Famous German Car Manufacturer Volkswagen

Volkswagen is a famous German car manufacturer, it was started on 28th may 1937 by the Nazi labor union. This was the same period when Germany was under Adolf Hitler’s autocracy. For a long time, Volkswagen was cheating in radiation tests by creating harmful software, which contaminated 40 times harmful than the authorized the amount of nitrogen oxide and diesel pollution. This happened to those cars, which were sold from 2009 to 2015 in Europe and America. This event was caught by the EPA on 18th September 2015. (Topham, G., Clarke, S., Levett, C., Scruton, P. and Fidler, M., 2015).

The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) is an American agency of the USA federal government, which is charged with the protection of the environment and they are pursued through the laws which are approved by the congress of the USA. On 22nd September the company has confessed the deed and they also confessed that they put bad tools about 11 million cars, which are sold all around the world. Along Volkswagen there were also other models are affected, for example: Audi, Passat, Porsche, Seat, Skoda, Jetta, Beetle and Golf. (Brignall, M., 2017)

The Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn apologized for this deed and a few days later he resigned and his place was taken by Mathias Muller, who was already involved with Porsche.(Kollewe, J., 2015). Because of the scandal, Volkswagen was fined 1 billion euro in Germany and they accepted, the trial was sentenced in the court of Braunschweig. (Morrison, C., 2018).

The ex CEO Martin Winterkorn resigned on 23rd September and his place was token by Mathias Muller in the board meeting of 25th September he is also the head of the Porsche company. (Ruddick, G. and Farrell, S., 2015). During the scandal the situation for the employees were very critical, because in this scandal there were also involved some employees and some engineers, few days later the Volkswagen decided to suspend those employees and engineers who were involved, six employees accused for cheating..(Agerholm, H., 2017). An employ was arrested by the FBI agents, his name is Oliver Schmidt for trying to destroy the evidence, for this act he was punished with seven years’ imprisonment in Florida.(BBC News. 2017). Not only this he was penalized 400,000 dollars, after accepting the deed and punishment. (Rushe, D., 2017).

In October another engineer of Volkswagen company James Liang appealed to be responsible for deceiving and plotting the government (Thielman, S., 2017) and disobeying Clean Air Act, is an American law which is in charge of air pollution.( Tabuchi, H., Ewing, J. and Apuzzo, M., 2017). Reuters, is a multinational news company, said that the Volkswagen company also suspended the bosses of two sections, which are: research and development and the supervisory board said that there are still some employees who risk their jobs. (Reuters, 2019).

This scandal was not only affected in USA but also affected in UK. In UK about 12m cars were affected and the Volkswagen company has accepted that they are connected in this scandal. By accepting this deed they are explaining that UK is most attacked by the scandal. (Ruddick, G., 2015). The smokes of NOx created lots of problems for people, because it causes strokes, lung disease, breathing and heart problems, because of this smoke in London about 9,500 people died early in every year.(Topham, G., Clarke, S., Levett, C., Scruton, P. and Fidler, M., 2015).

The victims were not only the drivers, there were also: walkers or people who lived in places with too much traffic. (Opinion, 2015). It’s true that most of the deaths were in Europe and in Asia only two countries were affected badly: China and India. But globally the deaths were about 38,000 every year, if the emission doesn’t stop there will be more deaths each year, like Susan Annenberg is an American Associate Professor of Global Environmental Health declared that the leak of the NOx is affecting on people health.(Carrington, D., 2017). Soon Volkswagen confessed that they encountered about 30,000 complains and 70% complains increased in 2018 in UK. (Allan, M., 2019).