The work culture that led to the VW Dieselgate

Between the internal probe and the external investigation led by the law firm Jones Day and backed up by Deloitte, Volkswagen currently has more than 450 people sifting through evidence of its diesel emissions scandal. Over 1,500 smartphones, laptops and USB drives have been seized so far, netting the investigators a whooping 102 terabytes of data. And now, for the first time, Volkswagen has delivered a trove of information that offers insight into its investigation, the first time the company has gone public with the findings of its internal probe.

The biggest takeaway we can have from this scandal, or #Dieselgate as it has come to be referred to in the press and social media, is that that three factors led to the creation of the emissions defeat device -- a mindset that tolerated rule breaking, weaknesses in reporting and monitoring processes, and the delinquency of individual employees. VW Group chairman Hans Dieter Pötsch admitted the preliminary investigation report into the diesel scandal was not caused by a one-off mistake or fraud by one engineer.

On the contrary, VW’s crisis was driven by a 2005 decision to push its diesel passenger cars into the United States, even before its engineers had the technology to pass its strict NOx emissions laws. Speaking at the MobileLifeCampus in Wolfsburg, Germany, the VW company town where about half of the 125,000 residents work for the car maker, Pötsch said: "We will be relentless in seeking to establish who was responsible, rest assured they will be brought to account. We will investigate in all directions and with no taboos, everything is on the table, nothing will be swept under the carpet."

"We are doing everything to overcome the current situation, but we will not allow the crisis to paralyze us," Volkswagen CEO Matthias Mueller added in another statement. "On the contrary, we will use it as a catalyst to make the changes Volkswagen needs."

This recent admission now also gives some credence to Martin Winterkorn, the chief executive who resigned five days after the story broke, but pleaded that he knew nothing of the deception. In his resignation speech, he said: "I am stunned that misconduct on such a scale was possible in the Volkswagen Group." The scandal has also led to the suspension of nine Volkswagen Group senior executives, including Porsche development boss Wolfgang Hatz, Volkswagen Group development head Heinz-Jakob Neusser and Audi’s development boss, Dr Ulrich Hackenberg, who retired last week.

Volkswagen’s emissions debacle has been a sobering and revealatory moment not just for the company but the worldwide vehicle market. Now the only question that remains unanswered is just how high up knowledge of this cheating went. We will find out soon enough.