I think there's a perception problem here. What the press and VW management has said is that this project was knowingly commissioned by VW's chief engineer. Yes

I think there's a perception problem here. What the press and VW management has said is that this project was knowingly commissioned by VW's chief engineer. Yes, this guy's title is "chief engineer," and he has the bona fides to prove it, but you should focus on the "Chief" part -- he's a C-level executive whose day to day activities and demeanor would be indistinguishable from a CFO or CEO. There's this reflexive reaction on Hacker News that has come up again and again of, "don't blame the engineers, they are just the nerds in the basement hacking the code, some evil management type put them up to it." What we know so far is that the evil management type who put them up to it -- was an engineer. The chief engineer in fact. So, in fact, it's highly likely that "the engineers" designed and implemented this entire scheme without telling anyone else. In my mind, that's an entirely plausible explanation. I'm not an expert on VW corporate structure, but it's entirely possible that the Compliance/Quality departments report into the Chief Engineer. They do at other companies where I have worked. If that's the case, then they could have been in on the job and it wouldn't have changed the fact that "Engineering" was responsible for this implementation.