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Volkswagen Engineer Pleads Guilty in US Diesel Emissions Probe (fortune.com)
A Volkswagen AG engineer on Friday pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate in the Justice Department's probe into the German automaker's diesel emissions scandal -- the first person charged by U.S. authorities in the environmental probe, reports Reuters. From the report:James Liang, who has worked for VW VLKPF since 1983 and was part of a team of engineers who developed a diesel engine, was charged in an indictment made public on Friday with conspiring to commit wire fraud and violating U.S. clean air laws. The 62-year-old engineer from Newbury Park, Calif., appeared in U.S. District Court in Detroit on Friday and entered into a plea agreement that includes his cooperation with the government in its investigation. The indictment says Liang conspired with current and former VW employees to mislead U.S. regulators about the software that allowed the automaker to evade American emissions standards.
WTF? why does some engineer get thrown under the VW bus?
Hopefully there is paperwork to show management had a hand in this; this kind of culture needs to stop. Mr. Engineer, wink... bonus...wink... standards... wink.
So if he is responsible for the creation "defeat device", is he responsible for the installation on every vehicle sold in the US?
120 characters ought to be enough for anyone
No one from top management pushed this down and forced their hands. He was just trying to save the company money! Always keep a paper trail.
I wonder what's actually happening here. No one in a high-profile civil case pleads guilty unless they have a real reason to. Is VW paying his family an exorbitant sum of money through a back-channel?
There's no way an engineer comes up with a scheme like this on their own. I know for myself that I'd be too much of an honest guy to go along with that. Yes, I know that makes me an idiot. But management is always involved in things like this, or at the very least is willfully blind. German companies are very meticulous, so I'm sure they have the exact email, timestamped to the millisecond, showing the management team telling the engineers to put the defeat device in.
VW has indeed a history of taking care for fallen children look at Mr. Harz and listen to the silence.
http://www.npr.org/2016/09/09/...
With all the corporate crime going on, it is easy to get your scumbags mixed up....
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Why throw this engineer under the bus? He was likely following orders.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
He needs the jail / prison health care plan till 65.
Meanwhile, the methane leak in Los Angeles last year caused more pollution than all of the affected VW's could ever hope to create in their lifespan.
...I'll believe someone's getting punished when SENIOR MANAGEMENT is seeing jail time or fines in excess of several years' pay.
Hauling one nearly-retired engineer up in the dock doesn't mean shit.
-Styopa
WTF? why does some engineer get thrown under the VW bus?
Because they are the easiest to get to. Hopefully they'll work their way up the ladder. It's almost always hardest to get to the guys at the top and you usually have to start at the bottom and work up. He'll probably get a lighter sentence in exchange for giving up a bigger fish and then the bigger fish will get a deal to give up the next guy up the food chain. Eventually you get to the top but it takes a while and a lot of work.
There's no way an engineer comes up with a scheme like this on their own.
Even if he did there is no way to keep it a secret for long and it would be virtually impossible for management to not know about it. But engineering is pretty much a team sport with a product this complex and there would be no way it would be one rogue engineer. It simply doesn't work that way.
German companies are very meticulous, so I'm sure they have the exact email, timestamped to the millisecond, showing the management team telling the engineers to put the defeat device in.
More than likely this is true. It shouldn't be too hard to work their way up the food chain if the investigators are sufficiently motivated and funded.
US pushing Volkswagen case, EU pushing Apple case. NIce!
I might fall from a tall building,
I might roll a brand new car.
'Cause I'm the unknown stuntman that made Redford such a star.
For some reason, I've got The Fall Guy stuck in my head now.
This scandal goes all the way up. The cheat crossed over to other badges, which are calibrated by entirely different teams. At the very least, some director who sits above all the badge bosses was involved in perpetrating this fraud.
Calibration engineers had to work on, and test, two sets of calibrations - the "cheat mode" values and the standard values. Somebody had to direct them to do this. This isn't just a Degiorgio being lazy and signing off on crap parts to clear his worklog - this is a systematic effort to spread the "cheat device" software across ALL of the brands. Tagging Liang as the primary perpetrator is like saying some Air Force Captain somehow managed to cause the Air Force, Navy, and Army to launch a nuclear war - Liang simply doesn't have the power to get that software calibrated on the other badges.
I'm guessing the engineer's family is being either well taken care of, or worse, threatened, to make him take responsibility.
It was discovered by researchers at an American university, not regulators. And the diesel standards in the Sates are much stricter than the EU.
I actually disagree.
There are plenty of situations that could be torpedoed by the engineer refusing to do the work. Engineers are not disposable.
Do not underestimate your ability to say "No" to something that is obviously illegal. You will end that shit right there in most cases. Especially when up against your own lower level boss who is probably less than pleased himself about having to ask you to do it.
And do not believe for a second that there are not engineers who will collaborate because they want to, or because they are rewarded, and not because of pressure or fear. Amorality and criminality are not exclusive traits for management.
Diesel emissions standards are much stricter in the US than elsewhere. Normally this would be a good thing, but in the US' case it just smacks of the same old protectionism that the US car makers have been lobbying for since they realised most other countries make better cars than they do. Ever notice how you hardly ever see a US-made family car outside the US?
How much VW are paying him to take the fall...
Point being issues deserve attention in media in proportion to their effects.
Call me when the manager that told him to do it gets locked up.
THAT will be news.
No sig today...
Firstly, soot standards are stricter in Europe than in the US. It is NOx where the US is (much) stricter. Secondly, the scandal has nothing to do with fuel efficiency and it changes nothing about the fact that diesel engines are more fuel efficient and use a fuel that costs less energy to produce. Finally, modern diesel engines produce fewer volatile hydrocarbons and ultra-fine particulates than petrol engines, both of which are known to cause cancer, as well as less carbon monoxide. There is often an order of magnitude difference.