Inside Volkswagen’s Broad Conspiracy to Dupe Pollution Regulators

Details on widespread deception revealed in new book, 'Faster, Higher, Father.'

May 9, 2017 8:25 am
Degree of Volkswagen's Emissions Deception Coverup More Wide-Reaching Than Previously Thought
Volkswagen AG Turbocharged Direct Injection (TDI) vehicles sit parked in a storage lot at San Bernardino International Airport (SBD) (Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The scandal that rocked automaker Volkswagen to its core—one in which the company had been found to be actively deceiving U.S. pollution regulators—has already made global headlines.

But until now, not much has been known about the lengths the car company went to orchestrate a coverup before the EPA finally unraveled the deception. In a book by the New York Times‘ Jack Ewing, Faster, Higher, Farther: The Volkswagen Scandal, to be published on May 23, the sobering scale of the scandal is revealed.

The newspaper giant published an article, adapted from the book, on Saturday.

The scandal started when it was discovered that Volkswagen had installed software in its diesel-based cars in California to “camouflage emissions that vastly exceeded legal limits.” That practice began as early as 2006, and it turns out that the revelation was just the tip of the iceberg.

To maintain the coverup, mounds of fake data was delivered to regulators. In the ensuing investigation, Volkswagen compliance official Oliver Schmidt was found to have misled regulators (and is currently in prison), while other suspects are still at large in Germany.

As a chaser to the Times’ serious look at the Volkswagen scandal, watch an informative (and hilarious) take on the scandal from HBO’s John Oliver (note: a little after the video’s 3:00 mark, there is some NSFW content).

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