Engineer Pleads Guilty in Detroit in VW Emissions Scandal

The drama in the Volkswagen emissions test scandal played out in a courtroom in Detroit on Friday.

James Robert Liang, a Volkswagen engineer, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Court Judge Sean F. Cox in Detroit for his role in a nearly 10-year conspiracy to defraud U.S. regulators and U.S. Volkswagen customers by implementing software designed to cheat U.S. emissions tests in hundreds of thousands of Volkswagen's “clean diesel” vehicles, the Justice Department announced in a press release.

Under the plea agreement, Liang will cooperate in the ongoing federal investigation.

Specifically, Liang, 62, of Newbury Park, Calif.,  pleaded guilty  to one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States, to commit wire fraud and to violate the Clean Air Act.

From 1983 until May 2008, Liang worked for Volkswagen AG in its diesel development department in Wolfsburg, Germany. 

Liang admitted, in his plea agreement,  that beginning around 2006, he and his co-conspirators started to design a new “EA 189” diesel engine for sale in the United States, but they couldn't meet this country's emissions standards.

So they they designed and implemented software to recognize whether a vehicle was undergoing standard U.S. emissions testing on a dynamometer, or being driven on the road under normal driving condition to cheat the emissions tests, the Justice Department said.

Liang admitted he used a "defeat device" while working on the EA 189 and assisted in making it work properly.

In May 2008, he moved to the U.S. to help launch VW’s new “clean diesel” vehicles here, according to the plea agreement. While working in the firm’s testing facility in Oxnard, Calif., his title was leader of the diesel competence team.

As part of the guilty plea, Liang admitted helping other lie to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the California Air Resources Board and VW customers even after regulatory agencies questioned the emissions.