Whistleblower pushed Volkswagen to admit broader cheating

FRANKFURT, Germany — Volkswagen’s recent disclosure that it reported false fuel economy and carbon dioxide readings to European regulators was prompted by an internal whistleblower, the company said Sunday.

Volkswagen’s admission that it had underreported carbon dioxide emissions on 800,000 diesel- and gasolinepowered cars in Europe. That disclosure added to the automaker’s credibility problems, which began in September when it admitted that it had installed software on millions of its diesel cars in recent years to enable them to cheat on air-pollution tests.

In trying to determine who was responsible for the diesel cheating scandal, Volkswagen’s investigators have reportedly been hampered by an ingrained fear of delivering bad news to superiors. But in the case of the new disclosure, some employees have evidently been willing to come forward under the company’s new management.

Volkswagen on Sunday broadly confirmed a report in Bild am Sonntag, a German newspaper, that an engineer at the company had volunteered information about how employees had manipulated tests for carbon dioxide emissions and fuel economy. Tires, for example, were filled with more air than normal, the newspaper reported.

The diesel cheating scandal involves the company’s manipulation of pollution control systems on 11 million cars that enabled them to pass emissions control tests in laboratory settings but allowed the cars on the road to emit up to 40 times the allowable limits of nitrogen oxides, a pollutant that can damage lungs.

The more recently disclosed problem involves understating the amount of carbon dioxide in cars sold in Europe. Although U.S. regulators do not measure cars’ carbon dioxide emissions, European officials do.