Earlier this week, the attorneys general of Maryland, Massachusetts, and New York filed civil lawsuits against Volkswagen in relation to the company’s diesel emissions scandal. And thanks to our colleagues at Road & Track, we were able to obtain the formal suit and damning complaint submitted by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, which sheds new light on the company’s behavior. 
Relying on corporate documents, staff e-mails, and employee testimony, the state’s complaint paints a picture of systemic deception by dozens of executives, senior managers, and engineers within the company, including former Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn. According to an unnamed Audi executive, current CEO Matthias Müller was also made aware of the diesel-emission issue and cheat device at least a decade ago when he was the head of project management at Audi. The complaint also establishes that the cheat device itself was first developed at Audi, in response to the development of a system dubbed Pilot Injection that the company began working on in 1999 for its 3.0-liter V-6 diesel engine. Pilot Injection poured additional fuel into the engine’s cylinders at startup to combat the traditional clatter at idle associated with diesel engines. Unfortunately, such a setup resulted in the engine’s failure to meet European emissions standards. According to the complaint, Audi then developed a defeat device that was able to recognize if the vehicle was bei...