The finding that sparked the Dieselgate scandal was the work of three college students. Marc Besch (right) is from Switzerland, while Arvind Thiruvengadam (left) and Hemanth Kappanna (center) are both from India.
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Who made the VW scandal public?
Dieselgate, a scandal involving the Volkswagen Auto Group, caused dominoes to fall across the whole industry when it was revealed that the Volkswagen Auto Group had fabricated its diesel emissions. Regulators launched investigations into numerous businesses throughout the world, many of which were later found to have installed similar “defeat devices” in their diesel vehicles; but, Volkswagen’s emissions-cheating scheme continued to be the most widespread. The scandal ultimately cost Volkswagen and its affiliates many billions of dollars and damaged the standing of a once-reputable carmaker.
And none of it would have been possible without the labor of an engineer by the name of Hemanth Kappanna, who, according to the New York Times, was fired from General Motors earlier this year.
A study conducted in 2013 by Kappanna and other graduate students at West Virginia University revealed diesel Volkswagens polluted more than claimed in actual driving situations. At a conference where members of CARB and the EPA were present in 2014, they presented their findings. Kappanna entered the field at the end of 2014 while investigations grew into the scandal whose outcomes are known today, working for GM in a position that would place him in command of emissions controls.
But Kappanna’s employment wasn’t guaranteed. When GM decided that automatic driving and electric cars were the future of transportation, it became clear that it would require money to make these new technologies a reality. This money could be easily raised by streamlining GM’s operations. The answer is to discontinue unprofitable models, shut down aging plants, and lay off thousands of employees. One of them was named Kappanna.
The now-41-year-old Kappanna told NYT, “They let me go.” Kappanna struggled to find work during his two months of paid time off because the automobile business is predicted to slow down in the next years. When the clock ran out, all Kappanna had left was a ticket back to India. He hypothesizes that a perceived bias in favor of regulators may have played a role in his job loss.
“They might have perceived me as biased, for sure. I honestly can’t say “Kappanna said. The action was criticized by Kappanna’s coworkers as “one of those stupid decisions taken to match the statistics,” even though GM has disputed that Kappanna’s removal was related to his history of disclosing Dieselgate.
Kappanna recalled his coworkers saying that the leadership’s actions were “absolutely incorrect.”
What precipitated the Volkswagen scandal?
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) determined in September 2015 that Volkswagen had violated the Clean Air Act by using “defeat devices in the form of computer software, which was designed to cheat on federal emissions testing” in over 590,000 diesel motor cars.
A defeat device is one that disables or disabling the emission control system of a vehicle. These programs basically have the ability to recognize when a vehicle is conducting an emissions test and activate complete emissions controls at that time. The efficiency of such devices is decreased during routine driving.
Who exposed Volkswagen’s deception?
Hemanth Kappanna, a 41-year-old Indian-born engineer employed by General Motors, was recently relieved of his responsibility for liaising with the EPA on the American automaker’s emissions technology. He was only one of about 4,000 GM employees that the business let go as part of a “strategic transition,” as it put it.
He wasn’t just any firm asset, though. Looking into Kappanna’s past reveals that he was a genuine hero who managed to alter the course of automotive history. How? He was in charge of making the world aware of Volkswagen’s emissions crisis.
The incident occurred in 2013, when Kappanna was a member of a small group of engineering students at West Virginia University in Morgantown, a renowned academic institution for its work on car emissions. Kappanna discovered a technique that would later expose the lie that Volkswagen had been telling the world about the emissions from its vehicles while attempting to complete a grant application from the International Council on Clean Transportation that had been given to him by the director of his program.
The university had intended to come up with a method of measuring the emissions of moving automobiles. All of the emission testing were conducted at the time in garages using specialized equipment because it was found to be more simpler than analyzing the emissions from a moving car. For the fieldwork, Marc Besch (Switzerland) and Arvind Thiruvengadam (India), two of Kappanna’s fellow graduating students, were selected.
Did Volkswagen’s CEO have knowledge of the scandal?
German capital, June 9 (Reuters) – Former Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn has been accused by the prosecution of lying to the German parliament when he claimed to be uninformed of the automaker’s deceptive diesel emissions practices before they were made public.
In its largest corporate crisis to date, Volkswagen (VOWG p.DE) is still working to put the scandal behind it after admitting to rigging diesel engine testing in the United States using illegal software. The German automaker has spent over 32 billion euros ($39 billion) on penalties, repairs, and legal fees as a result of the “dieselgate” scandal.
Berlin prosecutors issued a statement on Wednesday confirming an earlier allegation in the newspaper Bild, saying that the accused “falsely claimed in his evidence to have been notified of the defeat devices only in September 2015.”
The prosecutors continued, “According to the indictment, he had been aware since May 2015 that the engine control software of some VW vehicles had been outfitted with a mechanism to alter the exhaust values in testing.”
Winterkorn served as CEO of Volkswagen from 2007 until his departure in 2015, but his spokeswoman did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Late in March, Volkswagen said that it would sue Winterkorn for damages after the executive failed to promptly and fully explain the circumstances surrounding the deployment of illegal software functionalities in select diesel engines. View More
On September 23, 2015, one week after the scandal broke, Winterkorn announced his resignation as CEO.
Who reported Volkswagen to authorities?
The automotive industry was altered by Hemanth Kappanna’s research. However, GM fired the person who revealed Volkswagen’s Dieselgate scandal this year.
In sweltering Bengaluru’s green suburbs, Dr. Hemanth Kappanna, 41, is ready to burn off some calories on this hot midsummer day. “I never played sports. I used to do yoga in the US. I can now run 10 kilometers in one hour, he claims. The former General Motors (GM) employee began endurance training at Cubbon Park, a spit of lush land in the center of the city, after arriving back in India in May of this year.
Kappanna then discusses the events leading up to his abrupt departure from the Detroit-based automaker, where he worked from December 2014 until his participation in a West Virginia University research analyzing engine emissions. “I don’t feel guilty. He says in a phone interview with ETPanache that if he could go back in time, he wouldn’t change a thing. In place of laboratory studies on consumer vehicle engines, Kappanna and his colleagues at West Virginia University (WVU) conducted road tests in 2014 utilizing a portable emission testing system. Their findings paved the door for stricter pollution control standards by upsetting the cozy equilibrium between Big Auto and the regulatory bodies.
VW was dragged into the confessional. German company acknowledged utilizing “defeat devices that diesel automobiles use to tamper with pollution test results. Forbes said that the corporation was had to pay fines totaling more than $25 billion.
In December 2017, Oliver Schmidt, the general manager in charge of VW’s Michigan engineering and environmental division, received a seven-year prison term. Later, some of GM’s own goods were questioned. Just over a year after Schmidt’s imprisonment, on February 4, 2019, Kappanna was let off by GM as part of a restructuring “corporate reorganization
Why did VW fabricate emissions data?
Volkswagen misrepresented the diesel vehicles for years in order to obtain EPA and CARB certifications that permitted the vehicles to be marketed in the U.S. Volkswagen knew that the diesel vehicles would dodge U.S. emissions rules. Volkswagen hesitated until authorities threatened to withdraw approval when EPA and CARB eventually started to catch on.
Who filed suit against Volkswagen?
Approximately 91,000 drivers in England and Wales filed lawsuits against VW and its subsidiaries Audi, Seat, and Skoda with the assistance of multiple law firms.
They asserted, among other things, that VW had misled them regarding the sustainability ratings of their automobiles, which in many cases had an impact on the value of their cars.
The lawsuit was scheduled to go to trial in January 2023 and, according to attorneys, would have been the largest ever filed by a group of customers in the UK.
Volkswagen claimed that while it had not admitted fault, a settlement “was the most reasonable line of action commercially” given the costs of a six-month trial in England.
Has anyone been imprisoned as a result of the Volkswagen scandal?
When he was detained on suspicions connected to the automaker’s diesel-emissions issue, Schmidt served as VW’s point of contact with American regulators.
Oliver Schmidt, a former official of the Volkswagen Group whose arrest in 2017 at the Miami airport made headlines across the world, was freed from prison after serving almost half of his sentence for the charges he faced in the diesel-emissions crisis.
Schmidt was granted parole on Wednesday, according to a decision made by a court in the German city of Lneburg, according to his attorney Alexander Saettele. Schmidt, 52, was given a seven-year sentence by a U.S. court but was allowed to return home in November to complete his sentence there.
Volkswagen is still plagued by the diesel problem that American regulators revealed in September 2015. The biggest automaker in the world has spent at least 32 billion euros ($38.7 billion) manipulating engines to make it appear that they might pass U.S. emissions tests. Disgruntled investor and customer lawsuits are expected to last for years.
When Schmidt was detained at the Miami airport in January 2017 while returning from a trip, he served as VW’s point of contact with American inspectors. Shock waves from his arrest reverberated throughout corporate Germany.
In Germany, prisoners are eligible for release after completing two thirds of their sentence. Although it is uncommon, first-time offenders who have shown good behavior and are thought unlikely to commit crimes again may be given parole after serving only half the sentence.
How long did Volkswagen engage in fraud?
After five years, the Volkswagen emissions-cheating scandal appears to be among the most expensive corporate scandals ever. Just over five years after the scandal began, a new former top Volkswagen official was put on trial, and the case is far from over.
How were Volkswagen seized?
Volkswagen’s reputation is in ruins, it is being hit with hefty fines, and now CEO Martin Winterkorn has resigned.
It accomplished this by using smart software that could recognize when it was being tested and minimize dangerous exhaust so that the cars appeared to comply with regulations even when they did not.
The International Council on Clean Transportation, a clean-air advocacy organization, tested the vehicles independently because it believed they were such an excellent illustration of how diesel might be a clean fuel. This led to the discovery of Volkswagen.
How did Volkswagen become known?
In September 2015, a team of scientists from West Virginia University revealed that the German carmaker had put defeat devices on its “clean diesel” cars. This was the beginning of the Volkswagen emissions cheating scandal, also known as Dieselgate.