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VW engineer pleads guilty to diesel emissions scandal

187 points by oxryly1 10y ago

criddell 10y ago
If Mr. Liang is a P.Eng., I hope he loses his license. There should be a bunch of Engineers losing their licenses.
- scrumper 10y ago
  There should be some executives losing their jobs and freedom, if this guy is pleading guilty to several felonies. He wasn't acting on his own initiative.
  - sliverstorm 10y ago
    That's why I'm a little crestfallen that an engineer was first to be charged. By all means, charge the guilty & complicit, but I'm apprehensive the order could aide the narrative VW's execs tried to spin at first ('This company-wide scandal was clearly the work of exactly one rouge engineer') and help them get out scot-free.
    - beachstartup 10y ago
      most likely they are going after this like a drug dealing or racketeering outfit, from the bottom up, using plea bargain testimony to make the path easier as they go. but if not, yeah, this would be a farcical miscarriage of justice if a bunch of engineers end up taking the fall for this.
    - kuschku 10y ago
      "Engineer" at VW doesn’t mean he wasn’t in a managing position – VW almost exclusively promotes their engineers to managers, and rarely ever hires external talent.
      - jessaustin 10y ago
        ISTM this policy could ensure that no experienced engineer or manager whose time at other firms taught her to scrupulously follow the law and expect the same of colleagues, could join the team and expose their ongoing schemes. It's kind of like how the mafia works. One doesn't get "made" without a half a dozen murders to one's name, to discourage defection. When a young engineer starts at VW, she wouldn't be shown the truly evil shit, but she might be encouraged to cut a few ethical corners. Once she's done that a few times, they own her.
        kuschku 10y ago
        On the other hand, it ensures the managers, up to the CEO, actually understand what they're talking about. No more dealing with managers not understanding anything about what they manage. Doing this — only promoting your oen engineers to managers — improves efficiency by many times. And the story of VW in the US started with the EPA violating the law and discriminating against VW for a few years, after which most likely even experienced talent would say "if they break the law to keep us out and protect their local industry, let's break the same law to get us in". (Read more about this in the SPIEGEL).
    - pavel_lishin 10y ago
      > James Robert Liang, leader of diesel competence for VW from 2008 until June This isn't a guy quietly tinkering with hardware or writing code in a cubicle; he was in a leadership position. Seems to me, though, they should be charging people above and below him, as long as it can be proven that they knowingly assisted in this.
  - jasonkostempski 10y ago
    Just to play devil's advocate, maybe the requirements really are way over the line. In that case I wouldn't hold any grudges. Just because something is classified a felony doesn't mean it's morally wrong. Edit: To clarify, I'm not suggesting this guy taking the dive for the execs is ok, just that someone lying about emission test results may not be as horrible as they're trying to make it sound.
    - ArkyBeagle 10y ago
      He signed up to be accountable for this. It's a way. http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0535/6917/products/mistakesdemotivator.jpeg?v=1416776264 http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0535/6917/products/mistakes...
    - pavel_lishin 10y ago
      I'd say that causing 11 million cars to spew pollution into the atmosphere against regulations is fairly repugnant from a moral perspective. It's not different than him going around the back of a chemical plant that produces toxic byproducts, and opening a valve that releases toxins into a river when he knows the inspectors aren't watching. edit: actually saw the number of cars.
      - toast0 10y ago
        Regarding emissions, it's a tradeoff: increased engine temperature increases NOx emissions, but also increases fuel economy, decreasing carbon emissions. I was unable to quickly find a consensus on which type of emission is worse or how to weigh one versus another. Regarding regulatory compliance, defeat devices are clearly unacceptable; if the regulated requirements are considered inappropriate for whatever reason, they should be challenged through political or legal process, not by detecting test conditions and altering behavior.
    - e28eta 10y ago
      I don't think it's that VW can't meet the requirements, it's that they don't think it'll be as commercially successful. I think it's the tension between emissions requirements and customer demand for powerful vehicles. As allowable emissions decrease over the years, which automaker will be successful shipping a vehicle that has less power than the previous model? And that's the whole reason for emissions requirements, left to their own devices, automakers and customers weren't getting it done.
  - SwellJoe 10y ago
    It's almost always the little guys who take the fall. The banking crisis resulted in very few criminal charges...a lot of lower level employees lost their jobs and otherwise faced consequences, while the executives continued on as though nothing happened (they maybe took somewhat smaller bonuses that year, and acted chastened by the whole sordid affair, of course). I suspect it'll be the same, though at least the CEO resigned over this. I'm sure Winterkorn remains a multimillionaire, and will continue to enjoy his freedom and lack of criminal record.
  - slavik81 10y ago
    The CEO of Volkswagen international, the President of the US division and the heads of R&D for Audi and Porsche were fired/resigned almost immediately. Some of them were reported as engineers, because some of them were engineers. Engineer and executive are not mutually exclusive titles. As for this guy, I'm having trouble finding more details, but as "Leader of Diesel Competence", he may very well be the technical manager directly in charge of the design of the engines.
  - criddell 10y ago
    I'm not saying only Liang should be punished, but the guy has no upheld is professional obligations and so he should not be allowed to work as an Engineer any longer.
- wsh 10y ago
  In California, Michigan, and most other U.S. states, engineers who work for companies as product designers have a so-called “industrial exemption”: they are not required by law to be licensed, or indeed to have professional qualifications of any kind. (See, for example, Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code § 6747 and Mich. Comp. Laws § 339.2012.)
ardacinar 10y ago
Something away from the scandal itself, non-American here and I don't get plea deals. I mean, normally, a trial can result in acquittal even if the defendant admits their guilt if there's very strong objective evidence(DNA records etc.) disproving it. There has existed previous cases where some new evidence surfaced years after a plea deal and the defendant, previously found guilty, was released. So, why does a plea deal result in no trial at all? Shouldn't there be an, even very hastened, trial even if the defendant pleads guilty? That seems to be result if we only consider the American Justice System and Logic.
- jedmeyers 10y ago
  A judge has to approve the plea deal, so usually this is a kind of a very hastened trial. Unfortunately sometimes it boils down to the rubber stamping.
- Afforess 10y ago
  Plea bargaining is the modern equivalent to medieval tortured confessions. There is no incentive to look too closely. http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4154&context=uclrev http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic...
- ArkyBeagle 10y ago
  The defendant has the option of pursuing a trial. If the defendant loses the trial, there is usually a more severe sentence. The justice system in the US is "adversarial." The product of the process is the verdict. Any official information entered into the public record is a side product, not a primary. In cases where a prosecutor thinks the public information is more important, they have the option of not pursuing a deal.
- 4yt23623576 10y ago
  If you ask someone involved in the court system, they will tell you that plea deals are actually vital within the current court system. The judiciary is, in general, so underfunded in many jurisdictions that it would be simply impossible to try every case. Plea deals lessen the burden on the courts. Obviously, this shouldn't be seen as a defense of plea deals, merely an explanation of one of the incentives that currently exist for them. Properly funding our court systems would remove this incentive.
jobu 10y ago
Last year, the Justice Department implemented new guidelines that call for linking individual accountability as part of corporate investigations. It's ridiculous that this is only being done now - everyone in the US has been screaming for it since the financial crisis in 2007-08.
- mtgx 10y ago
  And now they only have to find a fall guy and ensure his family is well off after he goes to prison. In this case, three DAs have already found that top execs (and more) were implicated: > "This cover-up was deep, wide and long-lasting. It extended from front-line engineers throughout the corner offices ... and right into the CEO suites," Schneiderman said, adding that the "toxic corporate culture that produced this fraud must be stopped." http://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkwsagen-emissions-idUSKCN0ZZ1X3 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkwsagen-emissions-idUSK...
amelius 10y ago
How much did he get paid for this plea?
pweissbrod 10y ago
Given the minimal information in this article you cant help but wonder if this is a blatant attempt at designating someone to take the fall for a larger conspiracy, or if higher-level indictments are on the way. At a company like VW decisions like this are never made at the engineering level.
- superuser2 10y ago
  >decisions like this are never made at the engineering level. True, but the law has long held an obligation to "fall on your sword" disobeying illegal orders, even if it comes at great personal cost. See the lack of success of the "just following orders" defense at the Nuremberg trials.
  - kstenerud 10y ago
    That only happens if you lose a war.
  - callesgg 10y ago
    With that logic you can blame a sales man for selling the car to a customer who planed to drive it in the US. There is a undefined line between following orders and following the law. The sales man does not know that it is illegal to sell the car. It is his own responsibility to not commit crimes. To not commit crimes one must know the definition of what a crime is. That definition can be found in the law book. In the Law book one can find that the car in question is illegal to sell. It would be very hard for him to find that information but it is still his responsibility.
    - lallysingh 10y ago
      Selling something you didn't know was illegally polluting is a large distance away, legally, from designing the system specifically designed to break the law.
    - mulmen 10y ago
      Do you really think VW salespeople should go to jail for this? Should salespeople do their own emissions testing? Should they all buy multiple versions of the same car and crash it to see if it's really safe? How does that system work? VW has a clear set of emissions rules to follow because they build the cars, why should the salespeople be on the hook? This isn't Tesla, VW salespeople don't even work for VW.
post_break 10y ago
Interesting to see the 2014 software update to try and hide the defeat software.
macns 10y ago
"Defeat device" they called it, not sure if they realized or ever will what it was they were defeating: "We must be sure to prevent the authority from testing the Gen 1," the indictment said an employee wrote in German. "If Gen 1 goes onto the roller at the CARB, then we'll have nothing more to laugh about!!!!!"[1] [1]same story from reuters.com: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-emissions-idUSKCN11F234 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-emissions-idUSK...
TallGuyShort 10y ago
This feels a bit like the guy on Better Off Ted who always gets paid to admit fault, claim he has a drug problem, and then go to rehab so the company can move on blame-free.
- legitster 10y ago
  Dr. Bamba! That show was so spot on for corporate culture.
  - TallGuyShort 10y ago
    "With a mouse, people! Now that's rock bottom..."
- dexterdog 10y ago
  Or the professional inmate hired by Walt in Breaking Bad.
jpenninkhof 10y ago
If you're a cheating banker, you have nothing to fear, but if you're an engineer you will go to jail.
- sitkack 10y ago
  Launder money for the drug cartels and all you have to do is pay a fine.
- erikb 10y ago
  Probably even if you were not involved in the decision making at all.
WheelsAtLarge 10y ago
Really, the engineer is the fall guy. Yes he's at fault but what kind of QA system does a billion dollar car company have that one person carried on a sham for decades. No way he was alone! Top management needs to be grilled on what really happened. At the very least the VP of the division that manged the emission controls for the company needs to be charged with some felony. I bet that If he would have said something early on he would have been called a hero. Now he's a felon. This is a real learning moment for us techies. If you see something illegal, report it to the proper authorities and run don't walk out of the company. Companies will find a scapegoat to blame. "Hey you seem like a good choice as any," be ready for it.
- SilasX 10y ago
  Note that this is also an American employee, and there is certainly still blame to assign at the head offices in Germany, to both technical employees and upper management. Figure I might as well ask it here: how does it happen in Germany? If you go on reddit, you get inundated every day with tales of how strong their unions and labor protections are, and how seriously they take professional ethics and accreditation. Why didn't they feel they had the power to object to a plan like this? Edit: I stand corrected; the DoJ release says he was working in Germany and so should have been covered by those protections: "According to the plea agreement, from 1983 until May 2008, Liang was an employee of Volkswagen AG (VW), working in its diesel development department in Wolfsburg, Germany." https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/volkswagen-engineer-pleads-guilty-his-role-conspiracy-cheat-us-emissions-tests https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/volkswagen-engineer-pleads-gu...
  - WheelsAtLarge 10y ago
    I suspect why it all happened is that emissions are invisible for the most part so it's easy to not see it as a big deal. It's just regulations getting in the way. The reality is that people's health are effected by the emissions now and for some time to come. I bet early deaths can be attributed to the extra pollution these cars put out and all of it could have been avoided.
  - ricw 10y ago
legitster 10y ago
I imagine executives are technically innocent, in that they gave engineers very specific requirements within certain parameters, and asked them to get it done by any means necessary. And then the executives were more than happy to be kept in the dark about how it was done. I can't imagine that the executives would have even been technically competent to understand what had happened. But they also created a dead end set of objectives for the engineers to carry out, and no avenue for realism to work its way back up the channel.
- Gibbon1 10y ago
  Yep, make it clear the employees have to either break the law or be fired. See recent Wells Fargo scandal
- germanier 10y ago
  Pretty much every VW executive in a technical area (including the CEO) is an engineer by training.
aresant 10y ago
This guy isn't the "fall guy" or just a poor engineer hung out to try instead of an exec, he deserves to go to prison based on the material facts of his plea: 1) He was the central figure in engineering the device. 2) He understood exactly what he was doing and made repeated efforts to perpetuate the lie to the government and EPA. 3) He led efforts to damage control and roll out an update to consumers under the guise of improved performance, but really to cover his own ass when the software got stuck in "testing mode" and deteriorated engine components. 4) He lied to the US government when confronted and led efforts with conspirators to bury. I am going to guess that his relatively short 5-year plea also comes at the price of turning state's evidence on his often mention "co-conspirators". I'd say it's probably a little preliminary for us to assume that only a single engineer is going to wind up behind bars for this, just because he's first in doesn't mean he's last out! More data here: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/volkswagen-engineer-pleads-guilty-his-role-conspiracy-cheat-us-emissions-tests https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/volkswagen-engineer-pleads-gu...
- bsder 10y ago
  > This guy isn't the "fall guy" or just a poor engineer hung out to try instead of an exec, he deserves to go to prison based on the material facts of his plea: Um, yeah, that case is so good that they needed a plea bargain ... um ... sure. I really don't understand why this guy is signing a plea deal. This is a classic example of a case complicated enough that the jurors would almost certainly be unable to come to "beyond a reasonable doubt" (the standard for criminal charges in the US). I wonder what's really going on.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > Um, yeah, that case is so good that they needed a plea bargain Even with a slam dunk, prosecutors usually prefer a plea bargain. They have limited budgets, trials are expensive, and if you can get a guilty plea with an agreement on an acceptable sentence and get the defendant and a judge to sign off without the time and expense of a trial, that's a big win. (And, if they were likely to lose at trial, its also a big win for the defendant where they aren't indigent and are paying for the defense out of their own pocket -- a plea deal is cheaper than a trial, and may get them a substantially better outcome in sentencing.)
trhway 10y ago
It is hard to imagine that a large number of reasonable tech and business people would do it that blatantly for so long. After all it isn't Mafia nor government nor banks. I wonder whether it was done as some temporary "fix" back then, just to meet schedule/KPIs/etc., which just naturally became a "feature".
- DugFin 10y ago
  The way I see it, they probably did it somewhat incrementally. To some degree, they've ALWAYS programmed the ECUs "to the test", because isn't that basically what the authorities want? A system that meets standards X, Y, and Z, as verified by a test of X, Y, and Z? What got them into trouble was the fact that ECUs became more and more sophisticated, allowing them to gradually isolate X, Y, and Z into ever-shrinking "islands" of compliance. It was tolerated for so long that both engineering and management probably became accustomed to cheating the test to some degree, so when the standards became even more stringent, they basically saw nothing wrong with creating a special "clean" ECU profile narrowly tailored to the specific parameters of the test procedure. Granted, they knew they were cheating, but I think when you're inside the corporate bubble and everyone's operating on the premise that cheating has always been tolerated on the test, it becomes harder to be the guy that says "this is too much".
  - trhway 10y ago
    Reminds about that GPU performance tests story of Nvidia if I remember correctly.
alistairSH 10y ago
I'm glad criminal charges are being filed here. But, I do have to wonder why none for GM (ignition switch cover-up) or Takata (deadly airbags).
robotcookies 10y ago
Boy, If I were a high paid executive deliberately cheating on diesel emissions tests, the first thing I'd do is open a position called "leader of diesel competence" to take the heat should I get caught. What a ridiculous title and obviously shows the malicious intent of VWs management. Yes, the engineer deserves to go to prison because he pulled the trigger. But his boss deserves just as much if not more prison time.
yitchelle 10y ago
You know what is rather strange. Germany, the home country of VW, has been very quiet when compared to the US and other countries. One one hand, I think that they want to limit the damage. VW is one of the pillars the German economy. On the other hand, VW did admit to breaking the law and the appropriate penalty must be given.
- Reason077 10y ago
  Vehicle emissions standards in Europe are much weaker than those in the US. Even though a "defeat device" is technically against the rules, it seems unlikely that there will actually be fines or penalties for it. There isn't any environmental regulator in Europe with the same kind of powers that the EPA and CARB have. Legal action in Europe against VW looks more likely to be from the consumer protection angle. That is, customers were mid-sold vehicles that claimed to be compliant with emissions limits but in fact are not.
B1FF_PSUVM 10y ago
If I were a German engineer, I'd be more than a tad miffed at the executives who are flushing down the drain the reputation earned by over a century of unparalleled excellence. Oh well. Sic transit. "German engineering!" "Ah, ah, ah. The VW kind?" Sad.
draw_down 10y ago
It's good that we caught the one single person responsible for this scandal. Yep.
readhn 10y ago
Haha. Politics as usual. They really want us to believe an engineer was the mastermind of this scandal? An engineer can't make these decisions without approval from above. Is pathetic. Execs should go to jail or lose their jobs and pay multi-million dollar fines at the very least. But guess what's gonna happen? They will be discussing this as a bad dream when they meet up on a skiing trip in Swiss alps next winter.
- kuschku 10y ago
  The director of the entire diesel department signs a plea deal, and you complain that no higher ups are indicted? He wasn’t just an engineer, he was also a manager.
  - readhn 10y ago
    Are you telling me that there is just this single person in the entire multi billion dollar company that could make this kind of decision without top execs knowledge that screws up the whole business operation and that there are no checks and balances in place? If this is the case and top execs really had no clue - they all must go as they clearly have no idea whats going on and how to run a company.
known 10y ago
"Behind every great fortune there is a crime." --Honore de Balzac
intrasight 10y ago
I seriously doubt this guy will serve jail time. I'm not saying that I think that he shouldn't, or that he should. It's just rare for white-collar criminals to serve time here.
Ace17 10y ago
How many engineers with a similar position are there in the car industry? Does clean air depends on none of them misbehaving? Either this guy is the "fall guy", or the whole system is very fragile.
- tocf 10y ago
  The competition must have known that VW was cheating, yet not one "competitor" called them out on it. The whole thing is a systemic failure. Regulations don't work. Regulators are generally lousy at their jobs (if they aren't working for the regulatees, they will be - I'm talking about the top regulators, mind you). The "free market" failed, because if everyone is cheating no one is cheating. It's time we start working on a replacement, because what we've got now is busted.
elejsa 10y ago
Hey, buzzard, are you cloth-eared? Come on, look at hotchas here http://u.to/ceg3Dw http://u.to/ceg3Dw
tonyjstark 10y ago
I did a small software project as a contractor for VW and it was just a mobile app, not integrated in the car. The hassle we had to go though was immense, it actually went up for decisions 2 levels below CEO. So I don't believe he is the only one or even the main responsible guy. I hope this is not the end with trials for VW executives.

187 points by oxryly1 10y ago

criddell 10y ago

If Mr. Liang is a P.Eng., I hope he loses his license. There should be a bunch of Engineers losing their licenses.

scrumper 10y ago
There should be some executives losing their jobs and freedom, if this guy is pleading guilty to several felonies. He wasn't acting on his own initiative.
- sliverstorm 10y ago
  That's why I'm a little crestfallen that an engineer was first to be charged. By all means, charge the guilty & complicit, but I'm apprehensive the order could aide the narrative VW's execs tried to spin at first ('This company-wide scandal was clearly the work of exactly one rouge engineer') and help them get out scot-free.
  - beachstartup 10y ago
    most likely they are going after this like a drug dealing or racketeering outfit, from the bottom up, using plea bargain testimony to make the path easier as they go. but if not, yeah, this would be a farcical miscarriage of justice if a bunch of engineers end up taking the fall for this.
  - kuschku 10y ago
    "Engineer" at VW doesn’t mean he wasn’t in a managing position – VW almost exclusively promotes their engineers to managers, and rarely ever hires external talent.
    - jessaustin 10y ago
      ISTM this policy could ensure that no experienced engineer or manager whose time at other firms taught her to scrupulously follow the law and expect the same of colleagues, could join the team and expose their ongoing schemes. It's kind of like how the mafia works. One doesn't get "made" without a half a dozen murders to one's name, to discourage defection. When a young engineer starts at VW, she wouldn't be shown the truly evil shit, but she might be encouraged to cut a few ethical corners. Once she's done that a few times, they own her.
      - kuschku 10y ago
        On the other hand, it ensures the managers, up to the CEO, actually understand what they're talking about. No more dealing with managers not understanding anything about what they manage. Doing this — only promoting your oen engineers to managers — improves efficiency by many times. And the story of VW in the US started with the EPA violating the law and discriminating against VW for a few years, after which most likely even experienced talent would say "if they break the law to keep us out and protect their local industry, let's break the same law to get us in". (Read more about this in the SPIEGEL).
  - pavel_lishin 10y ago
    > James Robert Liang, leader of diesel competence for VW from 2008 until June This isn't a guy quietly tinkering with hardware or writing code in a cubicle; he was in a leadership position. Seems to me, though, they should be charging people above and below him, as long as it can be proven that they knowingly assisted in this.
- jasonkostempski 10y ago
  Just to play devil's advocate, maybe the requirements really are way over the line. In that case I wouldn't hold any grudges. Just because something is classified a felony doesn't mean it's morally wrong. Edit: To clarify, I'm not suggesting this guy taking the dive for the execs is ok, just that someone lying about emission test results may not be as horrible as they're trying to make it sound.
  - ArkyBeagle 10y ago
    He signed up to be accountable for this. It's a way. http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0535/6917/products/mistakesdemotivator.jpeg?v=1416776264 http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0535/6917/products/mistakes...
  - pavel_lishin 10y ago
    I'd say that causing 11 million cars to spew pollution into the atmosphere against regulations is fairly repugnant from a moral perspective. It's not different than him going around the back of a chemical plant that produces toxic byproducts, and opening a valve that releases toxins into a river when he knows the inspectors aren't watching. edit: actually saw the number of cars.
    - toast0 10y ago
      Regarding emissions, it's a tradeoff: increased engine temperature increases NOx emissions, but also increases fuel economy, decreasing carbon emissions. I was unable to quickly find a consensus on which type of emission is worse or how to weigh one versus another. Regarding regulatory compliance, defeat devices are clearly unacceptable; if the regulated requirements are considered inappropriate for whatever reason, they should be challenged through political or legal process, not by detecting test conditions and altering behavior.
  - e28eta 10y ago
    I don't think it's that VW can't meet the requirements, it's that they don't think it'll be as commercially successful. I think it's the tension between emissions requirements and customer demand for powerful vehicles. As allowable emissions decrease over the years, which automaker will be successful shipping a vehicle that has less power than the previous model? And that's the whole reason for emissions requirements, left to their own devices, automakers and customers weren't getting it done.
- SwellJoe 10y ago
  It's almost always the little guys who take the fall. The banking crisis resulted in very few criminal charges...a lot of lower level employees lost their jobs and otherwise faced consequences, while the executives continued on as though nothing happened (they maybe took somewhat smaller bonuses that year, and acted chastened by the whole sordid affair, of course). I suspect it'll be the same, though at least the CEO resigned over this. I'm sure Winterkorn remains a multimillionaire, and will continue to enjoy his freedom and lack of criminal record.
- slavik81 10y ago
  The CEO of Volkswagen international, the President of the US division and the heads of R&D for Audi and Porsche were fired/resigned almost immediately. Some of them were reported as engineers, because some of them were engineers. Engineer and executive are not mutually exclusive titles. As for this guy, I'm having trouble finding more details, but as "Leader of Diesel Competence", he may very well be the technical manager directly in charge of the design of the engines.
- criddell 10y ago
  I'm not saying only Liang should be punished, but the guy has no upheld is professional obligations and so he should not be allowed to work as an Engineer any longer.
wsh 10y ago
In California, Michigan, and most other U.S. states, engineers who work for companies as product designers have a so-called “industrial exemption”: they are not required by law to be licensed, or indeed to have professional qualifications of any kind. (See, for example, Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code § 6747 and Mich. Comp. Laws § 339.2012.)

ardacinar 10y ago

Something away from the scandal itself, non-American here and I don't get plea deals. I mean, normally, a trial can result in acquittal even if the defendant admits their guilt if there's very strong objective evidence(DNA records etc.) disproving it. There has existed previous cases where some new evidence surfaced years after a plea deal and the defendant, previously found guilty, was released. So, why does a plea deal result in no trial at all? Shouldn't there be an, even very hastened, trial even if the defendant pleads guilty? That seems to be result if we only consider the American Justice System and Logic.

jedmeyers 10y ago
A judge has to approve the plea deal, so usually this is a kind of a very hastened trial. Unfortunately sometimes it boils down to the rubber stamping.
Afforess 10y ago
Plea bargaining is the modern equivalent to medieval tortured confessions. There is no incentive to look too closely. http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4154&context=uclrev http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic...
ArkyBeagle 10y ago
The defendant has the option of pursuing a trial. If the defendant loses the trial, there is usually a more severe sentence. The justice system in the US is "adversarial." The product of the process is the verdict. Any official information entered into the public record is a side product, not a primary. In cases where a prosecutor thinks the public information is more important, they have the option of not pursuing a deal.
4yt23623576 10y ago
If you ask someone involved in the court system, they will tell you that plea deals are actually vital within the current court system. The judiciary is, in general, so underfunded in many jurisdictions that it would be simply impossible to try every case. Plea deals lessen the burden on the courts. Obviously, this shouldn't be seen as a defense of plea deals, merely an explanation of one of the incentives that currently exist for them. Properly funding our court systems would remove this incentive.

jobu 10y ago

Last year, the Justice Department implemented new guidelines that call for linking individual accountability as part of corporate investigations. It's ridiculous that this is only being done now - everyone in the US has been screaming for it since the financial crisis in 2007-08.

mtgx 10y ago
And now they only have to find a fall guy and ensure his family is well off after he goes to prison. In this case, three DAs have already found that top execs (and more) were implicated: > "This cover-up was deep, wide and long-lasting. It extended from front-line engineers throughout the corner offices ... and right into the CEO suites," Schneiderman said, adding that the "toxic corporate culture that produced this fraud must be stopped." http://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkwsagen-emissions-idUSKCN0ZZ1X3 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkwsagen-emissions-idUSK...

amelius 10y ago

How much did he get paid for this plea?

pweissbrod 10y ago

Given the minimal information in this article you cant help but wonder if this is a blatant attempt at designating someone to take the fall for a larger conspiracy, or if higher-level indictments are on the way. At a company like VW decisions like this are never made at the engineering level.

superuser2 10y ago
>decisions like this are never made at the engineering level. True, but the law has long held an obligation to "fall on your sword" disobeying illegal orders, even if it comes at great personal cost. See the lack of success of the "just following orders" defense at the Nuremberg trials.
- kstenerud 10y ago
  That only happens if you lose a war.
- callesgg 10y ago
  With that logic you can blame a sales man for selling the car to a customer who planed to drive it in the US. There is a undefined line between following orders and following the law. The sales man does not know that it is illegal to sell the car. It is his own responsibility to not commit crimes. To not commit crimes one must know the definition of what a crime is. That definition can be found in the law book. In the Law book one can find that the car in question is illegal to sell. It would be very hard for him to find that information but it is still his responsibility.
  - lallysingh 10y ago
    Selling something you didn't know was illegally polluting is a large distance away, legally, from designing the system specifically designed to break the law.
  - mulmen 10y ago
    Do you really think VW salespeople should go to jail for this? Should salespeople do their own emissions testing? Should they all buy multiple versions of the same car and crash it to see if it's really safe? How does that system work? VW has a clear set of emissions rules to follow because they build the cars, why should the salespeople be on the hook? This isn't Tesla, VW salespeople don't even work for VW.

post_break 10y ago

Interesting to see the 2014 software update to try and hide the defeat software.

macns 10y ago

"Defeat device" they called it, not sure if they realized or ever will what it was they were defeating: "We must be sure to prevent the authority from testing the Gen 1," the indictment said an employee wrote in German. "If Gen 1 goes onto the roller at the CARB, then we'll have nothing more to laugh about!!!!!"[1] [1]same story from reuters.com: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-emissions-idUSKCN11F234 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-emissions-idUSK...

TallGuyShort 10y ago

This feels a bit like the guy on Better Off Ted who always gets paid to admit fault, claim he has a drug problem, and then go to rehab so the company can move on blame-free.

legitster 10y ago
Dr. Bamba! That show was so spot on for corporate culture.
- TallGuyShort 10y ago
  "With a mouse, people! Now that's rock bottom..."
dexterdog 10y ago
Or the professional inmate hired by Walt in Breaking Bad.

jpenninkhof 10y ago

If you're a cheating banker, you have nothing to fear, but if you're an engineer you will go to jail.

sitkack 10y ago
Launder money for the drug cartels and all you have to do is pay a fine.
erikb 10y ago
Probably even if you were not involved in the decision making at all.

WheelsAtLarge 10y ago

Really, the engineer is the fall guy. Yes he's at fault but what kind of QA system does a billion dollar car company have that one person carried on a sham for decades. No way he was alone! Top management needs to be grilled on what really happened. At the very least the VP of the division that manged the emission controls for the company needs to be charged with some felony. I bet that If he would have said something early on he would have been called a hero. Now he's a felon. This is a real learning moment for us techies. If you see something illegal, report it to the proper authorities and run don't walk out of the company. Companies will find a scapegoat to blame. "Hey you seem like a good choice as any," be ready for it.

SilasX 10y ago
Note that this is also an American employee, and there is certainly still blame to assign at the head offices in Germany, to both technical employees and upper management. Figure I might as well ask it here: how does it happen in Germany? If you go on reddit, you get inundated every day with tales of how strong their unions and labor protections are, and how seriously they take professional ethics and accreditation. Why didn't they feel they had the power to object to a plan like this? Edit: I stand corrected; the DoJ release says he was working in Germany and so should have been covered by those protections: "According to the plea agreement, from 1983 until May 2008, Liang was an employee of Volkswagen AG (VW), working in its diesel development department in Wolfsburg, Germany." https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/volkswagen-engineer-pleads-guilty-his-role-conspiracy-cheat-us-emissions-tests https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/volkswagen-engineer-pleads-gu...
- WheelsAtLarge 10y ago
  I suspect why it all happened is that emissions are invisible for the most part so it's easy to not see it as a big deal. It's just regulations getting in the way. The reality is that people's health are effected by the emissions now and for some time to come. I bet early deaths can be attributed to the extra pollution these cars put out and all of it could have been avoided.
- ricw 10y ago

legitster 10y ago

I imagine executives are technically innocent, in that they gave engineers very specific requirements within certain parameters, and asked them to get it done by any means necessary. And then the executives were more than happy to be kept in the dark about how it was done. I can't imagine that the executives would have even been technically competent to understand what had happened. But they also created a dead end set of objectives for the engineers to carry out, and no avenue for realism to work its way back up the channel.

Gibbon1 10y ago
Yep, make it clear the employees have to either break the law or be fired. See recent Wells Fargo scandal
germanier 10y ago
Pretty much every VW executive in a technical area (including the CEO) is an engineer by training.

aresant 10y ago

This guy isn't the "fall guy" or just a poor engineer hung out to try instead of an exec, he deserves to go to prison based on the material facts of his plea: 1) He was the central figure in engineering the device. 2) He understood exactly what he was doing and made repeated efforts to perpetuate the lie to the government and EPA. 3) He led efforts to damage control and roll out an update to consumers under the guise of improved performance, but really to cover his own ass when the software got stuck in "testing mode" and deteriorated engine components. 4) He lied to the US government when confronted and led efforts with conspirators to bury. I am going to guess that his relatively short 5-year plea also comes at the price of turning state's evidence on his often mention "co-conspirators". I'd say it's probably a little preliminary for us to assume that only a single engineer is going to wind up behind bars for this, just because he's first in doesn't mean he's last out! More data here: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/volkswagen-engineer-pleads-guilty-his-role-conspiracy-cheat-us-emissions-tests https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/volkswagen-engineer-pleads-gu...

bsder 10y ago
> This guy isn't the "fall guy" or just a poor engineer hung out to try instead of an exec, he deserves to go to prison based on the material facts of his plea: Um, yeah, that case is so good that they needed a plea bargain ... um ... sure. I really don't understand why this guy is signing a plea deal. This is a classic example of a case complicated enough that the jurors would almost certainly be unable to come to "beyond a reasonable doubt" (the standard for criminal charges in the US). I wonder what's really going on.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > Um, yeah, that case is so good that they needed a plea bargain Even with a slam dunk, prosecutors usually prefer a plea bargain. They have limited budgets, trials are expensive, and if you can get a guilty plea with an agreement on an acceptable sentence and get the defendant and a judge to sign off without the time and expense of a trial, that's a big win. (And, if they were likely to lose at trial, its also a big win for the defendant where they aren't indigent and are paying for the defense out of their own pocket -- a plea deal is cheaper than a trial, and may get them a substantially better outcome in sentencing.)

trhway 10y ago

It is hard to imagine that a large number of reasonable tech and business people would do it that blatantly for so long. After all it isn't Mafia nor government nor banks. I wonder whether it was done as some temporary "fix" back then, just to meet schedule/KPIs/etc., which just naturally became a "feature".

DugFin 10y ago
The way I see it, they probably did it somewhat incrementally. To some degree, they've ALWAYS programmed the ECUs "to the test", because isn't that basically what the authorities want? A system that meets standards X, Y, and Z, as verified by a test of X, Y, and Z? What got them into trouble was the fact that ECUs became more and more sophisticated, allowing them to gradually isolate X, Y, and Z into ever-shrinking "islands" of compliance. It was tolerated for so long that both engineering and management probably became accustomed to cheating the test to some degree, so when the standards became even more stringent, they basically saw nothing wrong with creating a special "clean" ECU profile narrowly tailored to the specific parameters of the test procedure. Granted, they knew they were cheating, but I think when you're inside the corporate bubble and everyone's operating on the premise that cheating has always been tolerated on the test, it becomes harder to be the guy that says "this is too much".
- trhway 10y ago
  Reminds about that GPU performance tests story of Nvidia if I remember correctly.

alistairSH 10y ago

I'm glad criminal charges are being filed here. But, I do have to wonder why none for GM (ignition switch cover-up) or Takata (deadly airbags).

robotcookies 10y ago

Boy, If I were a high paid executive deliberately cheating on diesel emissions tests, the first thing I'd do is open a position called "leader of diesel competence" to take the heat should I get caught. What a ridiculous title and obviously shows the malicious intent of VWs management. Yes, the engineer deserves to go to prison because he pulled the trigger. But his boss deserves just as much if not more prison time.

yitchelle 10y ago

You know what is rather strange. Germany, the home country of VW, has been very quiet when compared to the US and other countries. One one hand, I think that they want to limit the damage. VW is one of the pillars the German economy. On the other hand, VW did admit to breaking the law and the appropriate penalty must be given.

Reason077 10y ago
Vehicle emissions standards in Europe are much weaker than those in the US. Even though a "defeat device" is technically against the rules, it seems unlikely that there will actually be fines or penalties for it. There isn't any environmental regulator in Europe with the same kind of powers that the EPA and CARB have. Legal action in Europe against VW looks more likely to be from the consumer protection angle. That is, customers were mid-sold vehicles that claimed to be compliant with emissions limits but in fact are not.

B1FF_PSUVM 10y ago

If I were a German engineer, I'd be more than a tad miffed at the executives who are flushing down the drain the reputation earned by over a century of unparalleled excellence. Oh well. Sic transit. "German engineering!" "Ah, ah, ah. The VW kind?" Sad.

draw_down 10y ago

It's good that we caught the one single person responsible for this scandal. Yep.

readhn 10y ago

Haha. Politics as usual. They really want us to believe an engineer was the mastermind of this scandal? An engineer can't make these decisions without approval from above. Is pathetic. Execs should go to jail or lose their jobs and pay multi-million dollar fines at the very least. But guess what's gonna happen? They will be discussing this as a bad dream when they meet up on a skiing trip in Swiss alps next winter.

kuschku 10y ago
The director of the entire diesel department signs a plea deal, and you complain that no higher ups are indicted? He wasn’t just an engineer, he was also a manager.
- readhn 10y ago
  Are you telling me that there is just this single person in the entire multi billion dollar company that could make this kind of decision without top execs knowledge that screws up the whole business operation and that there are no checks and balances in place? If this is the case and top execs really had no clue - they all must go as they clearly have no idea whats going on and how to run a company.

known 10y ago

"Behind every great fortune there is a crime." --Honore de Balzac

intrasight 10y ago

I seriously doubt this guy will serve jail time. I'm not saying that I think that he shouldn't, or that he should. It's just rare for white-collar criminals to serve time here.

Ace17 10y ago

How many engineers with a similar position are there in the car industry? Does clean air depends on none of them misbehaving? Either this guy is the "fall guy", or the whole system is very fragile.

tocf 10y ago
The competition must have known that VW was cheating, yet not one "competitor" called them out on it. The whole thing is a systemic failure. Regulations don't work. Regulators are generally lousy at their jobs (if they aren't working for the regulatees, they will be - I'm talking about the top regulators, mind you). The "free market" failed, because if everyone is cheating no one is cheating. It's time we start working on a replacement, because what we've got now is busted.

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tonyjstark 10y ago

I did a small software project as a contractor for VW and it was just a mobile app, not integrated in the car. The hassle we had to go though was immense, it actually went up for decisions 2 levels below CEO. So I don't believe he is the only one or even the main responsible guy. I hope this is not the end with trials for VW executives.