VW board suspends R&D heads of core brand, Audi, Porsche

News of the German car manufacturer suspending the R&D chiefs of its core Volkswagen brand, Audi and Porsche has been doing rounds. According to reports, Volkswagen’s supervisory board has put a number of employees on leave until the details of its emissions cheating scandal were cleared up, without providing names.

Volkswagen’s troubled time began on September 18, 2015 after the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the United States accused Volkswagen and Audi of using ‘defeat device’ or an illegal software in approximately 4.8 lakh vehicles for cheating official emission tests.

According to the findings of the EPA, the defeat device could automatically detect when the cars were undergoing an emissions test and change the way the engine behaved automatically. Post the test, the car went back into normal driving mode for day to day usage patterns, thus emitting NOX up to 40 times above the permitted levels.

This software has been used in vehicles including the Volkswagen Beetle, the Volkswagen Golf, the Volkswagen Jetta and the Audi A3 for the 2009-2015 model years.