http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1107193_california-should-approve-vw-electrify-america-plan-for-electric-car-charging-carb-analysisCalifornia should approve VW 'Electrify America' plan for electric-car charging: CARB analysis
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2017/07/20170728-vwarb.htmlCalifornia ARB approves $200M VW zero-emission vehicle investment in California; first phase of $800M investment
http://www.greencarreports.com/news/111 ... use-arrestVW exec to plead guilty to diesel cheating charges after jail, house arrest
. . . Former Volkswagen executive Oliver Schmidt is expected to plead guilty to charges surrounding the diesel-cheating scandal at a U.S. district court in Michigan, according to The Detroit News. Schmidt was Volkswagen's top emissions compliance manager for the automaker from 2012 to 2015 and is charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States, violating the Clean Air Act, and aiding and abetting wire fraud. The former executive will reportedly plead guilty to at least some of the charges at his hearing at 9:30 a.m. this morning, though it's unclear which.
Schmidt, a German national, was denied a pretrial bond release and had been ordered to stay at home in Rochester, Michigan, wear a GPS tracker, and surrender his passport after his arrest and months of jail time.
He was arrested in January 2017 after attempting to return to Germany after a vacation in Florida. . . .
Since his arrest, five other Volkswagen executives have been indicted: Heinz-Jakob Neusser, Jens Hadler, Richard Dorenkamp, Bernd Gottweis, and Jürgen Pete. They are not expected to face trial in the U.S., since Germany does not customarily extradite its citizens. They will, however, effectively be prevented from traveling to the U.S. on business, as they would face arrest once they were in the country. . . .
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/04/business/volkswagen-diesel-oliver-schmidt.html. . . Under a revision of the charges, he pleaded guilty to two counts: conspiracy to defraud the federal government and violating the Clean Air Act. A third charge of aiding and abetting wire fraud was rolled into the conspiracy charge.
Mr. Schmidt admitted conspiring with other Volkswagen employees to mislead and defraud the United States in 2015 by failing to disclose that thousands of diesel cars were rigged to evade detection of excess emissions levels. He also admitted filing fraudulent emissions reports to regulators.
Mr. Schmidt faces maximum penalties of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine on the conspiracy charge, and two years in prison and a $250,000 fine on the environmental charge. He is to be sentenced on Dec. 6.
There was no discussion at the hearing of his potential role as a witness in other federal cases. . . .
http://insideevs.com/german-automakers- ... an-energy/While German Automakers Colluded, Tesla Pursued Clean Energy
http://www.greencarreports.com/news/111 ... ating-roleVW engineer gets 40 months in jail, $200K fine, for diesel cheating role
Former Volkswagen employee James Liang was sentenced in Detroit on Friday to serve 40 months in prison and pay a $200,000 fine for his role in the global Volkswagen diesel-emission cheating scandal. It was a stiffer sentence than expected for an engineer who helped to create software that controlled exhaust emissions only when Volkswagen and Audi's TDI diesel cars detected they were being tested on rolling roads.
Prosecutors had recommended, according to The Detroit News, a sentence of three years in federal prison and a fine of $20,000. Defense attorneys had suggested the 63-year-old engineer should receive home confinement and a nominal fee instead.
The tough sentence appears to send a message from U.S. District Judge Sean Cox that employees can and should be held accountable for misdeeds they commit for their corporate employers.
“We haven’t seen many individuals being held responsible for corporate misconduct," Wayne State University law professor and former federal prosecutor Peter Henning told the News, "so this is one of those rare cases.”
The sentence makes it even less likely that six VW Group executives also indicted for their roles in the diesel scandal will ever return to the U.S. Germany does not normally extradite its citizens to other countries, so they were not expected to face trial; Liang's sentence makes that possibility even more remote. . . .
https://www.autoblog.com/2017/08/25/vw- ... ng-report/VW CEO reportedly learned of diesel cheating a month before board knew
And this was two months before it became public.
A former senior quality manager at Volkswagen has told investigators he informed then-CEO Martin Winterkorn on July 27, 2015, that the carmaker had "cheated" during emissions tests in the United States, German media reported on Friday.
VW has said its executive board did not learn about the severity of emissions test cheating using illegal software until late August 2015. . . .
According to a report by German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung and broadcasters NDR and WDR published on Friday, the unidentified quality manager told German and U.S. investigators that Winterkorn phoned him on July 27 to enquire about problems with the certification of new models in the United States. He says he then told the CEO that VW had "cheated" in the United States, the report said.
VW declined to comment on the report. Winterkorn's lawyer was not immediately available for comment.
Winterkorn in January declined to tell German lawmakers when he first learned about systematic exhaust emissions cheating but said it was no earlier than VW had officially disclosed. . . .
