AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)05/04 Report--

Former Audi CEO Rupert Stadler and his defense team said on May 3 that he was prepared to plead guilty to his role in the Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal and pay a fine of 1.1 million euros ($1.21 million) in exchange for a suspended sentence, according to foreign media reports.

Engineers at Volkswagen and its subsidiary Audi manipulated diesel engines to meet legal emissions on the test bench, but did not meet standards on the actual road. Steed is accused of not stopping selling the manipulated cars after the scandal broke.

Steed's defense team will issue a statement on May 16, after which the judge will decide whether the statement amounts to a full plea and deliver a verdict in June. At present, prosecutors have agreed to the agreement. Earlier, the judge said Steed would face 1.5-2 years in prison, but the sentence would be suspended if he agreed to plead guilty.

Back in 2015, Volkswagen added a failure protector to the 2.0TDI diesel engine in order to pass the EPA emission test, and designed a software mechanism: if the device detects that it is currently in a laboratory environment, it will turn on the exhaust purification device, but if it is detected that it is driving normally outside, it will choose to turn off the exhaust purification device. In other words, Volkswagen cars will obviously emit emissions when they are on the road, but under laboratory tests, there is no problem with the test results, which quickly attracted the attention of local consumers and institutions.

On September 18, 2015, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) accused Volkswagen of violating the US Clean Air Act (Clean Air Act) by revealing that some of Volkswagen's products were falsified by software control in US emission tests, thereby concealing the true emission situation. The outbreak of the biggest scandal in the history of the auto industry triggered a sharp shock within the Volkswagen group and a major blow to the group's reputation.

Since then, German prosecutors are still investigating the Volkswagen "diesel gate" emissions scandal, including market manipulation by Herbert Deiss, Hans Dieter Potts and Winterkorn. These executives are accused of being too late to inform the market of the diesel gate incident and its impact.

According to statistics, from the East window incident to April 2020, the emission gate has brought more than 30 billion euros in fines, compensation and cost losses to Volkswagen, but the number is still rising.

It is worth mentioning that Volkswagen is not "alone". After the Volkswagen "diesel door" incident, a new test by the German Association of Automobile drivers (Adac) shows that diesel vehicles from more automakers such as Renault, Nissan, Hyundai, Citroen, Fiat, Volvo, Ford, BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Peugeot also have excessive emissions. In June, companies such as Peugeot and Citroen, owned by the Stellantis Group, are under investigation by the French government for allegedly defrauding consumers over emissions from some diesel models. On the same day, Renault Group also announced that it was also investigated by French prosecutors for diesel vehicle emissions, but denied the existence of relevant violations in the announcement. The new round of fines imposed by South Korea's Fair Trade Commission on Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Volkswagen and Audi is also the latest development in the "diesel emission door" incident, which will be paid by relevant companies in the future.

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