Experts: Top managers probably knew about cheating on emissions

Associated Press

DETROIT

Auto-industry insiders strongly suspect the emissions cheating scandal at Volkswagen is much wider and reaches higher up the corporate ladder than the company is letting on.

Volkswagen’s new CEO, Matthias Mueller, was quoted Wednesday as telling a German newspaper that the investigation so far has found that a few software developers tampered with the pollution controls on some of VW’s diesel engines. He said top executives would not have gotten involved in the software.

But industry experts and analysts say it’s hard to believe a few designers acted on their own to blatantly circumvent U.S. emissions tests.

“You know that simple software guys would never have the courage or the authority to initiate the cheating,” said retired General Motors vice chairman Bob Lutz. “They would want someone senior to sign off on it.”

VW has admitted that 11 million of its diesel cars worldwide have software that turns pollution controls on when the vehicles are being tested on a treadmill-like device and shuts them off when the automobiles are on the road. The trick enables the cars to get better fuel mileage while spewing illegal levels of smog-causing exhaust.

Mueller didn’t rule out a wider circle of offenders and said VW is “now clarifying the responsibilities in detail.” The automaker has suspended four people responsible for engine development and hired a law firm to investigate.

Experts say others in the company had to know about the cheating because the software controlled devices engineered by other departments. Those departments surely would have seen something amiss during testing of their own equipment.