Volkswagen and Audi have had their hands full over the past year. Unless you’ve been on an island away from the country for an extended period of time, you’ve heard that Volkswagen was caught red handed cheating on emissions tests and has been doing so for many years. This cheating affects the diesel engines and is the result of a defeat device being installed that was originally created for Audi to allow for less shake and noise from the engine when the vehicle is running. This scandal has now been ongoing for a full year and it seems the chopping block is still warm with heads that need to roll.

This cheating scandal was discovered in August of 2015 and released in September of the same year. A university in West Virginia discovered that the Volkswagen TDI engine would emit as much as forty times the allowable emissions into the atmosphere when driving, but when hooked up to the testing devices this engine performed just fine. This was the case for both the 2.0 and 3.0-liter engines from Volkswagen which was also used on some Audi models. This had apparently been going on for several years which put a black eye on the EPA as well.

The EPA was transparent in its testing standards and practices, which unfortunately meant it was pretty easy for Volkswagen to get around the testing and defeat the system. Thankfully the good that has come of this is the fact that the EPA will now be more random with its testing and won’t release all testing practices the way it previously had. This will give automakers more rules and regulations they have to follow and will keep them more honest when building their vehicles. Of course with this scandal there were going to be retributions that needed to take place.

So far Volkswagen has had to fire several executives, one lower level employee and many of the board members have resigned as well. Now we have learned that there was one person in a leadership role that has waited an entire year to find out if they were going to be fired or need to resign. Stefan Knirsch, the head of technical development at Audi will be suspended from his position because of his knowledge of the cheating software. Not only did he know about the software and the defeat device, he also lied about his knowledge of it under oath, which might be why it took so long to discover he needed to be released.

As the house cleaning continues at Volkswagen and owners of vehicles with the offending engines file for either a replacement value or a repair of their vehicles we see that Volkswagen is about to head in a different direction and become one of the cleanest automakers in the industry. They are about to give us a close up look at their new EV models and we will see if they can produce thirty new models on this platform by 2025, but all this in the wake of heads rolling and dirty engines polluting our air.