Volkswagen Memos Suggest Company Misled U.S. Regulators - The New York Times
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/19/business/volkswagen-memos-suggest-emissions-problem-was-known-earlier.html
According to the documents reviewed by The Times, a confidant of Mr. Winterkorn wrote to him in May 2014, warning that regulators might accuse the carmaker of using a so-called defeat device — software that recognized when the car was being tested for emissions and activated pollution-control equipment. At other times, the cars produced up to 35 times the allowed amount of nitrogen oxide emissions, which are linked to lung ailments and premature deaths.
It was not until last September, more than a year after the letter of warning to Mr. Winterkorn, that Volkswagen admitted publicly that 11 million diesel vehicles, including about 480,000 Volkswagen cars in the United States, were equipped with defeat devices. The number of cars in the United States has since risen to include about 100,000 Audi and Porsche cars with diesel engines.
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In May 2014, for example, Bernd Gottweis, a veteran Volkswagen executive who had come out of retirement to help deal with the emissions problem in the United States, wrote Mr. Winterkorn a memo saying the company would not be able to give officials “a sound explanation for the dramatically elevated” nitrogen oxide emissions. United States officials were likely to investigate whether Volkswagen cars were equipped with “a so-called defeat device,” the memo said.
Mr. Gottweis was known inside Volkswagen as the #Red_Adair_of_quality_control, a former Volkswagen executive said, for his ability to deal with emergencies. Red Adair, a Texan, was famous for his ability to extinguish extremely difficult oil-well blazes.
Pas vraiment surprenant, mais les documents commencent à sortir…
Ceci dit, je me suis laissé dire que chez un concurrent de VW, ça fait très longtemps que dans les réunions internes sur les émissions des diesels, il est formellement interdit de prendre des notes…