DIESELGATE

THE CLAIM

That Volkswagen deliberately engineered software into eleven million vehicles to detect emissions testing and cheat it, that this was known and approved at senior levels, and that it continued for nearly a decade.

THE THEORY, AS ITS PROPONENTS TELL IT

This one is not contested by anybody, including the company. It is here as a modern control case: what a proven corporate conspiracy looks like when the evidence is source code.

The defeat device was software in the engine control unit. It monitored steering input, speed, duration of operation and barometric pressure, and recognised the specific pattern of a laboratory test cycle. In that mode it ran the emissions controls properly. Outside it, the controls were reduced or disabled, improving performance and fuel economy while emitting nitrogen oxides at up to forty times the American limit.

It was found almost by accident. A small team at West Virginia University, funded with about fifty thousand dollars by a European clean transport group, tested cars on the road rather than on a dynamometer, expecting to show that diesels were clean. The numbers did not match, and they published rather than assuming they had made a mistake.

Volkswagen denied it for over a year, offering technical explanations to regulators, and admitted it only when the California Air Resources Board threatened to withhold certification for the following model year.

WHAT IS KNOWN

The company pleaded guilty in the United States in 2017 to conspiracy and obstruction, and paid a $2.8 billion criminal penalty on top of civil settlements bringing the total past $30 billion.

Individuals were convicted. Engineer James Liang received forty months; executive Oliver Schmidt received seven years. Former chief executive Martin Winterkorn was charged in both the United States and Germany, and German proceedings against him were eventually severed on health grounds and later settled with a payment to the company.

The scandal spread beyond one manufacturer, with defeat device investigations touching several other companies, and it substantially changed European emissions testing, which moved toward real-driving measurement.

EVIDENCE FOR

• The source code itself, which is unambiguous and was examined by regulators and prosecutors.
• A corporate guilty plea to conspiracy in a United States federal court.
• Custodial sentences for named employees, on evidence tested at trial.
• The independent road-test data from West Virginia University, which was reproducible and was reproduced.

EVIDENCE AGAINST (THE WIDER CLAIM)

• How far up the knowledge went remains partly unresolved. Volkswagen's own position was that a limited group of engineers was responsible, and prosecutors did not fully rebut that at the highest level.
• There is no evidence that regulators were complicit, as opposed to using a test regime that was known to be gameable and slow to change.
• Claims that all manufacturers were doing precisely this are not supported. Several were investigated; the findings varied considerably.

ASSESSMENT

Confirmed, recent, and included deliberately as a calibration file. Everything the sceptical reader is told cannot happen, happened here: a large organisation coordinated a deception across a decade and eleven million products, multiple engineers wrote and maintained the cheating code, senior people signed off on public denials, and it held until a university team with fifty thousand dollars measured the wrong thing on purpose. Read alongside OSA-017 and OSA-106. The recurring shape is not a secret meeting. It is a commercial incentive, an unwatched technical detail, and a testing regime everybody knew was theatre.

WHAT WOULD CHANGE THE GRADE

• CONFIRMED at the highest standard in this archive: a corporate guilty plea to conspiracy, a $2.8 billion criminal fine, custodial sentences for named employees, and source code as the physical evidence.
• Open: how far up the knowledge went. The company's position was that a limited group of engineers was responsible, and prosecutors did not fully rebut that at board level.
• Not supported: that all manufacturers were doing precisely this. Several were investigated and the findings varied considerably.

FURTHER READING

• Volkswagen emissions scandal · Wikipedia
• United States v. Volkswagen AG · plea agreement and statement of facts (2017)
• International Council on Clean Transportation · the study that commissioned the road testing