If you have two hours and twenty minutes on your hands, here’s the entire video of Volkswagen’s Michael Horn testifying before the U.S. Congress about the automaker’s emissions-cheating software, which is found on roughly 11 million VW, Audi, Porsche, and Seat vehicles worldwide.
If you don’t have that much time — and really, who does? — here are a couple of takeaways:
- Volkswagen has no plans to buy back affected vehicles. Instead, it will fix them. However, a software upgrade alone won’t solve the problem. In many, if not most cases, hardware will have to be installed, too. Sounds pricey, no?
- There’s still no concrete timeline for fixing the vehicles. This fact doesn’t sit well with members of Congress.
- Previously, Horn had said that he’d learned about issues with Volkswagen’s diesel emissions software in the spring of 2014, around the time that West Virginia engineer Daniel Carder broke the news. Now, Horn says that he was only informed of problems, and didn’t learn of Volkswagen’s in-house deceptive software until September of 2015. You can ask yourself why Horn spent 18 months not asking questions about the nature of the diesel problem.
- Horn insists that the decision to install the software was made by engineers, not executives. No one in the corner offices knew anything about it. Which reminds us a bit of this:
We may know more soon. Yesterday, German police raided Volkswagen headquarters and left with a schiesse-tonne of documents that could shed new light on who knew what and when they knew it. Stay tuned.