The heads continue to roll at VW with R&D chiefs at Volkswagen, Audi, and Porsche joining the recently deposed CEO. Their names respectively are Heinz-Jakob Neusser, Ulrich Hackenberg, and Wolfgang Hatz. They all formerly served at Volkswagen and all are big names who are being forced out over the Volkswagen diesel scandal.

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More details continue to emerge as to why Volkswagen did what it did by using an ECU 'cheat code' so to speak to beat US emissions tests. The reason is that it would have cost Volkswagen $335 per vehicle to refit the cars with an AdBlue Urea injection system to clean their emissions. Volkswagen chose the software approach to save money instead.

That is what brings Bosch into the picture as Bosch supplies the engine management systems that Volkswagen used to skirt the tests. Bosch of course claims they only supplied these systems that could be programmed to beat the EPA for testing purposes. They also claim they warned Volkswagen not to use software that could beat tests. Nobody at Bosch knew what software Volkswagen was using for years? Sounds like Bosch is already in protect their own behinds mode as they supplied the software VW needed to beat the tests.

Cost cutting is the cause of this whole mess. $335 times roughly 500,000 affected US cars is $167,000,000. That is not chump change but it sure beats losing billions upon billions. There will be those who point out this software is in 12+ million cars worldwide but again not all countries have the same emissions standards so not all cars would require the AdBlue Urea system. Even if they did we are talking about roughly three billion dollars. Still six times less than what was wiped out from VW's stock in one day. Greed is certainly to blame here.

Now what about the other German brands? Audi uses many of the same motors with the same software so they are pretty much screwed too but we all already knew that when Volkswagen itself was caught. Now we see how Mercedes, BMW, and suppliers such as Bosch make it out of this.

German magazine Autobild says the BMW X3 xDrive 20d emits more than the legal amount of pollutants in Germany. Autobild's own test is not the same as a test by a government agency and BMW quickly denied Autobild's report. BMW's stock price still took a 10% hit based on the report.

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The BMW Group does not manipulate or rig any emissions tests. We observe the legal requirements in each country.
There is currently no proof BMW did anything wrong but BMW's stock continues to tumble. You can see how Volkswagen has the entire German automotive industry in turmoil right now.

It does not end here. BMW diesels will be scrutinized by government agencies worldwide as will Mercedes. The extent of the role Bosch played has yet to be determined. Volkswagen also needs to make the cars compliant so whether they wanted a hardware solution or not they will now have to shell out for it at a much greater cost.

This is nowhere near over.