It was last year September when Volkswagen got busted big time. Over a time span of 10 years, the company had developed six generations of cheating software to beat federal emissions tests and placed them into 11 million diesel vehicles.

The software, although genius, was terrible. It allowed TDI (Turbocharged direct injection) cars to detect when they were being tested for emissions, and consequently ensured the cars emitted far less than their norm.

But that’s not even the worst of it.

Although the company settled with a $15.3 billion (R218 billion) fine last month, it has come out that the VW scandal is much bigger than what it was deemed at first – and even that was scandalous.

A new lawsuit by the states of New York and Massachusetts goes on to claim that VW executives had actually calculated the cost of getting caught – and knew it was still worth it.

The Daily Beast explains:

The complaint throws a devastating light on a company culture that from the top down remained committed for years to cheating on U.S. emissions tests for not just VW models but also Audi and Porsche models using diesel engines—to the extent that the engines on some models emitted up to 40 times the permitted levels of nitrogen oxide pollution.

Executives even carefully evaluated what the cost would be to the company if they were caught. Reviewing previous cases of violations of environmental regulations by auto manufacturers in the U.S. they predicted that the likely fines posed “only a moderate cost risk.” They cited the highest fine, imposed against Hyundai/Kia as amounting to “barely $91 per vehicle” and added “fines in this amount are not even remotely capable of influencing the share price of a globally operative company such as Volkswagen.”

Portraying what it calls “a cynical fraud on the American car-buying public,” the lawsuit claims that once VW realized, last summer, that regulators in California were about to expose the scandal, the automaker’s staff deleted or removed incriminating data from the company’s records.

Shocking, right? Well, the way the American government manipulates its citizens via underhanded deals is just as bad, so they’re not really one to talk.

Like, here they are worrying about the fuel emissions of millions of vehicles, but will allow fracking to happen without blinking an eyelid.

Anyway, The Daily Beast’s Clive Irving wrote an epic piece on just how VW engineers went about influencing the results, and how the German company first broke into the American market – but are struggling to maintain interest. Check it out HERE.

[source:thedailybeast]