VW invented some software that
recognised when a government test computer had been plugged into a
car. When that happened all the emission controls were turned on, and
the car gave a low reading that complied with government regulations.
Then,
as soon as the government computer was unplugged, the VW computer
turned off all the emission controls and the car spent the rest of its life spewing out forty times more than the expected amount of
emissions.
Chief executive Martin Winterkorn said on Sunday,
"We do not and will not tolerate violations of any kind of our internal rules or of the law."
Except on those many occasions when they tolerated multiple violations involving 11 million cars over the last seven or eight years!
My prediction: Not one person from VW will jailed for any of the felonies that have been committed since 2008. Politicians will be paid huge bribes to look the other way and most charges will be dropped as long as VW management promises not to do it again.
Also, no matter if the investigations lasts for decades, we will never find out anything about the software. At the end of the investigation VW will be saying they can't understand where it came from, who wrote it, why they wrote it, when they wrote it, or how it got onto their cars. In fact VW might even try to claim that they were victims of commercial sabotage. They won't be able to sustain that idea, but they'll give it a go anyway.
My
favourite memory of VW was that time in 1998 when they bought the Rolls
Royce Motor Company for hundreds of millions of dollars and then
discovered that the sale didn't include the naming rights, so they were
still unable to build Rolls Royce cars.
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