Source: TheGuardian
Despite Volkwagen’s congressional hearing lasting more than two hoursand the carmaker’s US boss facing almost constant criticism, Congress was only fixated on a pair of questions – who is to blame for the diesel emissions scandal and how are you going to fix it?
Unfortunately for Michael Horn and VW, the energy and commerce committee in Congress was not satisfied with either answer.
Horn warned it will take “one to two years minimum” to fix the half-a-million cars in the US fitted with a defeat device.
The vast majority of these cars – 430,000 – will require software and hardware repairs that could even involve a new tank being fitted to the vehicle. However, Horn admitted that the fix was still being tested and the solution was “complex”.
Frank Pallone, the representative for New Jersey, refused to believe that VW’s repairs would not affect the performance of the vehicle. He also urged VW to consider offering customers a full refund.
However, if the committee was frustrated with Horn’s explanation with VW’s plan to fix the affected cars, it was nothing compared to its incredulity at his answer about who fitted the defeat devices that allowed vehicles to cheat emissions tests.
Horn regurgitated the official VW answer that it was “not a corporate decision” and that “a couple of software engineers” had put the device into the vehicles. Three people have been suspended by the company, according to Horn, whose official title is president and chief executive of Volkswagen Group of America.
Do you know how that defies credulity?” Michael Burgess from Texas said.
Chris Collins went even further. The representative from New York said he “categorically rejects” VW’s version of events and the carmaker was either incompetent or guilty of a “massive cover-up”.
Did the company not wonder how its engineers had managed to lower the emissions on a car that was 40 times over the legal limit, he asked? If they had actually done this it would have been “massive breakthrough technology” and surely VW would have looked to patent the device that did it.
“It goes way, way higher than that,” Collins said of the explanation that rogue engineers were to blame.
Perhaps as a defensive strategy aimed at winning over the committee or perhaps because he genuinely does doubt the company’s official version of events, Horn said he also struggled to believe this story.
“I agree too, it is very hard to believe, and personally I struggle as well,” Horn said.
Horn described the defeat device as a line of code “hidden in millions of software code”, meaning it was possible it had been missed by others in VW.
However, he also criticised his own company, urging VW to “bloody learn and use the opportunity to get its act together”. The way the carmaker manages its 600,000 staff needs to change, he added.
The scandal was ultimately caused by “pressure in the system to get resolutions and cost pressures”, according to Horn. “It is dead wrong if you put corporate profits before people.”