The never-ending train wreck of Volkswagen’s emissions cheating scandal continues.
The never-ending train wreck of Volkswagen’s emissions cheating scandal continues.
In the latest blow to the automaker, German public broadcasters NDR and WDR and newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung have revealed that the manipulation of engine ECU software in order to cheat US EPA emissions testing continued for several months after the California Air Resources Board began a probe into the high emissions levels of VW’s diesel vehicles.
According to the German reporting, VW developers added an additional software update just over a year ago that went unnoticed by the EPA. The cheat software update was designed to incorporate inputs from the steering angle sensor in order to differentiate between static dynamometer vehicle operation and real-world driving. The intent was to turn on engine control mapping for minimum emissions during emission testing, but continue to operate in a dirtier, higher performance mode during real-world driving.
The CARB-mandated recall of December 2014 forced Volkswagen to perform a software update, but in May 2015, further testing showed that OX emissions were still 15 times over the allowable limit. It was the May 2015 testing that detected the cheat software update.
VW won’t comment and maintains that development of the cheat software was restricted to a small circle of employees acting without knowledge of management personnel. Unfortunately for VW, the issue isn’t restricted to Wolfsburg.
Daniel Donovan, formerly a technical project manager in VW’s Michigan operation, alleges that he was wrongfully dismissed in December after telling VW managers and the company’s legal team that Volkswagen data was being destroyed after the September 18, 2015 announcement by the EPA that VW had broken federal emissions law.
According to Donovan, the US unit’s information technology manager ignored an order from Donovan’s immediate supervisor to “stop deleting data effective immediately pursuant to a Department of Justice hold.” Donovan further claims that data deletion continued for three more days in violation of the DOJ order and backup disks were destroyed afterwards.
Under Michigan law, dismissed employees can instigate legal action if their firing is in retaliation for a demand that the employee break the law. VW claims that the circumstances of Donovan’s dismissal were unrelated to the emissions issue.
Overall, it’s a mess and it just gets worse by the day. Although the impact has been minimal on European sales, the core demographics for VW’s US diesel market include environmentally responsible, affluent and frequently left-leaning consumers. Put simply, the scandal is worse in my opinion for Volkswagen of America than for the company as a whole.
So what should the company do? Those of us that remember the Ford/Firestone fiasco in 2000 recall how Bridgestone Firestone recovered from early missteps with a customer satisfaction program that effectively saved the Firestone brand. In that situation, Bridgestone Firestone simply replaced every affected tire with the brand of the customer’s choosing, including direct competitors like Goodyear and Michelin. If Volkswagen asked me—and they most assuredly haven’t—I would recommend this course of action:
1. Declare that Volkswagen will be the world leader in environmentally friendly mass-produced cars and light trucks and publicly declare that the firm will, across the fleet, undershoot allowable NOX limits in future models to make up for the excessive emissions due to the scandal.
2. Revamp the firm’s internal engineering and management hierarchy and consider moving VW engineering into a separate business unit operating under a different name with its own CEO and board.
3. Open-source VW engine control software to allow independent scrutiny and lobby for a global agreement for other major automakers to open-source their engine control code. Better yet, standardize the code and ECU firmware and hardware for basic engine operating parameters.
4. Propose automotive engineering societies worldwide create an anonymous “whistleblower line” to allow responsible engineers to stop unethical and criminal behavior from their peers without risking their own careers.
5. Rebrand Volkswagen diesel models in America with a major PR and advertising effort, perhaps eliminating the word “diesel” and replacing it with another descriptor like “compression ignition” or “CI.”
Volkswagen can choose to do this the hard way or the easy way, but one thing is clear: doing nothing at all will drive away VW owners and US dealers.