VW Diesel Cheat Linked To 2006 PowerPoint Presentation

The document's existence was leaked by two anonymous sources close to the investigation.

The presentation in question was created by a top technology executive at VW and presented in 2006. We don't yet know who in the company saw the PowerPoint, but it does help show how far back the plan was hatched and by whom. It also reconfirms the premeditated nature of the diesel-emissions cheat and dispels any theories that this might have been the work of lower-level engineers working in the background. The two sources of the Times story were present at meetings discussing the plan. They both say engineers presented ideas to avoid using the cheat code and comply with regulations but that those plans were ignored due to their higher cost.

It's clear people at the top were aware this was going on. The fact this file was created and saved suggests that whoever came up with the idea might not have thought it was such a bad idea. We now know that this person was wrong.

Just last week, VW announced that it will buy back or repair about 500,000 affected cars in the US. Other companies are now being subjected to emissions probes in the wake of the VW scandal. In related news, Mitsubishi recently admitted to falsifying fuel-economy data as far back as 1991.

And, for the record, that's not a screenshot of the actual presentation above. We used our imagination for that one.