Its january 22nd 2008 at the Audi Development center and its one for 2 years audie technicians have been trying to make a Diesel Engine run clean. This is the day they realize that their plan may fail. At 7 42 pm one of the chief engineers sends a desperate email to his boss. We are not going to manage it without a bit of cheating. Because its unbelievable that a vehicle which is 18 times over the nitrogen oxide emissions limit is even allowed on the road. Hundreds of thousands of disappointed customers and billions of euros worth of damages previously secret documents show that audi manipulated its software more systematically than previously suspected. Bribes or does a huge scale of the. Fraud in the number of people who are involved is pretty shocking. As fine a call but its yes it was a combination of Corporate Culture greed and arrogance. Under the rug rats. Up until january 28th body was selling cars with manipulated exhaust software on board. It wasnt a case of now wed better come clean it was more a case of no one will ever find out. The public has yet to be informed by the authorities or politicians of the scale of the emissions manipulations or do you remain silent on the matter. And im confident given the enormous dimension of the scandal you would expect a company like audit to at least admit wrongdoing or that the manipulation of the thing is this is this really is one of the biggest business scandals in german history. For College British tough love from franconia the Diesel Scandal started only recently. His diesel car was produced in 2016 a year after the emissions scandal broke. Back then body assured its customers that vehicles with larger engines in the euro 6 emissions standard had not been affected he assumed everything was fine with his car. Is why a suit us that is all and everything was fine when we bought the car in october 2016 or the princely sum of 58000 euro. I thought the Diesel Scandal was over by that is. But a few months ago he got a letter from audi the company was recalling its q 5. Boys guns and i was surprised the car needed a Software Update. In the letter from oddy the product recalls something quite innocuous there were irregularities in the engine control software. A previously unpublished directive was sent by germanys federal Motor Transport Authority to audi and december 2017 their instruction that audi recalled the car sounds rather different with the authority demanding that cars like go for this q 5 model. All impermissible defeat devices must be removed. The federal authorities also found 4 different strategies by which audi had manipulated the diesel exhaust system. Such directives from the authorities are rarely seen by customers. We showed this want to do it for. What were you expecting. You know just all the usual you can make use of. It all from the well as i thought theyd just do one Software Update and that would be that its least thats the year to be going to last but im reading here that 4 different points have to be rectified. This is a minus logons its like a slap in the face being let along like that focus on this in the then in the end the government is forced to intervene. When they cant cheat their customers like that its fraud in my opinion. But in mine it always does because. We have tamed several internal recall instructions for diesel cars sold by audi up to january 28th. Each one pertains to strategies that audi used to interfere with exhaust emissions. Insiders passed on controversial documents to the bike to show one form and hundreds blocked confidential minutes of meetings internal correspondence and secret presentations tens of thousands of pages that shed a completely new light on the audi Diesel Scandal. They depict how the manipulations came about and who was involved the role played by the authorities and politics also emerges in a new light. Lets go back to the year 2007 the dawning of a new era for audi. Audiophiles its new environmentally friendly Diesel Technology at the detroit motor show hoping to use it to conquer the u. S. Market. Visits to teach students we are profoundly convinced that this Diesel Technology one of the most modern available on the market today is a great leap forward for us. To problem Diesel Engines emit large quantities of harm. Nitrogen oxides even back in 2007 the usa limits on such emissions were pretty stringent. However the harmful nitrogen oxides can be rendered harmless with a fluid called add blue a simple chemical mixture of artificial euro and water. The adult chemical mixture was already being used to neutralize diesel emissions from trucks in 2004 they just needed to carry a large extra tank onboard. Body opted to use this technology to clean up missions from diesel cars to. They also needed to fit an additional tank to contain the your real mixture. Add blue is injected into the hot exhaust fumes and converts toxic nitrogen oxide into harmless substances in a special catalytic converter around 90 percent of the nitrogen oxides are thus rendered harmless back then this was the state of the art. In the autumn of 2007 body presented the allegedly cleanest diesel car in the world in germany to announcing the 2008 launch of 2 models with the new Emissions Technology available not only in the usa but also in europe. However in their labs and workshops developers were struggling with huge problems the new exhaust system needs to use more add blue than expected. An internal report from october 16th 2007 criticizes this. Objection your real consumption is too high. In a further document developers warned that the legace jeopardizing the start of production. Deadlines situation very critical approval at risk only a small series possible. By. It was there such a panic was the problem we had to search long and hard to find an independent emissions expert who was prepared to explain what the body technicians did next. In the end we traveled to switzerland. To do. At the swiss Materials Testing institute we need to your system up with us hes been researching abu injections for years his lab test system works like a large catalytic converter so he can measure exactly how much of the year real mix has to be injected. Precise dosing is crucial for the system to work. And with the other you must adjust the dose of and soon exact relation to the nitrogen oxides being emitted from the engine. If an engine is admitting a lot of nitrogen oxide more add blue has to be injected to neutralize the exhaust fumes. That Developers Demand that the larger real tanks require but since they take up a lot of space a high ranking manager blocked it. In an email he wrote. To be consistently clean in europe we need 30 leaders which currently cannot be stored in any of the vehicles. With an incline and if they had a smaller tank the customer would need to refill it more often which could be a nuisance for them. Particularly in the usa the your real mixture was supposed to last for 16000 kilometers until the next service was due on the vehicle if the absolute tank was empty the vehicle wouldnt start. The sales team in the usa warned that this would be unacceptable. This would be a disaster for the whole clean diesel strategy in north america. We meet the correspondent for the New York Times in germany jack ewing hes been following the emissions scam intensively especially the strategies of v. W. And audi on the u. S. Market. As some cross i think the b. W. Managers were very irritated that the company had become so insignificant in the u. S. And void and they were in the same league as mazda or subaru just a niche market that was an untenable position for the worlds biggest Automobile Company and goes for their truck bar for the cruise to all to a new name and developed. The plan to conquer the u. S. Market with clean diesel vehicles simply could not be allowed to fail. We have contact with people who are involved at the time staff and those who know the firm they report on the enormous pressure within the company. One of them is prepared to talk to us in an interview we meet him somewhere in germany he does not wish to be recognized. Failure is not an option but if it happens everyone make sure that it wasnt their fault because they know what the personal consequences are. Anyone who is under suspicion certainly didnt stay in the company much longer. In early 2008 just a short time until the start of production of the new diesel model the pressure on the Developers Must have been enormous. Then they came up with an idea what if the cars were only clean in the test phase. On january 23rd 2008 a leading Developer Center presentation one possible solution introduced to operating modes. A clean efficiency mode for the test drive. And an economy mode for the open. In a condo me mode the cars would use less add blue referred to as quantity restriction in the presentation. Then money. If youre almost always in economy mode on the open road and its highly likely that too much nitrogen oxide is a mid into the atmosphere on down hot munden if you have the efficiency mode that only complies with emissions and limits during a test pits hardly a great solution is this kind of work. To ensure that the car is only clean when its being tested for developers interfere with the engine control to manipulate the software. As soon as a vehicle recognizes that a socalled test cycle is running its software switches into efficiency mode sufficient add blue is injected into the catalytic converter and the car is clean. Once the car is on the open road the software switches back into the dirty economy mode emitting more pollutants. Thus cheating on emissions values. In the test cycle in the industry they call it cycle beating Developers Express their misgivings in a presentation. Cycle beating approach highly critical in the usa. Cycle beating. Cycle beating is a term known to everyone in the Automobile Industry side you dont have to be an engineer to know that its evidently illegal theres no legal cycle beating very clearly against the law in both europe and the usa when this clearly shows that they knew exactly what they were doing was to see a marked up according to our research its not the 1st case of manipulation and audis development of Diesel Engines among a sheaf of secret papers we come across an unusual document from. 2003 a poem written by a software developer. Based on go to earl king the developer describes how adi intends to dupe the authorities with a defeat device. Defeat device come hither. Play lovely games with you. I have lots of tricks up my sleeve. And the hysteresis loop so no one can see. The post and shown to us they were aware that they were committing a crime and good thing that they could go to prison if they were caught. Like the law i think that shows us the risks they were willing to take the code people write far as. I would if it means that the ones who had to do the dirty work were fully aware of the high risk of being found out of. Most. Obviously of the fear of being caught wasnt that great the socalled defeat device described in the poem was put into use from 2003. But she does say in westphalia audie fans regularly meet to show off their dream cars some of which are older diesel models and emissions category youre all for. The roar of the engine is on mistake of all. The stupid this is the classic engine sound from the injection jabs the stacking sound is opening thats what makes it rattle like that and on the flip of the. Audi developed special software the socalled acoustic function allegedly in an attempt to muffle the sound. But in fact already use the software to rickets emissions tests on the euro for diesel cars from 2003 to 2010. A previously. Secret memo from the federal Motor Transport Authority is testimony to this. The authorities certified the acoustics function in july 28th noting that the functionality was being used as an on permitted defeat device. To see if so also as of it looks like they came up with the idea of using the software to solve the emissions problem and it all started with audi does. It by september this year that had been no recall of the year 04 vehicles. Questions to audi regarding the acoustic function the company informed us that they could not comment during current investigation. Journey where its 2008 shortly before the launch of the new Diesel Technology with at bloom in the usa this is an audi manager advertises the cleanest diesel in the world in the american media. Because. If you are. Very close to really come the good. Yet he must know that the cars are in no way clean because they conceal how much ad blew needs to be consumed on the road. This is shown in a presentation code written by this manager saying Current Software functionality restricts the use of bad loops what are the legal implications of the statement. We have an appointment here and im stuck with a lawyer martin. He was the expert in the Investigation Committee for the admission scandal in the german blunder stock we show in the documents detailing how adi restricts the use of add blue is this not illegal. Its just introduced us of course its a defeat device because it reduces the cleaning of the emissions unnecessarily. So its an illegal defeat device. Should and must. Adil launches its allegedly clean diesel on the u. S. Market in 2009. But the car manufacturer deceives both american licensing authorities and unsuspecting customers. In new york state. In the Small University town many people want to actively do their part to protect the environment. Including anthony come on. In 2010 he bought an audi diesel advertised as clean the car was an important decision that when i when i found out about you know the clean Diesel Technology that was an important consideration. That they could come up with a Diesel Engine that that burned clean and was very fuel efficient so those are 2 big considerations when i bought that car. Millions were spent on advertising and t. V. Commercials running at prime time and putting him on remembers one particularly convincing commercial during the super bowl 2010 the biggest thing about plastic bottles now the order setting is that. The green Police Arrest all kinds of environmental polluters but the clean diesel cars allowed to drive on. It. Thats michael. Carrick i think its exactly the fearful and part of the reason we we believe that or i believe that you know germans make good vehicles. Really no no no complaint there but also you believe the engineering behind it engineers do wonderful things i mean engineers put people on the moon. You would think that they could make a Diesel Engine bird plainly that wouldnt be such a big deal. But many cars that have come off of audis production lines for the European Market since 2009 are even dirtier than those for the u. S. Market. Even less at blue is used in the european diesel cars to neutralize emissions. Those responsible make light of the fact that the vehicles do not comply with legal requirements they say that emissions cleaning only needs to be maintained at test levels on the new European Driving Cycle for any d. C. High de nox efficiency only necessary on any d. C. One c. E. O. Is often quoted as saying there are laws and there is volkswagen the Company Makes its own laws that describes their mentality to a t. Where does this mentality come from 3 men characterize the v. W. Group with its subsidiary none more than the recently deceased ferritin and. The grandson of the v. W. Founder fair to nonproportional was the 1st head of development at adi and later its c. E. O. The engineer landed some spectacular successes ph developed audis 4 wheel drive the legendary quatro and justified audis image as an innovative brand he was also the man who led v. W. Out of its serious crisis in 1903 with ambition and a tough management style. In the venice whenever theres a war there are always fewer left at the end understood you always have winners and losers. The upsy. It is my intention. To gather with b. W. s worldwide partners. To be the winner see. The mentality of a warrior insiders report that this is how we influence the Corporate Culture at v. W. And audi. There was a culture of fear in our firm. Everyone just wanted to survive. And that means not spreading any bad news. The successor to ph martin even took on rose to the top 1st as the head of audi and then as c. E. O. Of the entire group his staff say that he wont tolerate disagreement and pursues a system of command and obedience. And one of his favorite phrases was make it go away meaning a problem you dont want has to simply be eliminated. The 3rd man in the group as. He became the c. E. O. Of audi in 2007 staying until his arrest in 2018. The emissions scandal at audi happened under his watch what exactly which douglas role in it all. One example is from 2010 when the e. U. Commission was planning to test emissions on road tests as well as in the test lab with socalled r d e test drives. Audis dirty diesel tricks were in danger of being discovered and the head of Diesel Department was alarmed. He wrote to his staff. Hi it doesnt look good regards. The still body pressed on. In 2012 the socalled Product Strategy Committee headed by audi c. E. O. Decided on a flexibility scenario for a new series. But 1st just a small amount of bad lou should be injected not neutralizing the emissions completely. One employee summarized the strategy thoughts. On april 24th it was decided to run the cars dirty at 1st as part of the clean diesel strategy if this was later spotted on road tests the emissions would be cleaned up accordingly