> He would know why. Though he may not understand the technical details of why." He would know why they are getting better results. "Oh, we tweaked the firmware

> He would know why. Though he may not understand the technical details of why." He would know why they are getting better results. "Oh, we tweaked the firmware and now we're in compliance." Yes, precisely my point. If he knew that they "tweaked the firmware" well there's a million ways to do that legally and to be in compliance. And there seem to be a few ways you can do it illegally too, and no be in compliance. The claim he made was "He has said publicly that he is not aware of any wrong-doing on his part." And that's technically true! Hiring someone who punches another employee reflects poorly on you, but that doesn't make the punch your fault. So hiring someone who hired someone who hired someone who told a programmer to come up with a "cheat mode" hardly makes the CEO directly responsible. He is responsible through the chain of command, but not because of direct knowledge. Finally, please remember that emissions are incredibly complex and it's entirely possible that someday someone will discover a way to get great mileage with low NOx emissions. Maybe it's pulsed injection, maybe it's having more fuel injectors, maybe it's even higher pressures, maybe it's who knows what. So just because you're getting numbers that are better than your competitors doesn't automatically mean that the people in your company must be cheating and that they need to be found out. It's entirely likely that they just did something clever!