A German investigative media group has reported that former Volkswagen Group engine development boss Wolfgang Hatz has been taken into custody for questioning on his involvement in VW’s diesel emission manipulation scandal.
The media group consists of the Süddeutscher Zeitung newspaper and German government-funded Norddeutscher Rundfunk and Westdeutscher Rundfunk broadcasters.
News of Hatz’s detention on Thursday follows confirmation from the public prosecutor’s office in Munich that it has arrested a VW employee following a search of various offices and houses by the German police.
Hatz’s rumoured arrest is seen as a turning point in the so-called Dieselgate scandal due to his close association with former VW Group chairman Martin Winterkorn.
Under Winterkorn’s leadership, Hatz was the head of engine development at Audi between 2001 and 2007 – a crucial stage in the development of software solutions to enable diesel engines to pass emissions standards in the US. In 2007, Hatz followed Winterkorn to VW, where he acted as engine boss for the entire group until 2011.
From 2011 to 2015, Hatz was a member of the board responsible for research and development at Porsche.
58-year-old Hatz is not the first former high ranking Volkswagen manager to be suspected of involvement in diesel emission test manipulation, but if the report published by the Süddeutscher Zeitung on Thursday holds true he is the first to be taken into custody in Germany. In July, the Munich public prosecutor office confirmed it had arrested 60-year-old Giovanni Pamio on possible involvement in the Dieselgate emission scandal. Pamio, an employee of Audi, was involved in the development of diesel engines.
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Not up to the engineering task
It seems that VW group were not able to engineer a compliant diesel engine, they were more interested in engineering expensive optional extras for added cash like DSG and nice little daytime running lights and other showroom appeal gadgets to entice people who don't generally read about cars and assume that because the design looks good the product must be good...meanwhile their engine is a diesel clunker and the cars don't actually work that well in terms of ride/handling and steering yet they were making smug adverts suggesting that they were the "genuine car maker". As far as I can tell the only thing this group does well is make the actual "mechanical car" well but the rest is "under engineered"...and they would have got away with it if it weren't for those pesky kids. The fact that the engine knew when it was going to be tested and then failed the emissions when it didn't know it was being tested is more than enough evidence.
"In the blue corner is ____"
"In the blue corner is ____" "In the red corner is _____" Sigh!!!
Mac
".....not the first former
".....not the first former high ranking Volkswagen manager to be suspected of involvement in diesel emission test manipulation...". I love the way this is written. It's well known how autocratic Volkswagen's management structure is, there's no way anything like this could have happened unless it was sanctioned by top management. The pity is that ultimately its the workers lower down the scale that will suffer for all this, and of course VW's paying customers, but then when has the company ever been bothered about this?