There is a verdict regarding the greatest fraud in the history of European automotive industry. It's about Volkswagen
The sentence, announced for over four hours after the process lasting over three years, symbolically He closes one of the key legal threads of the scandal, but does not finish the settlement of the group with the past.
Judge Christian Schütz, chairman of the adjudicating panel, described actions as “particularly serious” and talked about “working in an organized group”. The testimony and intercepted correspondence showed that already in September 2007. Engineers were aware of the existence of manipulated softwareand the test results were to remain “the secret of the narrow circle”.
Let's remind: Volkswagen (and then revealed other brands of the concern) installed in cars with a “Defeat Device” diesel engine. It was an algorithm that recognized laboratory emission tests and only then included full exhaust gas purification systemswhich made the cars look “clean” in the research. During normal driving, environmental protection was extinguished, the vehicles emitted many times more nitrogen oxides than allowed the regulations, which after unmasking in 2015 translated into billions of penalties, criminal trials and a violent retreat of customers from diesel.
Hadler will go to prison
The most severe punishment – four and a half years imprisonment – received Jens Hadler, responsible in 2007-2011 for the development of diesel engines. Hanno Jelden, dealing with the electronics of the drive team, heard a sentence of two years and seven months. Heinz-Jakob Neusser, former head of component development, was sentenced to a year and three months suspended, and the broadcast specialist, presented in the files as Thorsten D., for a year and ten months suspended.
The defenders announced appeals, arguing, among others cooperation of your clients with justice.
Before 2015, diesel models accounted for more than half of the registration of new cars in Europe. Today, their share has fallen below 10 percent, while fully electrical vehicles and plug-in hybrids are already responsible for a quarter of the market. Volkswagen, trying to rebuild credibility, became the European leader of electromobility – in April he sold three times more battery cars on the Old Continent than Tesla, which results from the data of Jato Dynamics cited in the course of the process.
The financial costs of the scandal have already reached over EUR 33 billion as fines, compensation and court settlements. Sources inside the company admit that a real bill – including investments in new technologies and reputational losses – is even higher.
The proceedings are still against more than thirty former employees. Among them is the former President Martin Winterkorn, whose trial was deferred for health reasons. Rupert Stadler, former head of Audi and a member of the VW board, who in 2023 pleaded guilty and received a suspended sentence and a fine exceeding a million dollars, remains the highest -erected person.
Automotive expert prof. Ferdinand Dudenhöffer recognized the convicted engineers as the sacrificial goats of the system ruled by “fear and blind obedience”, built – as he claims – by the previous authoritarian management. In his opinion, the company led by the current president of Oliver Blume has undergone a cultural transformation. Respect was replaced by fear, and the strategy is driven not by diesel, but electricity.
The verdict from Braunschweig is an important stage of settlement with the greatest fraud in the history of European automotive industry. Shows that even in complex and multi -story technological matters, personal responsibility is possible to enforceand the consequences of breaking environmental standards can be redefined by entire sectors of the economy.
Although Volkswagen managed to set a new course for electromobility, Echo Dieselgate still reminds the industry that customer trust is built for years and loses in an instant.
