 So, has any one of you heard of Rolling Coal? It's a mostly American phenomenon of modifying your car in such a way as to maximize the emissions, so they are visible as a big black cloud of smoke. Apparently, I heard that VW cars are very popular among the friends of Rolling Coal, but let's not joke so much and focus on the topic at hand. Daniel Lange has the mission to stop the omissions of emissions at VW. He spoke to hundreds of people since last year he also gave a talk together with a colleague about the same topic, and since then he has spoke to hundreds of people and has gained some new insights that he will now share with us. I welcome you to desegate one year later. Can you hear me? Okay, wonderful. Thank you very much. Very quick announcement. The talk will be about 40 minutes if you have to leave after 30 minutes because you have a dinner appointment or something like that. Just please do so quietly. I was really unable to reduce the slides down much further without taking all the jokes away. So, my name is Daniel Lange. I have worked on the desegate stuff on and off over the last year because I have worked with press or litigation people. And kind of last year I was here because I felt that this Volkswagen notion of there is this rogue group of engineers was so utterly wrong and everybody in the automotive industry actually knows this that I just felt I had to speak up. And I don't know why, but they kind of keep motivating me to come back and point out their lies. So that's actually what I'm going to do. Myself, I've worked 16 years in the automotive industry, 14 years of that at a Barbarian manufacturer that's not located in Ingolstadt. And I run my own company, right? Here is a consultancy, but we don't work for the automotive industry. So that's why I can actually talk here and don't have much of an issue. Hello, next slide. Okay, this was broken in the process. So I'm fixed here. I can't walk. So everybody basically cheated, right? The emissions thing is not Volkswagen scandal. It's desegate. It's something where nearly everybody basically has an issue. So this is why I actually would like to show you this slide to just, you know, relieve my conscience. This is about the temperature window. This is kind of the second-last client that came out like middle of this year. That basically everybody has a temperature window where they reduce and at some point in time switch off the emissions treatment system. And if like at Opel, which Felix is going to talk about later a bit more, or Nissan or Audi for example, these kick in at 17 centigrade, that kind of has a flavor to it, that has a taste to it, because the testing is being done at 20 centigrade. And there's a two centigrade margin error. So that means, you know, testing can be 18 to 22 centigrade and when you start to switch off your emissions treatment at 17 centigrade, you just start to switch it off like in most real-life situations in Northern Europe or in the States. But you're sure it's available when the car has been properly set up for testing. So sadly so, that's the only slide I'm going to show which is not on Volkswagen. So I'm also guilty of not putting enough focus on the others. But Volkswagen is just so entertaining that, you know, I can't make that up with anybody else. So this is the money slide. This is kind of to update you in case you have been living under rock for the last, I don't know, six months. There's two class action suits. Class action suits are a law legislation in the States which allows to collect actions from individual people that have owned a Volkswagen and have been betrayed together. And they have split the solution to those class action suits into two because on the two-liter, it was rather easy. Volkswagen said, yes, we cheated. But on the three-liter, they maintained for quite a long time that they didn't cheat. So there were extended negotiations. And what you see here is basically a breakdown of the overall cost which is currently estimated to be in the $12 billion range for settling these. For the 2.0 liters, Volkswagen basically has to buy them back a bit more on this later. And for the 3.0s, they have split into a generation one, which they also buy back, and a generation two. And those vehicles will be getting a new catalyst. They will be getting up to three new sensors. They will get a turbine mixer for the injection of the diesel emission fluid. They will get a new diesel emission fluid, AdBlue is the brand name, Dosing Valve. All of that has to be approved by the EPA. And if it is approved, Volkswagen can retrofit it. If not, they also have to buy back the vehicle. So this is why it says go to one there, right? Because then they will be treated the same as generation one. Now you can compare that. I don't know whether you saw the talk last year. In Europe, there is this plastic tube, this flow rectifier, a kind of, I don't know, three-euro part which is put into your car and then all is well, right? Now, okay, that's, you know, honestly, two-liter engines, three-liter engines, they are different four-cylinder, six-cylinders. But, you know, I guess everybody, you don't need to work in the automotive industry, understand that a plastic part for three years and some better flow calculations are not the same as investing substantially in each car to really equip it with what it should have been equipped with right from the beginning. So that's kind of the settlement there. The process is quite interesting. Volkswagen has to reach 85% of all customers bringing in their vehicle for fix or buying back those vehicles. If not, there will be additional penalties. So that's the way that the U.S. folks actually make sure that this is successful. And somebody in the States gets like $10,000 to $20,000 on top of the value of their car. So that's kind of quite substantial. For the States themselves, it's also quite interesting because the last lines you're seeing there is $2.7 billion on the 2.0 settlement, another $225 million on the 3.0-liter settlement. They go into an environmental trust, and this is then used to, you know, buy new bus fleets, build up forests, do infrastructure for zero-emission vehicles, and so on and so on. So there's a lot of money actually being available now to the governments of the United States, and Canada has settled for a very similar thing, to actually do good for the environment and set off the damage that Volkswagen has done to the environment. There's an unofficial figure, which I didn't put on the slides, so the press people that only read the slides don't get it, so they really need to see the talk. Bosch seems to have settled for a $300 million fine as well, so they will pay $300 million into the fund to offset their participation in the diesel gate. I think you probably remember that we were discussing, you know, how much does Bosch know last year, and we basically showed that it's not possible to do this type of cheating without a close cooperation between the supplier of the electronic control unit, which is Bosch in this case, the OEM, which is the Volkswagen group. The callback process itself is quite interesting as well. This is the form that you have to fill when you bring in your car, and Volkswagen has hired more than 700 people in the States just to conduct this process. So this is not only, you know, about $5 billion to the environment and to zero emission vehicles and building up the infrastructure. It is also really a job machine, because at every dealer, there's a dedicated person taking care of this process, and there are 700 people that run it for Volkswagen Central in the USA. I find this mildly funny here, because in the process, they're actually making you feel that your car has gone the mileage which is shown on the automator. So about 30 to 40% of all cars sold in Germany have falsified automated readings. This is really another scandal. This is something that's not being so widely reported on, but if you buy a used car, you have a chance of one in three that it's actually a car which is not worth the money you're paying. And it's so easy to fix this problem, but the OEMs don't seem to have an interest to do it. And the outcome here is that actually Volkswagen tells you by law you are required to give an honest statement how many miles does that car actually have. So it's quite funny that they actually are bitten by the same problem which they have ignored in the market for a long time. Okay. So the thing is the official narrative from Volkswagen is they want to buy back transparency and trust to their customers. This is from Mr. Müller, who's the CEO of Volkswagen Group at this time. From the very start, I have pushed hard for the relentless and comprehensive clarification of events. We will stop at nothing and nobody. This is a painful process, but it is our only alternative. For us, the only thing that counts is the truth. This is the basis for the fundamental relightment that Volkswagen needs. The Board of Management of Volkswagen deeply regrets this situation and wishes to underscore its determination to systematically continue along the present path of clarification and transparency. Can I have an applause for this, please? Thank you very much. And, you know, because heads of state and ministers don't repress clippings, they actually write letters like these to every head of state, to every minister in Europe at least as much as I could verify. Where they personally update the ministers to, you know, give them the latest claims. This is from May 2016, so it's, you know, half a year later. And you can read it here. It's the same narrative is, you know, we're doing well and, you know, we keep you informed and, you know, there's no need to listen to anybody else. We own the narrative. We are actually informing you. So, let's check one thing. Hello. Thank you. Right when the diesel gate scandal broke, there was two things. There was the NOX issue, which has clarified that it's a real problem. There's defeat devices in the engines. They're being fixed. And there was a CO2 issue. CO2 issue was pretty clear because, you know, the cars actually consume much more fuel than the sticker rating says. So there must be a problem there, right? There is a problem there. I called it off really quickly. And this is my MAHA moment, right? Martin Haas is here. If you read that line here, no unlawful change to the stated fuel consumption and CO2 figures found to date, right? So there is Volkswagen saying, we didn't find anything to date. Now that kind of, you know, that's a pointer, right? So let's keep on looking. This is from November this year. This is a new class action suit. And Audi in this case here is sued because inside their gearbox, inside their automatic gearbox, there is yet another defeat device. There is a defeat device that actually makes this car drive like a dog, so it shifts up really early. It doesn't provide any torque. But that is sufficient to run through test cycles. And obviously, if the car doesn't have any power, it consumes very little fuel, and thus you get very good sticker ratings and you get very good CO2 emissions. So we found it, right? Felix will give a bit more details on the technical side here. But this is a class action suit, so this is the same thing which they have settled for on the engines, now running for the gearbox and the module in the engines that co-operates with those gearboxes here. Next fact check. Warranties. Volkswagen refuses to give warranties in Europe. So, you know, we are only getting those cheap fixes. But then people like the ADAC, the German biggest car owners club, asks, couldn't you please kindly at least give us a warranty? Can't you warrant that it will not have a negative effect on the car? And Volkswagen says, now we can't. We'll give you a certificate, we'll give you a paper, but it's not a warranty. This is Eugustische Feinheiten, so this is legal intricacies, right? We can't do this, it's very sorry, but you'll get the paper. Now, if you look at the states, this is the settlement which came out on the 20th of December, so the second part of the settlement. And the American customers get a 10-year warranty or 120,000 miles, which is about 200,000 kilometers. And they get four years or 48,000 miles after the fitting of the new catalyst and all the other stuff inside the car. So that means not only they get a stash of money, not only they get their cars properly fixed, they also get a warranty that the proper fix is proper and if not, Volkswagen has to redo it. So you see it is possible, but there's a huge discrepancy between the American legal system that forces the company to do this and the European legal system that apparently does not have any scare factor or any lever to motivate them to give a warranty. And they're not giving it by free will, right? They could, they could just be generous and say like, of course we fucked up, sorry, we'll give a warranty, but they've been asked over and over and over again and they refuse to do this. So, Jack Ewing from the New York Times, one of the few really good journalists working on that topic, put it well, in the US, Volkswagen owners get cash in Europe, they get plastic tubes. And there's another thing I want to point out to you, we ran this here in the Deuteron to Taitung a few days ago. Volkswagen says it wants transparency, but what it does is it actually goes and keeps as much information secret as possible. So in this case here, every time somebody sues Volkswagen, they settle, and they used to be settling in court, which means you could get the information, you know, what was the settlement value, did they buy back the car, and now they've learned and they settle out of court. Because then the court only records the two parties have settled, you know, somebody pays the fee for the court, which is only a few hundred euros and everything's fine. And you don't find out what the settlement is. So this is something which they're now doing quite on a big scale. And the thing here is, we have a very odd situation. The Kraftfahrt Bundesamt says you need to do the recall. But legally, they have not ordered the recall. So this means it's something that is voluntary. Well, voluntary actually means it's voluntary for both sides. Volkswagen voluntarily fixes the car and you voluntarily agree to have the car fixed. If you don't want to have that voluntary agreement, you can sue. We can't do this as a class action suit. You can't do this like in the States and it's done once and for all. It has to be going to the regional court and everywhere. But the pattern we are seeing is that Volkswagen is afraid of getting actually judges to trial this and actually get fines and have to buy back the car. So they settle quite generously out of court. The downside is when people settle, they need to subscribe to a non-disclosure agreement to keep everything silent. And they put really hefty sums on this. So there are like five-figure euro sums that people have to pay. So they get kind of their car bought back for a few thousand dollars or euros on top. And then if they were talking about it, they would be having to pay hefty fines to Volkswagen. So that's the way they keep people quiet. Another way which is quite interesting is a court case which is running on the Landgericht Paderborn actually asked Mr. Winterkorn to come around and testify. And he's a witness. So courts can ask witnesses to show up. But Mr. Winterkorn actually said, no, sorry, sorry, I would like to have my right to remain silent on it. Remain silent is a legal privilege against self-incrimination. So you must not say something in court. You cannot be forced to say something in court which will be later causing a problem for yourself. But the issue here is Volkswagen always said, you know, he's not our boss anymore. We continue to pay him. And he gets a hefty income still for sitting at home and watching TV or watching this talk. Hi. The thing is, if the narrative is true and he didn't know, he can go to court and he can say I didn't know. He may be on oath. So that means he has to really be sure that he didn't know. But that's the only thing that can happen. But they're fighting this really hard. So in this case here, that's an invitation for the 20th of January. On the 20th of January, the court will have a hearing only on the fact of Mr. Winterkorn has to show up and testify. So the thing is another pattern which we're seeing here and that pattern is, Volkswagen is trying to delay everything as much as they can. So in this case, they're not saying, yeah, we'll bring him along and yes, there will be some press, but we fucked up, so that's fair. They delay everything as much as they can. We think the legal issue behind this is they granted an extension of the deadlines for cases to be brought against them until the 31st of December next year. So we think they kind of reconsidered and are now trying to drag everything out beyond that deadline because legally, because there's no class action suits here in Germany, that means the right to sue has voided because of the time when people bought the cars and there's warranties of two years and that's it. So that's kind of what's probably happening and that's probably the tactics which is behind that. Okay, one thing for the journalists. This is a list from Rogged and Ulbricht, which lawyers that are working on Volkswagen cases, of all the German court cases where Volkswagen was forced to buy back, compensate, terminate the leases. So they are happening and the red ones here are Oberlandesgerichte, so they are like higher level courts. But I guess you, like me, have not really seen much press reporting on this and that's one of the issues here. The Volkswagen people are very good at communicating to the press, doing regular press clippings, have all the good marketing and advertising running. And journalists need to do tedious work. They need to go to those courts and say like, can I please have the documentation and they need to write a piece on that and stuff like that. So we really need to get the message over to the journalists that it would be really cool if they were reporting both sides of the picture and it's done actually, the people that read the magazines, that read the internet and possibly newspapers, if people still do that, they will actually get a more fairer picture. Because this information here is out there, it's available for grabs, you have all the action sign here, so please folks, pick it up and write some pieces on this. One of the things I predicted in 2015 was accidental data loss, right? Because always when these big things happen and in the States the thing is you actually get the right to request the other party to produce data for you. So it's different from the way it is here in Europe and that's kind of a very big tool and it's quite logical that it's very hard for the incriminated side to go and produce all the material that will actually prove that it has betrayed, that it has committed fraud and so on. So it was a quite true bet and here is the result. We have two incidents here, the one on the top is a gentleman called Daniel Donovan. He worked as an information manager in the general council, in the legal team of Volkswagen Group of America and he said, I questioned whether you are actually preserving evidence well and this is why I was fired. And then they settled. So there is an agreement or a communication here again from Jack Ewing reported which is word by word the same between his legal team and the Volkswagen legal team and they agreed on very amicable terms and it was settled out of court so we don't know how much he was paid. And then there's another lawsuit, I didn't give the name here because it's not publicly known, you can find it out if you know how to use Google but it's not very publicly known. There was a German law advisor at Volkswagen and he requested his colleagues to delete documents. So he basically wrote an email to his colleagues and said like, we're getting under pressure, please delete all incriminating stuff. That's not a very cool thing to do if you're a company lawyer. And then we have the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission and they brought a lawsuit against Volkswagen and it was, read the first line here, they lost or accidentally erased 23 mobile phones. I don't know, these things just, you know, whoop, another one gone, I don't know. The other issue is they had is, Volkswagen brought a witness and they said this witness was either unprepared or unable to provide information because 250 times he said, I don't know to all the questions. And the funny thing is, and here we have another maha moment of over communication, in the reply, Volkswagen said, oh, he was very well prepared. We spent 20 days with him just preparing for that deposition. So it took Volkswagen 20 days to make one engineer say, I don't know a sufficient amount of times. So why do we all have this problem in Europe? It seems to be working in the States somehow, where does that come from? And the root cause here is actually copy and paste regulation or regulation by Stack Overflow, or however you want to call it. The thing on the upper side is the American regulation. They define two things and I'm sorry you won't be able to read it all, but the slides are being made public and then you can dig into this. But the basic idea here is the Americans define auxiliary emission control devices. So things that actually modify some physical values which have an effect on emissions. And then there's a defeat device. A defeat device is an AECD, which reduces the effectiveness of emission control. So it doesn't improve it, for example. And in many cases, it is not disclosed. So you may have AECDs. You may even have AECDs that reduce the effectiveness of an emission control system. And those are then called defects. And there's a amount of defects which you're allowed to have. And the amount of defects decreases from year to year. So that is a way to steer the automotive industry into compliance, a very clever system. Now whoever wrote the law for the European Communion actually just copy and pasted, which you can see because you will find all the same words. There's a second slide coming up which is more of the definition here at the top vehicle speed engine RPM transmission, manifold vacuum and so on. And so they just copy and pasted and thought, like, we don't need AECDs. They just say defeat device is an AECD, so ditch the AECD. It's like people that copy and paste or Debian working on the random number generator. It's like, I don't understand that code. It doesn't seem to be used. Let's ditch it. And so they did, I don't understand AECDs. They don't really necessarily ditch it. But the problem here is this is why Volkswagen can actually say we don't have a defeat device. And the way they say it is again very lovely, they say we have no unlawful defeat device under European law. Right? So we have a defeat device, but it's not unlawful and not under European law. And they clarify this and say the efficiency of emissions cleanup systems will not be reduced in those vehicles, which however would be a prerequisite for the existence of an unlawful defeat device in the legal sense. So that's a quote. So what that actually means is they found the loophole and the loophole is there because people have been doing bad copy and paste regulation. Okay, now the other problem the European Union has is that it's herding cats and the only tool it has is this one very long stick, which is the EU treaty infringement process, Vertragsverletzungsverfahren in German. So the thing here is they actually would want to have proper emissions regulation, but they can't because it needs to be put into local laws. And there are three companies that didn't put any sanctioning mechanisms in place over seven years. And there are four companies that didn't use those sanctioning mechanisms and one of them is Germany obviously. Actually the UK will probably evade this because they can just sit it out, Brexit. Okay, so this guy here, he was really, really pissed because Fiat didn't show up when he said but you are actually emitting way too much. We caught you in our lovely report which we made. So would you please show up and we'll really tell you off. And Fiat said, you know, we're an Italian company. We are regulated in Italy. We will answer the Italian people but we don't really want to chat with you. So he was really pissed. He made a press report. That was from a press report. And he said like, this uncooperative behaviour from Fiat is completely not understandable. All right. This is from Suddeutsche Zeitung which basically says that his people went and took the report which was already very amicable. We know the quote, mit industriefreundlichen Grüßen. I don't know whether you've read newspapers. And they soften it down even more. I was at the EMIS commission of the European Union which is the investigative committee on Dieselgate. And I just called that report a joke. And I'll repeat it here. It's a joke. And I wouldn't want to have my name on that. So any scientist that does, sorry that's more kind of shameful, perhaps take it out of your CVs or something and try to hide it. So the funny thing is he said also in this press statement, it cannot be that a European law is formulated in a way that manufacturers of underdeveloped engines can hide behind engine protection reasons. Right. So I'm sorry this is German. But the car he meant obviously was the Fiat 500X which was measured in this report. But if you look at this engine here which is from his own report, it's the Audi A3, the three-liter, the one which has just been settled in the States. And it is allowed to emit 180 milligrams. So in the cold and in the warm, it does this. But as soon as you go 10 centigrade, remember there was this temperature window, right? It does 663. And when you do it on the road and you actually move the steering wheel and it detects that, it does 868. So underdeveloped engines are made in Germany and actually produced in Hungary because that's where the engine comes from. I was on a code retreat on an island in the Mediterranean Sea. I run my own company so, you know, we can do great things for our employers. And somebody brought this. And I don't read Bill's writing. I have to read Bill's writing because they're the only ones who have a leak and get some information out of Volkswagen and everybody copies them. It's really weird, right? Bill Amsonntag reports it first and then Deutsche Zeitung writes an editorial on it. And in here I found a gem. And the gem is the Kraftfahrt Bundesamt doesn't actually have people who are able to analyze what Opel gives them. So they have tasked Felix Domke, the guy who's coming after me, and asked him to actually verify whether Opel has actually implemented a fix. So, you know, I'm very happy they support the Hacker community but I don't think that is a very sustainable business model for authorities, right? Okay. So second to last point, Brownschweig. The Brownschweig General Attorney's Office are the ones that actually should be analyzing the case of all the Volkswagen senior management. They have now 28 people which they are investigating against and that includes Mr. Hans Dieter Pöcz, who's the former CEO, Martin Winterkorn, and the current head of Volkswagen, the Volkswagen brand, who came in from BMW. So that's great, that's great. They're actually doing something. The question is just what are they doing because we never get any feedback. So, I don't know. I have no clue what they're doing. I'm in good contact with nearly everybody but they actually only rang me once and the only thing they ask is do you have Felix Domke's phone number? Perhaps Felix knows more. Perhaps he's able to tell us more what they're doing. That's the court of Mario, which is in Ireland, very nice place. You should go and visit it. And they have the same legal mechanism that they have in the States. So they have the capability to order somebody to produce documents to clarify the case. So in this case, the judge, Mrs. Devins, has ordered Volkswagen to produce documents. And they hate this. They were furious. So what happened is this time they had a meeting, which was in September of this year, the legal representative told the court this is completely inappropriate and unfair. I did not bring anyone except myself because we think you do not have jurisdiction in the case. Now it's an Irish lady that has bought a Volkswagen from an Irish dealer but Volkswagen is sure they don't have any legal beef in this, right? So I don't know what they are thinking. And to actually add to this, they walked out of the court. So in protest, the representatives of Volkswagen, their lawyers walked out of the court. So the thing is, the judge is a very cool lady and she said she would continue without Hamlet referring to the play and said the Volkswagen legal team had a spectacular walk out. That has not happened to a court before. And the other thing is the Irish people are trying to help the case a bit and the states people are trying the same. They have a gentleman called Mr. Liang who has worked long time for Volkswagen first in Germany and then in the states. And he is now basically the principal witness. They made a deal with him and said we will limit the cost you will have for the time even in jail that you have to do if you cooperate with us. And the thing boxed here in red is the defendant shall cooperate fully with the government, any other law enforcement agency including but not limited to the Staatsanwaltschaft Braunschweig in Germany, right? So the Americans are actually bringing the witness to Braunschweig and I have not heard whether they even had a chat with him. At least there is nothing publicly known. All right. Bonus round for the last five minutes. Somebody on Reddit actually managed to get his car bought back. Cool. Super. He received $21,000 for it. The thing is the buyback terms say it is okay if your car has damages because they actually want to make sure that somebody who has, you know, a scratch or so it doesn't get so complicated, right? So the buyback process actually just goes on like what car is it, what did it cost initially and what is the mileage and, you know, we know about the mileage now. So this car apparently had some damage and the guy thought, you know, it's damaged anyways. All the front parts would be pretty good use for my friend who has a Volkswagen wants to keep it. So, you know, I just removed them. Now, the interesting thing is we have a company here that has infringed which has betrayed millions of its customers. More than half a million in the states. And, oops, there's a slide missing, that's not good. Sorry. I hope this wasn't deleted by our friends who set up the video, which was a difficult thing at the beginning. Oh, no, it's deleted. That's not very nice. Oh, it's moved there. Okay, let's use this one. It actually shouldn't be there. It's the second to last slide. Yay. So this is from a meeting of this settlement class. I'm reading it. At least one owner went so far as to strip the car of almost every removable part including cars, a radio and even the airbag. Now, remember that company has actually betrayed half a million people in the states a few million worldwide. They've made people pay way more for a car which is dirty because they believed it was clean. And now there's five people who strip parts of their cars and they complain to the judge. Okay. That's it. I'm going to take away points here. Everybody's cheating. I only did one slide, but please don't forget this. There will be much more coming out from others. Volkswagen promises but their actions are completely different. So please look beyond the spin doctrine. Don't buy the Volkswagen narrative. And the other thing is we don't have functional regulation in the U. I hope Julia Reda and the others I will fix it. But this will be a really tough task. Okay, thank you very much.