software” to get around emissions standards.

Volkswagen, which submitted its plans and timetable to bring vehicles into compliance to German authorities on Wednesday, plans to begin recalling affected vehicles from January.

“These events are deeply troubling”.

In a statement presented to the US House of Representatives, Horn says he was first made aware of “a possible emissions non-compliance” in the Spring of 2014.

The VW scandal came to light when researchers from the global Council on Clean Transportation and West Virginia University performed all kinds of tests on VW vehicles, discovering that when the vehicles were on the road, they polluted substantially more than when they were being tested for pollution emissions.

He said there was no discussion or decision by the company’s board to install the defeat devices software.

America CEO Michael Horn apologized Thursday at a hearing on Capitol Hill and said the automaker is “determined to make things right” after years of deception on an air pollution device. “This was a couple of software engineers who put this in for whatever reasons and I would also like to find out”.

The company has vowed to to spend about $7 billion on “necessary service measures and other efforts to win back the trust of our customers”.

The beleaguered German automaker, accused by USA regulators of using an illegal “cheat device” to evade emissions regulations, has said as many as 11 million vehicles across several of its brands were sold to drivers with the diesel engine software in question.

Members of the EPA are also scheduled testify Thursday.

The device allowed VW vehicles to pollute 10 to 40 times over the legal limit.

“In Europe too, Volkswagen effectively cheated on emissions in a systematic manner”, newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung claimed, citing its own research in collaboration with public broadcasters NDR and WDR.

Horn was asked by Vermont Democrat Peter Welch why he thought Volkswagen engineers chose to design and install the software to cheat emissions tests. Liz Purchia, a spokeswoman for the Environmental Protection Agency, said VW recently gave the agency information on an “auxiliary emissions control device”. The fix, he said, would not hurt fuel mileage, but it could hinder the cars’ performance, knocking one or two miles-per-hour off the top speed.

“I sincerely apologise over betraying customers’ trust”, Volkswagen Korea President Thomas Kuehl said in a newspaper advertisement in South Korea.

EPA officials will defend their testing, as well as the importance of the Clean Air Act that VW is charged with violating.